Trump Says He Will Accept Republican Nomination In Jacksonville, Florida, On 60th Anniversary Of KKK-Led Beating Of Civil Rights Advocates In That City

UPDATE: Trump backs down, moves date of MAGA rally to June 20.

Perhaps you thought that Donald Trump's first MAGA Rally since March on Juneteenth, in an Oklahoma town known for the worst massacre of black Americans by whites in US history was an awkward coincidence.

In a Fox News interview taped yesterday and aired today, Trump was informed about the timing of his rally and the Juneteenth celebration: "It wasn't done for that reason, but it's an interesting date."

Trump also announced he will be accepting the Republican Party's nomination in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 27, which happens to be the 60th anniversary of a Ku Klux Klan attack in that city known as "Ax Handle Saturday".

On August 27, 1960, the KKK led a mob of more than 200 white men who attacked black civil rights protesters holding sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters, beating them with baseball bats and ax handles.

CeLillianne Green, historian and author:

I'm speechless. That day is the day those people in Texas found out they were free. The juxtaposition of the massacre of black people and Juneteenth, the delayed notice you are free, is outrageous. Juneteenth symbolized our freedom.

California Senator Kamala Harris tweeted: "This isn't just a wink to white supremacists—[Trump]'s throwing them a welcome home party."

The history behind "Ax Handle Saturday" was explained in a Florida Today article in 2014:

The violent attack was in response to peaceful lunch counter demonstrations organized by the Jacksonville Youth Council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The attack began with white people spitting on the protestors and yelling racial slurs at them. When the young demonstrators held their resolve, they were beaten with wooden handles that had not yet had metal ax heads attached.

While the violence was first aimed at the lunch counter demonstrators, it quickly escalated to include any African American in sight of the white mob. Police stood idly by watching the beatings until members of a black street gang called "The Boomerangs" attempted to protect those being attacked. At that point police night sticks joined the baseball bats and ax handles.

Bloodied and battered victims of the vicious beatings fled to a nearby church where they sought refuge and comfort from prayer and song. Eventually the white mob dispersed. ...

Sixteen-year-old Rodney L. Hurst was president of the Jacksonville Youth Council, leading sit-ins at "whites only" lunch counters in Woolworth's and W.J. Grant Department Store to protest racial segregation.

Hurst has written about his experiences in the award-winning book "It was Never about a Hot Dog and a Coke." ...

In 1959, the year before Ax Handle Saturday, Nathan B. Forrest High School opened in Jacksonville, celebrating the memory of the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. As of July 1, 2014, the name has been changed to Westside High School.

The violence of Ax Handle Saturday did not occur in a vacuum. Racial segregation and overt racism had been building tension in Jacksonville for decades. In his book, Hurst places his personal story as a young activist into the larger historical context of the civil rights movement. "Jacksonville was a mess, not unlike a lot of other southern cities," Hurst says.

It is believed that the Ku Klux Klan organized the violence of Ax Handle Saturday. "The intent was to scare, intimidate, and bring physical harm," Hurst says. "Many times you could not draw a line between the Klan and law enforcement, because law enforcement were at least accomplices to a lot of the things the Klan did."

While the events of Ax Handle Saturday were documented in Life Magazine and newspapers from major cities across the country, reporters from the Jacksonville Times-Union and the Jacksonville Journal were not allowed to cover the story.

Wikipedia adds:

Nat Glover, who worked in Jacksonville law enforcement for 37 years [he was the first African-American elected sheriff in Florida since the end of Reconstruction], including eight years as Sheriff of Jacksonville, recalled stumbling into the riot. Glover said he ran to the police, expecting them to arrest the thugs, but was told to leave town or risk being killed.

Several whites had joined the black protesters on that day. Richard Charles Parker, a 25-year-old student attending Florida State University was among them. White protesters were the object of particular dislike by racists, so when the fracas began, Parker was hustled out of the area for his own protection. The police had been watching him and arrested him as an instigator, charging him with vagrancy, disorderly conduct and inciting a riot. After Parker stated that he was proud to be a member of the NAACP, Judge John Santora sentenced him to 90 days in jail.

Scheduling important political events on days of racist attacks and murders seems to be a Republican tradition. In 1980, Ronald Reagan launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town in which three civil rights workers - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner - were abducted and murdered in 1964.