Vigils in Jacksonville, Florida, are continuing after a white supremacist gunman shot and killed three Black people at a dollar store on Saturday. The gunman, who had a swastika on his AR-15-style gun, attacked a dollar store in a predominantly Black neighborhood after being turned away from the campus of Edward Waters University, an HBCU, a historically Black college. The gunman shot himself dead after the rampage. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters spoke to reporters.
Saturday’s shooting occurred at the same time thousands were gathering in Washington, D.C., to mark the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, when Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. The Jacksonville shooting also occurred as civil rights activists in Jacksonville were preparing to remember the 63rd anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday. On August 27, 1960, a white mob led by the Ku Klux Klan violently attacked Black protesters who were engaged in peaceful sit-ins in Jacksonville. We’re going to play a piece about that in a moment.
But right now we’re joined now by two guests: Rodney Hurst, civil rights leader from Jacksonville, as well as a historian and the award-winning author of several books, former president of the NAACP Youth Council in Jacksonville that helped lead the sit-in protests in Jacksonville in 1960; we’re also joined by Democratic Congressmember Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida, the first Afro-Cuban American and first member of Generation Z to serve in Congress. Frost is the former national organizing director for March for Our Lives, which was formed by survivors of the Parkland shooting in Florida.
— source democracynow.org | Aug 29, 2023