# A Story of Desegaration in Jacksonville
Released in 2024 by Hal Jacobs, Just Another Bombing?: This is Donal and Iona's Story takes audiences on a poignant journey through a little-known incident of the 1960s Civil Rights era. Iona Godfrey King and her son Donal Godfrey share their deeply moving account of surviving the Klan bombing of their home with three other family members on February 16, 1964, in Jacksonville, Fla.
The reason for the bombing? Six-year-old Donal was the first Black student to enroll in the neighborhood Lackawanna Elementary School.
JOIN THE SCREENING & DISCUSSION
The Screening Room: Just Another Bombing? This is Donal and Iona's Story on Thursday, February 22, from 4 - 5:30 p.m. at Bill Brinton Murray Hill Branch Library.
Note: After the screening, guest speakers Donal Godfrey, Hal Jacobs, and Iona Godfrey King will talk about the film. This program is presented by the Friends of the Bill Brinton Murray Hill Library.
About the film
The documentary (25 min.) relies on interviews with King and Godfrey, archival footage, and FBI and court documents to explore moments leading up to and after the domestic terror attack. Ms. King was a 24-year-old domestic worker at the time. She says that she acted on her own to send her son to the whites-only school believing he would be safe. She knew nothing of a NAACP plan in the works to integrate Jacksonville's schools.
To the media, it was just another bombing of another Black family. "It was expected," says Ms. King. The silence from city and school officials was deafening. No one talked about it. The incident is seldom included among historical accounts of school desegregation in Jacksonville.
About the director
Filmmaker Hal Jacobs is known for Common Good Atlanta (2022), Northside Tavern: The Mostly True Story of the Golden Age of Atlanta's Most Exquisite Blues Dive (2022) and Saving the Chattahoochee: The Story of the Women Who Defended the River (2024). The same age as Donal, Jacobs lived a few streets over in the segregated white section of the neighborhood. He only learned about the incident a few years ago from an online article by Jacksonville author Tim Gilmore.
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