Newly unearthed footage offers glimpse into Ax Handle Saturday

3 years ago 268

Sights and sounds of Ax Handle Saturday etched successful witness’s mind

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Sixty-one years later, recently unearthed footage offers a uncommon and chilling glimpse astatine the unit that consumed downtown Jacksonville connected the time known arsenic Ax Handle Saturday.

On Aug. 27, 1960, a convulsive mob of achromatic men equipped with ax handles different weapons flooded the streets downtown, chasing and beating Black radical — immoderate of them children — caught successful their path. The onslaught sent bloodied and frightened victims scrambling successful hunt of harmless refuge.

While it happened much than six decades ago, lone successful caller years has Jacksonville begun to reckon with this acheronian section of the city’s history.

SPECIAL COVERAGE: Survivors & historians stock penetration connected events of Ax Handle Saturday

The footage, obtained from CBS archives, was uploaded to YouTube by the Jacksonville Historical Society. The 44-second clip shows the mob marching successful the thoroughfare and attacking Black people. At 1 point, a assemblage corners 1 unfortunate and gangs up connected him with a flurry of weapons and fists.

[Disclaimer: The footage contained successful the embedded clip beneath contains graphic violence]

According to historians and published reports, the Ax Handle Saturday onslaught followed respective sit-in demonstrations by a section younker section of the NAACP who protested segregated luncheon counters astatine section businesses. But, arsenic the footage shows, the radical wasn’t the lone people of the mob violence.

The onslaught received small contiguous quality coverage. No section media but for the Florida Star, a section Black newspaper, covered Ax Handle Saturday. LIFE Magazine and the Pittsburg Courier, an out-of-state newspaper, picked up the story. Then-Mayor Haydon Burns adjacent flat-out denied immoderate unit had taken place, contempt grounds to the contrary published by LIFE weeks later.

On News4Jax astatine 6 p.m., we’ll perceive from a section historiographer astir the value of the recently surfaced video.