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Martin Luther King III and his wife, Andrea Waters King, joined News 12’s Gwen Edwards to discuss a racially motivated shooting that recently took place in Jacksonville.

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Our Lives: Martin Luther King III reflects on racially motivated Jacksonville shooting

Welcome to our lives. I'm Gwen Edwards. It was a watershed moment in us history. The 1963 march on Washington and just weeks later, it was followed by unspeakable violence. If you remember in 1963 about three weeks after the march on Washington, four little girls lost their lives in the 16th street Baptist Church because of bombing. Every time, there seems to be a sense of a pro a forward movement. There's always the inevitable setback. The fact of the matter is hate is being voted in this country and we've got to change that and we got to do something about it. Now, not tomorrow, not next week, but now the parallels, the uncanny parallels as to where our country is in 2023 as where it was in 1963. 1 of the main reasons I say that is that during the, after the original march on Washington, three weeks later, four little girls were killed in the bombing in Birmingham, Martin Luther King the third and his wife are speaking about the racial motivated shooting in Jacksonville, Florida during the same weekend that hundreds of thousands had gathered in Washington to commemorate the march on Washington here. What he says about how this country must make a radical change. Number one, we have gone down uh of uh a spiral of going backward instead of moving forward again. We created what we call a huge coalition for this 60th anniversary where we had blacks and Jews and we had Latino and, and Native Americans. We had the LGBT Qi a community, we had labor. Uh This was the one of the largest coalitions that has ever existed. Uh We had the Chinese American community. Uh So Asian Americans, the point is the trajectory has got to change and we keep going down this negative hole. We have to figure out how do we create a, a positive energy, a positive my father used to talk about that's what I'm dedicated to building coalitions to say America is better than it is acting at this time. Then maybe one day we will be a great nation. We have an opportunity and we must, we, we gotta learn Nonviolence. Also. We, we've accepted a culture of violence. We must create a culture of Nonviolence. Uh that makes us a better nation. Darkness will never put out darkness, only light can do that. And they say as parents that they're concerned for their child's future because she has less rights now than she did when she was born. Our daughter has fewer rights today than she did when she was born. She's 15 years old in 2008, she had more rights than she does in 2023. That is unacceptable. And if a picture is worth 1000 words, tell me what comes to mind. When you see these pictures here is Doctor Martin Luther King junior removing a burnt cross from his front lawn in Montgomery, Alabama. Next to him is his young son, Martin Luther King the third for our lives. I'm Gwen Edwards.

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