'History cannot be UNLIVED'

Last Saturday, three African Americans were murdered by a 21-year-old white gunman at the Dollar General Store in Jacksonville, Florida, who then shot himself. The murderer was motivated, Jacksonville Sheriff T K Waters reported, by an "ideology of hate." The shooting took place 15 months after 10 African Americans were murdered in another racially motivated shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo.

- Jesse Jackson

Racial violence against Blacks has scarred America since the first slaves were forcibly shipped to America. The Jacksonville murders, for example, took place one day after the 63rd anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday, where 200 Ku Klux Klan members armed with ax handles attacked Blacks holding a peaceful sit-in to protest segregation in Jacksonville.

Sadly, the Jacksonville shooting occurred on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, when Martin Luther King summoned Americans to his "dream" of a society of equal justice under the law, in which children would be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

This history-of hate and hope-continues to this day. Each movement toward racial equality in this country has been met with a fierce and violent reaction. After the bloody Civil War, the 13th Amendment was passed abolishing slavery, and America began a brief period of reconstruction for the defeated Confederate states. Against great resistance, African Americans gained not only their freedom; but the right to vote, to serve on juries, to own property, and to retain their families. In some Southern states, multiracial reform coalitions took power, redrafting state constitutions, providing for public education, and launching efforts to rebuild the economy.