It has become an annual event for a small, and shrinking, liberal newspaper in Jacksonville to publish the “ax handle day” story.

Every year it seems to become more preposterous.

This year, a blurry video was added that purports to be from the event. It is of people fighting but that’s all that it shows. It could be from a typical Saturday night on Ashley Street during the time period.

The event took place around what was then called Hemming Park in downtown Jax, in front of the current City Hall.

People with black skin were protesting for civil rights and a lot of White Democrats were there looking for trouble.

The little liberal newspaper wants to make the confrontation look like the Massacre at Wounded Knee but it was much less.

No one currently at the paper was there.

I was.

Contrary to the newspaper’s false assertions there was no “news blackout.”

I and other reporters were sent there to cover the event. We didn’t have all the modern conveniences such as cell phones and computers. I was told to phone in and report what I saw, which I did.

The newspaper wrote a story the next day.

Editors at the paper made the decision not to hype the story, tabloid style. It was considered more responsible to report it straight so as not to inflame tensions and cause more violence.

The Jacksonville citizens with black skin were using the non-violence methods advocated by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., for the most part. Only a few fought back when attacked by white Democrats.

I saw only two acts of violence and the aftermath of a third.

I saw two adult Democrats stop a teen-aged boy with black skin who was riding a bicycle on Monroe Street, curse at him and strike him, once.

I saw a mob of white Democrats corner a man with black skin in the doorway of the Penney’s store at Hogan and Duval and hit him several times.

Using a 35 mm camera I had with me I got several photos before I was advised by one of the men with white skin that it would be healthier for me to put away the camera. There was nothing more to film, so I did. The photos I got were not very good because I could not get close enough.

As I walked over to Monroe and Laura streets, I saw a man who had been hit with an ax handle and was bleeding from the head. This was the subject of a photo, taken by someone else, that appeared in Life magazine.

There were other scuffles around the park that I did not witness, and some in other parts of the city.

No one was killed that day or even hospitalized, as far as I know.

The little liberal paper, which was conservative in its opinion pages for nearly 150 years, has been sold to a large liberal corporation and now is liberal not only in its opinion pages but also in its news columns, contrary to sound journalistic practices.

Every year it conjures up an excuse to revisit the incident and attempt to make it fit into the Democrat effort to divide and destroy America by pitting people of different races against each other. It frequently apologizes for the reporting that was done 60 years ago, in a shameless display of virtue-signaling.

The fact is the people with black skin won the day, aiding in the efforts to accelerate the advancement of civil rights that were being made even before government intervention.

Today’s efforts by the media and current federal government to revise history are having the opposite effect.