 Jacksonville Civil Rights icon Lloyd Pearson Jr. died Sunday afternoon at 102 and just two weeks before his passing he sat down with Jacksonville Today reporter Will Brown and what would be his final interview. I'm going to talk now to Will, thank you so much for being here. Good morning. So this must have been a real privilege to interview Lloyd Pearson, tell our listeners who he was and how he fits into the Jacksonville Civil Rights movement. So first of all there are two members of the current city council who are registered to vote by Mr. Pearson. In all it is estimated that he registered more than nearly 50,000 people in Jacksonville in his lifetime. He was even lauded by the supervisor of elections Jerry Holland for his advocacy for getting people registered to vote and that really started I think in the 1940s when he was sitting in City Hall or sitting somewhere in city government and listening to people and they were just flagrantly using the n-word and he believed that by expanding the electorate through more people participating in the voting process that would lead to better candidates to represent us. He was also the older brother of the late Rutledge Pearson who was the leader of the Jacksonville NAACP. And his name is on some buildings around town. Yes, his name is on a his name is on the post office and on Kings Road right there in Durkeyville the Pearson family home is probably about maybe a mile if that away from that post office. Mr. Pearson quipped that you know he's like you know I wish the sign on the post office would be bigger so you could really see my brother's name. Mr. Pearson mentioned that he really got into the civil rights advocacy and civil rights movement because his older brother once he finished from Houston Toletsin College with a political science degree in 1951 really got him involved and that's how that's how Mr. Pearson got involved with the civil rights movement. He also attended the march on Washington for jobs and freedom which is there I think there's only one person locally left who attended that march. Yeah I think Lloyd was Lloyd Pearson was one of 35 Jacksonville villains who attended the march on Washington and he was able to stand close to the stage with his brother when Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rocker brotherhood. Now is the time. So Lloyd Pearson was also able to return for the 50th anniversary of the march on Washington. So he really has been in the in the warp in the wolf of this entire movement in Jacksonville. What does his loss mean? His loss is immeasurable because we just heard Dr. King. Mr. Pearson was seven years older than Dr. King. He was in first second grade when Dr. King was born. So you know he in addition to you know his work at the NAACP he was very active in his church. He was a living connection to the civil rights movement to a Jacksonville that has has changed in many respects. I mean you know he got involved with people he got involved with getting people registered to vote because of what he heard in City Hall and then earlier this year when the new Rutledge Pearson elementary opened in the Harborview neighborhood he stood right next to the mayor of Jacksonville and elected leaders and let's be really clear Mayor Donna Deegan is Mayor Donna Deegan because of Black voter participation and you can almost tie a direct link of Black voter participation in Jacksonville to Mr. Pearson's tireless decades of getting people registered to vote. And you found some pretty prominent people that he actually did register to vote. Who did you learn that he actually signed up? Brenda Prisley Jackson former school board member former city council member who's running for public office again. She he said but she said that he personally registered her to vote. Rockman Johnson current city council member also said that he Mr. Pearson personally registered him to vote. I was told that Mr. Pearson not only registered current council member Jacobi Pittman to vote but also her mom. So this isn't just like a certain segment. This is literally generations of people who were encouraged to vote and registered to vote. And you know it's it's worth remembering that Mr. Pearson was born a year and a year to the day after the Okoe massacre which essentially happened because Black folks in Florida dared try to vote. And just tell us briefly about what it was like to be with this man and to just kind of be in his presence knowing all of his history. It was it was awe inspiring to sit next to Mr. Pearson. I literally sat next to him for about 90 minutes and we went over everything from how he played basketball for coach JP Small at Stanton High School. Everything from you know the the the ferry rides that he'd take across the St. John's River with with his dad of he'd be on the second floor of the ferry and his parents be below. He talked about his adventures at Edward Waters his his lovely late wife Mildred he he doted on his children how much Jacksonville has changed. He just really it was a great retrospective of the last 102 years of local history. Will Brown we so appreciate your reporting on this important man. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.