Senator Duncan U. Fletcher
Senator Duncan U. Fletcher
By Linda McCauley
Duncan U. Fletcher Middle and High Schools are landmarks of the Beaches. With so much needed attention focused on the naming of our public schools, I wanted to address the history of Senator Duncan U. Fletcher.
Born in 1859 in Americus, GA, Fletcher attended Vanderbilt University and was admitted to the bar in 1880. He moved to Jacksonville and set up his law practice, where he became a founding member of the Jacksonville Bar Association and its first President. In 1896, Fletcher was one of three attorneys appointed to administer the bar examination to James Weldon Johnson, who in addition to his many other accomplishments, was the first African American man admitted to the Florida Bar by examination. It was Duncan Fletcher who moved that Johnson be admitted to the bar over the objection of another examiner.
Fletcher served as the 21st and 25th Mayor of Jacksonville and was instrumental in rebuilding the city after the Great Fire of 1901. He also served five consecutive terms, from 1909 until his death in 1934, representing Florida in the United States Senate as a Democrat. One of his most notable achievements while in the Senate was introducing legislation in 1928 to create Everglades National Park, which was signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934.
Fletcher died in 1936 from a heart attack while still in office. His remains are interred in Jacksonville at the Evergreen Cemetery.
In addition to having our two schools named in Fletcher’s honor, a dormitory at University of Florida is named after him. It is part of the historic Murphee area and it forms half of the “F” in the iconic “UF” buildings. Fletcher High School was built in 1937, after Senator Fletcher’s death through a federal grant he received to build it.
Right: Photo of Senator Fletcher and two constituents, John and Lena Cypress, 1931. Photo courtesy of Florida Bureau of Archives and Record Management, Florida Photographic Collection.
Left: First graduating class of Fletcher High School, 1938. Beaches Museum Archives.
