Residents of Buffalo, New York, whose neighborhood was also transformed after a gunman opened fire at a Tops supermarket in May 2022, felt anger and frustration again following a racist incident that killed three Black individuals at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday.
According to Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters, the shooter in Jacksonville, a 21-year-old white guy, “hated Black people” and left behind a hateful white supremacist paper. The 18-year-old Buffalo gunman who killed 10 Black people planned the assault “for the future of the White race,” claims a federal criminal complaint.
For Cashell Durham, hearing about the incident in Jacksonville was particularly painful. When Aaron Salter, her brother, went inside the store to alert others to the oncoming shooter, he was shot and died.
Since that happened, I still haven’t been to that Tops, and the shop is still open, Durham said. “From my house, it’s about three or four blocks away. I still am unable to travel.
Before her own family was affected by a mass shooting, she never gave them any thought.
In the days following the massacre, Jamien Eutsey, a fellow Buffalo resident, claimed he developed paranoia about his safety: “I was looking over my shoulder, head on the swivel,” he recalled. I shouldn’t need to, I say.
The passing of Anolt Joseph “A.J.” Laguerre Jr., according to Eutsey, was particularly upsetting. Laguerre, 19, was slain while working at the Dollar General. “My birthday was only three days ago. I’m 24 years old now. I don’t know what to say,” Eutsey replied.
In addition to her daughter, Fragrance Harris Stanfield also escaped the Tops shooting.
Her life, according to her, had completely changed. We are aware that only we left the store, while others did not, she added. “We deal with that on a daily basis.
“Black people around the world have been trained to manage our trauma rather than heal from it. We’ve discovered that pushing it down causes it to multiply,” she continued. She advised the Jacksonville shooting victims to “find the support that you require from whoever is ready to support you.”
Jacksonville and Buffalo shootings are not one-off incidents. From coast to coast, lives continue to be disrupted by both random gun violence and hate crimes.
Nine Black worshipers were murdered in 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina, by a white shooter who entered Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The gunman, who is serving a federal death sentence in a jail in Indiana, published a racist manifesto online.
Wayne Jones, whose mother was killed in the Buffalo incident, claimed he has dealt with racism all of his life. Nevertheless, he attributes some of the rise in murderous rhetoric to social media.
He claimed that “someone” was telling young white men that black people were taking over.
The Anti-Defamation League said in 2022 that right-wing extremists were responsible for the majority of mass shootings over the previous 12 years. White supremacy-related shootings were noted as being of “particular concern,” according to the report. Black people have been the targets of 66% of all hate crimes based on race since 1995, according to the Center for Public Integrity, an organization that does investigative journalism.
Ax Handle Saturday, a somber memory of how an ax-wielding mob attacked Black adolescents holding a nonviolent sit-in at a segregated lunch service, was remembered in Jacksonville on Sunday. The neighborhood is currently dealing with another case of racial terrorism decades later.
Dakarai Singletary and other Buffalo residents think the Jacksonville shooting highlights the systematic racism Black people have experienced in America.
No other group in America frequently experiences this kind of blatant persecution, according to Singletary. “And all we receive are prayers and thoughts. Each time. And it’s really irritating.
For people to value us, he said, “10 members of the community had to die.” And that only applied to this city. That is painful.
After the Tops shooting, Singletary intervened to help families affected by the store’s temporary closure by donating healthy food through his nonprofit organization, Candles In The S.U.N. (Save Ur Neighborhood), which offers mentorship, activities, and other resources to underprivileged youth and young adults. Additionally, Singletary claimed that he recently gave more than 1,600 free backpacks to kids in Buffalo and Syracuse, both in the state of New York. Together with his group, he also intends to travel to Jacksonville to “help however we can.”
The Lt. Aaron Salter Memorial Scholarship organizer Earl Perrin Jr. has stated that he intends to get in touch with folks in the affected Jacksonville community.
He remarked, “We need to attempt to be more proactive than reactive. “I want this generation to be remembered as the one that stood up against hate and did so in a loving manner.”
The Buffalo community received an avalanche of assistance following the Tops shooting and widespread media attention, including donations and federal funds for mental health services. There is still work to be done, according to the locals. Malik Stubbs, a local, noted that structural inequality still exists in the area, which includes the dearth of grocery stores that drew so many Black customers to one Tops store. He suggested concentrating efforts on stopping gun violence and providing police protection for grocery and other retail outlets.
Additionally, Stanfield questioned several of the city’s post-shooting initiatives, saying they placed too much emphasis on getting back up after a shooting and not enough time or space on providing support for survivors to heal. She expressed her optimism that elected officials in Jacksonville will be dedicated to putting in the effort necessary for recovery.
Stubbs understands Jacksonville’s situation because he co-facilitates healing circles with Eutsey for males of color in the Buffalo community and is aware that “it’s not easy” and that the healing process “is going to take a while.”
But the escalation of racial violence raises one general question for Black people across the country, just as it does for many Buffalo residents: “When will it ever end?” Stubbs enquired.