CLARA WHITE MISSION

The Clara White Mission was founded in 1904, but traces its origins to 1880s Jacksonville where former slave, Clara English White fed hungry neighbors from her two-room house on Clay street. Over the years her daughter, nationally recognized humanitarian Dr. Eartha M. M. White, molded the labor of love into a thriving social agency.

By 1932, the "mission work", as Eartha and Clara referred to it, had grown so large it could no longer be managed in a residential setting. Eartha White acquired the old Globe Theatre Building on West Ashley Street, and dedicated the facility to the memory of her mother.

The Clara White Mission became the base from which Eartha White directed her many activities. The facility itself housed a variety of projects and programs over the years in addition to the feeding program for which the agency remains best known. During the Depression, WPA (Works Progress Administration) arts and sewing projects were headquartered in the Mission; during the Second World War, soldiers away from home lived on the Mission's upper floors. Eartha White also provided rooms to released prisoners and the homeless, while she fed, clothed and helped them to find jobs; the agency offered on-site canning, cooking, typing, and ceramics classes, in addition to instruction- in Braille. After renovations to the facility were completed in 1946, Miss White encouraged local business owners to lease office space on the building's ground and third floors.

The Pittsburgh Courier (a newspaper for which Arnolta "Mama" Williams was a correspondent), a dental office, labor union offices, a funeral director, Davis Jewelry, Avery Photography Studio, radio station WOHR '(predecessor to WPDQ), and the Roosevelt Barbershop, have all held office space at the Mission.

The Clara White Mission was only the first of many projects and programs Eartha White developed over her 97 years. In 1902, Eartha and Clara White founded "The Old Folks Home", predecessor of Eartha M. M. White Health Care, Inc., a 125-bed, $780,000.00 facility, initiated by Eartha at age 89.
Eartha White was also responsible for the establishment of a tubercular hospital (Mercy Hospital), a program for delinquent boys (The Boy's Improvement Club), establishment of the first public park for African Americans (Oakland Park, which Miss White ran for ten years out of her pocket until the city took over its operation), a home for unwed mothers, an orphanage and adoption agency, a child care center for working mothers, a halfway house for recovering alcoholics and a rehabilitation program for released prisoners.

Eartha had careers as an opera singer, a school teacher, and operated a variety of businesses of her own including a laundry company, a mercantile, a restaurant, a janitorial service, a taxi service and an employment bureau. She was Jacksonville's first woman realtor, the first professional social worker hired by the city, the first black census taker in the state of Florida and the first female employee of the Afro American Life Insurance Company. Eartha White's charter memberships included the National Business League, the Community Chest (United Way), the Jacksonville Historical Society and the Jacksonville Humane Society.

Eartha White lived on the second floor of the Clara White Mission from 1932 until her death in 1974 at the age of 97. The rooms on the north end of floor were her living quarters; her office suite at the hall's south end is still used by the Mission staff.

For more than a century, the Clara White Mission has served the homeless and low income in Jacksonville, with a particular emphasis on veterans. Our purpose is simple… we help people get back on their feet. Our foundation begins with stabilizing programs providing nutritional meals and transitional housing. Our industry-specific job training programs build marketable job skills, layered with job placement services, life skills training, and personal counseling. Clara White has assisted more than 800 formerly homeless veterans, ex-offenders and low-income citizens to obtain gainful employment and secured housing of their own.

Like much of the First Coast community, the Mission has been deeply impacted by the national economic crisis. Clara White has faced ongoing increases in service demands and simultaneously experienced reductions in both public and private funding. Using the social enterprise model as a means of program support, Clara White developed business ventures through each of our vocational tracks, including a café, full-service catering company and a cleaning service. These ventures have provided partial financial support to our programs, allowing us to continue supplemental training to program participants.

Clara White’s goal is to build on our social enterprise successes, and construct a continuum of sustainable programs effectively supporting both operations and participant’s achievements. As previously stated, Riverside North, Beaver Street Villas, and White Harvest Farms, are new projects designed to guide Clara White’s progression toward social change, greater financial autonomy and sustainability.

The Clara White Mission has achieved an elite rating from Charity Star Navigator in the categories of community service, effectiveness and financial stewardship. Clara White is a recipient of the HUD Secretary’s Opportunity and Empowerment Award for innovation in programming.

Our Mission is to prevent and reduce homelessness through advocacy, housing, job training, employment and working in partnership with the community.