Sep 5, 2023 4 min read

When the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. spoke at Mt. Rose Baptist Church in Uniontown in July of 1963, he brought a powerful message with him.

“We have come a long, long way, but we have got a long, long way to go,” he told the packed congregation on Grant Street.

A month later (on Aug. 28), his son, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered much the same message to the assembled masses at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., with his “I Have a Dream” speech.

It was a speech that crystallized the urgency Black Americans had to throw off the oppression of white supremacy – nationwide.

Sixty years later, on the very day tens of thousands of people gathered to commemorate the events of 1963, the remnants of white supremacy violently reappeared.

In Jacksonville, Florida, a crazed gunman walked into a Dollar Store carrying an AR-15 style rifle – adorned with swastikas – in search of innocent Black victims.

He killed three of them, before killing himself.

The following day, Florida’s governor (and presidential candidate) Ron DeSantis traveled to Jacksonville to show his support for the families of the victims of the attack at a prayer vigil.

He got booed.

Badly.

To some Black Floridians, DeSantis is no less racist than Gov. George Wallace had been in Alabama, and Orval Faubus in Little Rock, Arkansas, when both tried to block Black students from enrolling in their states’ schools decades ago.

DeSantis’ “War on Woke” even led the NAACP to call for a formal travel advisory for the state of Florida back in May.

“The travel advisory comes in direct response to Governor Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools,” it said.

DeSantis had figured out that by getting Florida’s parents riled up to stop the teaching of the complete history of the nation’s race relations, it could catapult him to national prominence.

He’d engineered legislation that helped satisfy that strategy.

Thanks to DeSantis, Florida’s schools now avoid teaching the fullness of slavery, and its after-effects. When it was made public that some of Florida’s new teaching standards would include teaching students that “some Black people benefited from slavery,” DeSantis foolishly claimed he didn’t have anything to do with it.

Thus, when he arrived in Jacksonville, those boos were aimed at a man they thought was using the occasion for nothing more than a photo op.

He deserved them.

The following day, another presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, made the Sunday morning news rounds.

Ramaswamy is given to bombast. But when he was asked about the murders in Jacksonville the previous day, he gave CNN’s Dana Bash the stock Republican answer.

“We have a mental health epidemic in this country,” he said, as if reading from a cue card.

From there, he engaged in some slick verbal tap dancing around the brutal tragedy of a man who went hunting for Black people at random.

Bash didn’t allow Ramaswamy to engage in prefabricated rhetoric.

“This is very much racially motivated. The sheriff said that he went to the Dollar Store with the intent of killing Black people,” she said.

Give credit to Ramaswamy for being quick on his feet. Even if his answers were head-scratchers.

“I think that is heinous. And deserved to be called out for what it is,” said Ramaswamy. So far, so good.

But only so far!

He then went on and on about how the media, universities, and politicians have fueled what had been the “dying embers” of racism. To him, those forces have been responsible for “taking something away from some people on the basis of their skin color.”

He thinks that the problems of racial hatred in this country have been “fueled” by, well, affirmative action.

He’s no thoughtful revolutionary.

He’s just a polished fast-talker who sees the victims of racial animus as the recipients of advantages they’ve never deserved.

Martin Luther King’s “Dream” is lost on him.

Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 50-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.