TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Ron DeSantis scoffed when the NAACP issued a travel advisory this spring warning Black people to use “extreme care” if traveling to Florida.
The leading civil rights group argued that the state’s loose gun laws and the Republican governor’s “anti-woke” campaign to deny the existence of systemic racism created a culture of “open hostility towards African Americans and people of color.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, left, speaks Sunday at a prayer vigil for the victims of a mass shooting a day earlier, in Jacksonville, Fla.
Will Walsh of Nocatee, Fla., prays Monday in front of three crosses honoring the victims of Saturday’s shooting near the site of the attack at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Fla.