The shooting happened one day before the 63rd anniversary of one of Jacksonville’s most notorious racist incidents, “Ax Handle Saturday.” A group of Black protesters were conducting a peaceful sit-in at a city park to protest the Jim Crow laws that kept them out of white-owned stores and restaurants. That’s when they were attacked by 200 members of the Ku Klux Klan, who hit them with bats and ax handles as police stood by.

Only when members of a Black street gang arrived to fight the Klansmen did the police intercede. Only Black people were arrested.