SCLC #641 Jacksonville axe-handle attack · advance warning field study

Aug 27 1960 Jacksonville: Mayor/Commissioner Haydon Burns told investigators he warned Chief Luther Reynolds at midnight Fri 26 Aug and briefed 8 a.m. squads. Eyewitnesses described assembly in Hemming Park from ~8 a.m., distribution of perhaps 50 axe handles, march ~9:30 attacking Black people including uninvolved passersby.

Chief Reynolds: ~60 armed men outnumbered officers; claimed only one or two weapons visible at first — tension with eyewitness distribution accounts. Commission’s 37-interview field study (7 white officials, 19 other whites, 11 Black): mayor and police “did not take all the preventive measures they could have”. Standing three hundred fifty-two.