As we commemorate 60 years since the sit-in demonstrations, led by university students and youth members of the NAACP across the country and in Jacksonville, we also remember the violent white-led backlash on August 27, 1960 that erupted in our city and became known as Ax Handle Saturday. It was a pivotal moment in the march towards desegregation in a community ripe with racism and ready for change. This powerful history is especially poignant at this moment of national reckoning following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the constant drumbeat of violence and oppression against Black people in America.