By some measures, the town was making strides to emerge from its racist previous. But the killing of three Black folks Saturday by a younger, white shooter was a painful and startling reminder that the remnants of racism proceed to fester in Jacksonville, Florida.
What occurred in Jacksonville, stated longtime resident Rodney Hurst, 79, “could have happened anywhere, except it did happen in Jacksonville.”
The shooting occurred as the Jacksonville community prepared for an annual commemoration of what is known as Ax Handle Saturday. In an unforgettable exhibition of brutality 63 years ago, a mob of white people used baseball bats and ax handles to club peaceful Black demonstrators protesting segregation at a downtown lunch counter on Aug. 27, 1960. Police first stood by but joined the white mob when the Black group began fighting back. Instead of collaring any white instigators, police arrested several Black people.
Hurst, who was 16 when the historic violence erupted, has been encouraged by progress following the Civil Rights movement, but worries racism once again has become normalized by the nation’s divisive politics.
Even so, he said, “Jacksonville didn’t want anyone to assist its racism alongside.”
Jacksonville County Sheriff T.Ok. Waters stated notes left by the 21-year-old shooter, Ryan Palmeter, made it clear he was concentrating on Black residents of a predominantly African American neighborhood in Jacksonville.
Palmeter used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a Glock handgun to kill his victims, Waters stated, each weapons purchased legally earlier this yr regardless of his involuntarily committment for a 72-hour psychological well being examination in 2017.
He fatally shot Angela Michelle Carr, 52, as she sat in her automotive and chased A.J. Laguerre, 19, by means of a Dollar General retailer earlier than capturing him. The third sufferer, Jerrald Gallion, 29, was killed as he entered the shop.
Then the shooter killed himself.
Palmeter despatched statements to federal legislation enforcement and the media suggesting his assault marked the fifth anniversary of a capturing at a online game event in Jacksonville that killed two folks. That assailant additionally killed himself.
Somewhat puzzling is the obvious lack of a racial motive within the capturing 5 years in the past, leaving questions on why Palmeter cited the assault in his writings.
Jacksonville is residence to just about 1 million folks, a couple of third of them Black, simply south of Florida’s border with Georgia. The metropolis remains to be coming to phrases with its Southern heritage whereas attempting to turn out to be extra cosmopolitan within the shadows of the state’s different main cities: Miami, celebrated for glitzy nightlife and welcoming seashores, and Orlando, residence to the world-renowned Disney World and Universal theme parks.
In latest years there have been indicators Jacksonville was altering, and it’d nonetheless be.
Jacksonville elected its first Black mayor in 2011. A pair years later, there was one other watershed second when a coalition of activists succeeded in persuading the college board, after years of failed makes an attempt, to rename a highschool honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate normal and the primary grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Since then, the town has continued to sever ties to the racist previous by eradicating a Confederate soldier statue atop a memorial in a park bordering City Hall. The excision was finalized by Jacksonville’s former mayor, a Republican who as soon as served as his occasion’s statewide chair.
Donald Trump took Duval County within the 2016 presidential election. Two years later, a Black Democratic candidate working for governor, Andrew Gillum, gained the county however narrowly misplaced statewide to now-Gov. Ron Desantis. In 2020, Joe Biden carried Duval County due to a heavy turnout from Black voters — the primary time a Democratic presidential candidate has gained the county since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Earlier this yr, Democrat Donna Deegan, who’s white, was elected mayor of Jacksonville. Waters, who’s Black and a Republican, took the helm of the sheriff’s workplace in January.
“It feels some days like we’re going backward,” Deegan stated by means of tears Sunday whereas addressing a congregation at St. Paul AME Church, 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from the positioning of the capturing.
Former state Sen. Audrey Gibson, who represented a principally Black district in Jacksonville, stated a single occasion mustn’t outline the group.
“I don’t think you can use one person to say there’s a racism issue in Jacksonville,” she stated, even when a historic sample of racial divides persists at present, significantly in wealth and the financial system.
There are nonetheless many unknowns in regards to the shooter’s motives and why he selected that exact neighborhood, Gibson stated, despite the fact that “it was obvious that he was trying to attack Black people regardless of who they were.”
Social justice activists comparable to Michael Sampson, who based the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, have lengthy hoped for everlasting change however proceed ready.
Saturday’s capturing is “a reminder that we’re still at the same place,” he stated.
Sampson recalled the killing of 10 Black folks at a Buffalo grocery store in May 2022 by a white supremacist, who was sentenced to life in jail in February.
“This happened in Buffalo,” Sampson said. “You had a racist killer indiscriminately trying to kill Black people, and now this happened in Jacksonville — it happened in Jacksonville — so there’s a culture that needs to be addressed out there.”
Ax Handle Saturday serves as a seamless reminder of Jacksonville’s racist previous, Sampson stated, and the brutality in opposition to Black residents that repeated with the capturing and deaths of three folks.
“That violence,” he said, “is still something that we face every day.”
Source: www.the-independent.com
