A current of grief still courses through the small park off Kings Road when people gather at a huge oak tree and remember the lives of three Black people killed in a racist shooting at a Dollar General store.
This year's third annual memorial continued to say the names of Angela Michelle Carr, Jerrald De'Shaun Gallion and Anolt Joseph "A.J." Laguerre Jr. while calling for a "time to light the way forward."
"It doesn't mean that anniversaries are not going to hurt, or that memories will not bring you tears, or that there will not be moments when the question 'Why?' arises in hearts," Pastor Michelle Godfrey-Watson of Refresh Ministries said. "Moving forward means that what happened to us will not determine what is going to happen through us.
"We're
going to take the memory and we need to turn it into movement," she said. "We're going to take the darkness that tried to consume us and we become light. That is how we honor Angela. That's how we're going to honor A.J. That's how we're going to honor Jerrald."
City Council member Ju'Coby Pittman organized the memorial ceremony on Aug. 26 at Kings Road Memorial Park just up the road from the storewhere a white gunman from Clay County opened fire on Black people based solely on the color of their skin.
"It's important that we continue this memorial because the passage of time should never mean that you're forgotten because you're not," Pittman told family members who joined in lighting candles. "This memorial says to the families and to Jacksonville that we stand with you and that you're not alone."
U.S. Senate Democratic nominee Angie Nixon of Jacksonville, invited by Pittman to speak, said she broke down during an interview the previous day. She told family members of the victims she "can't imagine what you are experiencing and facing."
She said she keeps thinking of the number three for the third anniversary of the three lives lost.
"If you are a Biblical person or a spiritual person, three represents wholeness and something becoming complete," she said.
Nixon said that doesn't mean "to get over this" and let what happened "just be wiped away."
"Because also when it comes to numbers, this is the 250th anniversary of our country's founding and in this moment, with this wholeness of three, we have the opportunity to build a new vision for our country. So we should not let their deaths be in vain because at the end of the day, we all want the same thing, every one of us — to be healthy, to be prosperous, to be safe, to experience joy and rest."
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Ceremony remembers three lives lost in racist shooting three years ago
