The racially motivated killings of three Blacks in Jacksonville by a racist last week were not the first time this happened in Jacksonville. In 1964 Johnnie Mae Chappell, a Black woman who was the mother of ten children, was shot to death on a dark stretch of road in Jacksonville by three white racists who were looking for a Black person to kill.

The men who killed Chappell were never effectively punished for their act although to their credit two white Jacksonville detectives did their best to bring them to justice. Unfortunately, the file in the case somehow disappeared in the police department and was found months later under the floor mat in the office of a high-ranking police official.

Some are blaming the governor for the recent killings. Not me. Jacksonville has always been a dangerous city for black people however, Ron DeSantis through race-baiting and using violent language such as the “slitting” of throats and criminals being left “stone cold dead” has not helped to cool Florida’s boiling racial climate which he intentionally created for political purposes.

Given the present racial climate in Florida and in the country some people fear that we are on the verge of civil war and this Jacksonville case is a clear signal that this is true. It is not. The killings in Jacksonville were carried out by a deranged racist who evidentially acted alone. It is not civil war that we must fear. Rather, it is the lone wolf deviant who feeds on the hateful rhetoric of the historical moment who believes he is losing his country to Blacks and Browns and God only knows to whoever else and who sees President Trump as a victim as he sees himself that we must fear. Unless the dangerous rhetoric is stopped in Florida and in America there will be more of them.