Ax Handle Saturday | |||
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Part of Civil Rights Movement | |||
Date | August 27, 1960 | ||
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Ax Handle Saturday, also known as the Jacksonville riot of 1960, was a racially motivated attack in Hemming Park (since renamed James Weldon Johnson Park) in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 27, 1960. A group of about 200 white men used baseball bats and ax handles to attack black people who were in sit-in protests opposing racial segregation.
Because of its high visibility and patronage, Hemming Park and surrounding stores were the site of numerous civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s. Black sit-ins began on August 13, 1960, when students asked for service at the segregated lunch counter at W. T. Grant, Woolworths, Morrison's Cafeteria, and other eateries. They were denied service, kicked, spat at, and addressed with racial slurs. [3] [4]
On August 27, 1960, a group of approximately 200 white men, some of whom were thought to have Ku Klux Klan affiliations, gathered in Hemming Park armed with baseball bats and ax handles. [5] They attacked the protesters conducting sit-ins. The violence spread, and the white mob started attacking all black people in sight. Rumors were rampant on both sides that the unrest was spreading around the county. Actually, the violence stayed in relatively the same location, and did not spill over into the mostly white, upper-class Cedar Hills neighborhood, for example. A black street gang called the Boomerangs came to protect the demonstrators. [6] Police had not intervened when the protesters were attacked, but when "blacks started holding their own" [7] and the Boomerangs and other black residents attempted to stop the beatings, the police arrested them for it. [8] [9]
Nat Glover, who later worked in Jacksonville law enforcement for 37 years, including eight years as sheriff of Jacksonville, recalled stumbling into the riot. Glover said he ran to the police, expecting them to arrest the thugs, but was told to leave town or risk being killed. [10]
Several white people had joined the black protesters on that day. Richard Charles Parker, a 25-year-old student attending Florida State University, was among them. White protesters were the object of particular dislike by racists, so when the fracas began, Parker was hustled out of the area for his own protection. The police had been watching him and arrested him as an instigator, charging him with vagrancy, disorderly conduct and inciting a riot. After Parker stated that he was proud to be a member of the NAACP, Judge John Santora sentenced him to 90 days in jail. He was attacked in jail, suffering a broken jaw, after which Santora sentenced him to a road gang. [11] [12] [13]
Local authorities and news media downplayed the violence. Mayor Haydon Burns claimed there was no violence, and Jacksonville's leading newspaper buried the story on page fifteen. It was covered by local Black publications, out-of-town reporters, and in Life magazine. The mayor alleged most rioters were not Jacksonville residents and refused to convene a committee requested by the NAACP to address racial discrimination. [14] [15]
Snyder Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church hosted community discussions and negotiations following the incident. [16] Lunch counters in Jacksonville were desegregated in 1961. [17]
A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to move unless their demands are met. The often clearly visible demonstrations are intended to spread awareness among the public, or disrupt the goings-on of the protested organisation. Lunch counter sit-ins were a nonviolent form of protest used to oppose segregation during the civil rights movement, and often provoked heckling and violence from those opposed to their message.
William Haydon Burns was an American politician. He was Mayor of Jacksonville, Florida, from 1949 to 1965, and served as the 35th Governor of Florida from 1965 to 1967.
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The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in February to July 1960, primarily in the Woolworth store—now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum—in Greensboro, North Carolina, which led to the F. W. Woolworth Company department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. While not the first sit-in of the civil rights movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were an instrumental action, and also the best-known sit-ins of the civil rights movement. They are considered a catalyst to the subsequent sit-in movement, in which 70,000 people participated. This sit-in was a contributing factor in the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
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Nathaniel Glover Jr., is an American former college administrator and former police officer and sheriff. Glover is considered a pioneer in leadership in Jacksonville, Florida. He was the first African American elected sheriff in Florida since the end of the Reconstruction. He was a mayoral candidate and served as the President of Edward Waters College, Florida's first institution established for the education of African-Americans. He served as President of Edward Waters University in Jacksonville, Florida from 2010 to 2018. Previously he was the Sheriff of Jacksonville from 1995 to 2003, after serving in the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office since 1966. He was succeeded by John Rutherford.
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