By Pat Bryant
Florida’s Progressive Clergy responded to the racist August 26, 2023, massacre of three Blacks, Angela Michelle Carr, 52, Jerrald Gallion, 29, and Joseph Laguerre, Jr. 19 by a 21-year-old racist White man at a Jacksonville Dollar General Store.
Florida’s progressive clergy took back the microphone from Governor Ron DeSantis, and hateful forces that attack Black, Brown, LGBTQ+ communities. Led by the Repairers of the Breach, the Florida Council of Churches, the League of Women’s Voters, the National Action Network, the Florida African Methodist Episcopal Churches, and others, marched on September 16 a short distance from Bethel Baptist Church to Jacksonville City Hall. It was a hot partly cloudy Saturday. A day earlier, these religious leaders delivered to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis a letter demanding he cease and desist from spewing racist rhetoric that creates an environment of racial hatred and violent attacks upon Black, Brown, and marginalized communities.
Governor DeSantis, an ultra-conservative Republican running for president of the United States on a record of hateful laws and state actions, reacted in the media accusing the clerics cease and desist letter a “stunt”, which quickly drew a response from Rev. Dr. James T. Morris, ,president of the Florida Council of Churches.
Several pastors responded to DeSantis, but none as clear as Rev. Dr. Morris. Morris quoted Proverbs 22: 8-11, “Whover sows injustice reaps calamity, and the rod of his fury will fall”, and said “we have come to say to you that we are taking back the mic … and we are putting your behind in check…woke folks vote”, an apparent threat of massive Black vote in 2024.
A few of the more than 200 persons supporting the ministers were authors, scholars and noted community and labor activists. A short list includes James and Pam Pierce, Linda Baker, Ann Gayle, Jacquelyn Jones, Dorothy Holder, Geraldine Smith Baker, Gloria Dean Belton, Carol Alexander, Ingrid Montgomery, Rodney Hurst, Rev Reginald Gundy, Rev. Jeanette Cofer, Marsha Dean Phelps, Jamil Davis, Florida House of Representative member Angie Nixon.
One pastor who marched was Rev. Reginald Gundy pastor of Mount Saini Baptist Church and president of the Jacksonville Leadership Coalition. Rev. Gundy is a history teacher who quit working for Duval County Schools rather than teach new history standards that includes themes that Blacks benefited from slavery.
Absent were several activist leaders like former Senator Tony Hill who could not attend due to the statewide annual conference of the NAACP in Orlando and others due to the Florida Rising conference in Tampa. Senator Hill has urged reimposing bans on assault rifles, the weapon of choice of racist murders like the Jacksonville murderer. A Parkland High School massacre survivor also spoke at the rally and supported the assault weapon ban.
Along with chants, the group sang “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” and “Woke Up This Moring With My Mind Stayed on Freedom” jazzed up by the Repairers of the Breach jazz group.
Captivating was the Repairers of the Breach jazz band’s leading the group singing “Take Back the Mic” with a jazzy/Caribbean beat. The lyrics follow: “Take back the mic , take back the mic, and tell the truth, take back the mic, Love is here, truth is here, we are the change.’
Bishop William Barber, who recently retired from pastoring Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, N.C. He is founder and director of the Center for the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy at the Yale Divinity School repeated statistics included in the cease-and-desist letter and in his speeches across America.
“Nationally, more than 140 million poor and low-income people live in the United States, or 43% of the country’s population, and that was before the COVID-19 pandemic, and 250,000 die each year from poverty. Among those 140 million people are: 52.2% or 39 million children (below 18); 41.9% or 21 million elders (above 65); 42.6% or 65.8 million men; 45% or 74.2 million women; 60.4% or 26 million Black people; 64.1% or 38 million Latinx people; 40.8% or 8 million Asian people; 58.9% or 2.14 million Native/Indigenous people; 33.5% or 66 million white people.” The data is from the U.S. Census.
Barber called on DeSantis to stop dividing people with racist rhetoric and unite them to solve the problems of poor people.
Barber recounted how in 1960 racist actions of the Florida legislature triggered Governor LeRoy Collins, a moderate, to refuse to take part in race baiting which he said would have bad results.
On August 27, 1960, more than 200 white men beat down a few youthful members of the NAACP Youth Council in the area that is now James Weldon Johnson Park. The youth were violating Florida’s segregation laws which prohibited racial integration in public places like lunch counters they were attempting to integrate. Barber also mentioned George Wallace’s 1960 racist campaign to prohibit Blacks from studying at the University of Alabama created the environment which enabled the Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in which four Black girls were murdered September 15, 1963.
At the march was author Rodney Hurst, author of “It was never about a Hot Dog and a Coke” his personal account of Jacksonville’s Axe Handle Massacre. Hurst was the Youth Council organizer during the August 27, 1960. White attackers were never arrested, and a White Florida State sympathizer was arrested and sentenced to 30 days in jail.
**Pat Bryant is a longtime journalist who covers Freedom Movement activities in the Southern United States
