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The irony is almost too rich: Thousands of people gathered on the National Mall to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, only for a racist White man in Jacksonville, Florida, to murder three African Americans simply because of their race. Angela Michelle Carr, 52, was fatally shot in her car in the parking lot of a Dollar General store in a predominantly Black neighborhood. A.J. Laguerre, 19, a store employee, was shot dead as he attempted to flee from the attacker. Jerrald Gallion, 29, was unknowingly shot dead as he entered the store.
The senseless killing of Black individuals because of their skin color is not a new occurrence. We witnessed a similar tragedy in May 2022, when a White supremacist murdered 10 Black shoppers at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo. We saw it again in February 2020, when Ahmaud Arbery, a young Black man, was hunted down and killed by three White assailants while jogging through a White neighborhood. It happened in June 2015, when a White supremacist murdered nine Black worshippers at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina. We’ve seen it happen repeatedly in incidents of police violence, where minor infractions like a broken taillight have led to fatal encounters between law enforcement and African Americans, leaving families devastated and communities outraged.
It is clear that the dream articulated by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during his iconic speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, where he expressed hope that his children would live in a nation where they would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, is still far from being realized.
According to law enforcement officials, the Jacksonville gunman, who was from the neighboring Clay County, first went to Edward Waters University, a historically Black college. When chased away by campus security, he proceeded to the Dollar General store armed with an AR-15-style rifle adorned with a Nazi symbol and a Glock pistol, wearing a bulletproof vest. Tragically, he took his own life before being apprehended, leaving behind disturbing writings revealing his hateful ideologies, as stated by Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, though somewhat awkwardly, expressed the right sentiments during a vigil for the victims by denouncing the killer as a “major league scumbag” and vowing to prevent racial targeting. However, the crowd rightfully booed him. DeSantis has consistently weakened gun laws in Florida instead of taking measures to prevent an unbalanced, homicidal young racist from obtaining deadly weapons. Furthermore, DeSantis has waged a continuous campaign against “wokeness,” a term originally intended to raise awareness of systemic racism that perpetuates anti-Black discrimination and violence.
DeSantis has also implemented a revised curriculum in Florida schools that downplays the extensive history of African Americans being targeted solely because of their race. When studying the Jim Crow era, students are taught about “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” as if both White and Black individuals were equally responsible. This curriculum conveniently overlooks significant events like the “Red Summer” of 1919, where numerous anti-Black riots and massacres occurred across the country, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of African Americans.
Ironically, DeSantis delivered his speech on the anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday, a dark day in Jacksonville’s history. On August 27, 1960, African Americans engaging in a peaceful sit-in to protest segregation at a lunch counter were violently attacked by a White mob armed with baseball bats and ax handles. When the demonstrators defended themselves, the police arrested the Black victims instead of the White assailants.
While Jacksonville, like the rest of the nation, has made progress over the years, with a Black mayor serving from 2011 to 2015 and a Black sheriff, Sheriff Waters, in office, there is still a long way to go. The city has made efforts to remove Confederate memorials and rename schools that honor Confederate figures like Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former Confederate general and the first “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan.
However, King’s dream will never be fully realized until the nation confronts and acknowledges its complete history. And mass shootings, whether motivated by racism or other factors, will not cease until sensible laws are enacted to keep lethal weapons out of the hands of those who wish to commit acts of violence.
Those who argue that it is not the appropriate time to have these discussions in the aftermath of a tragedy are ensuring that there will always be a next time.
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