On June 12, 2025, Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, Florida, issued a stern warning regarding the county’s response to any form of violent protest. His comments, made in a press conference conspicuously lacking diverse representation, reflected more than just a local law enforcement posture. They echoed a long, often unspoken history of racial suppression and resistance in Brevard County. A history that deserves not just acknowledgment, but reconciliation.

Brevard County was founded in 1844. By the 1860 U.S. Census, it held a small population of just 246 people, including 15 enslaved individuals, one free Black person, and six classified as “mulatto.” These numbers reveal a foundational truth: Brevard, like much of the South, was built within a system that codified human hierarchy, legitimized through slavery and sustained by systemic exclusion. Florida would become the third state to secede from the Union, embracing the Confederacy’s defense of that system.

From this dark foundation, a figure of light emerged. Harry T. Moore, along with his wife Harriet, stood tall. As educators and civil rights activists in the 1930s and 1940s, the Moores registered Black voters and fought for equal pay for Black teachers. For their activism, they were fired from their positions. And for their courage, they paid the ultimate price. The Ku Klux Klan bombed their home on Christmas night, 1951, killing Harry instantly and Harriet days later. Their deaths were not random acts of hatred. They were targeted assassinations meant to suppress Black advancement and silence truth.

But the truth persisted.

In 1966, during federally mandated desegregation, teacher Pat Manning arrived at Mims Elementary, an all-white school, as Brevard struggled to implement change. White teachers were offered workshops to help them navigate interactions with Black colleagues and students, highlighting a reality few acknowledged. Racism was not simply a social problem. It was a professional one embedded in institutions. Manning, who taught students from families aligned with both the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan, even had a cross burned in her yard.

In 1973, the federal government approved a desegregation plan for Brevard County that disproportionately placed the burden of busing on Black children, particularly the 500 students from Poinsett Elementary School in Rockledge. The NAACP’s Rev. W. O. Wells criticized the plan as unjust, and the community responded. Over 4,000 African American students boycotted Brevard schools, sending a clear message. Forced compliance without equitable treatment is not justice.

That same year, Leon Collins became the first African American man elected to Cocoa City Council, serving until 1983, with seven of those years as Vice Mayor. His leadership marked a symbolic shift, but symbolic change has never been enough.

Today, the echoes of that inequity remain thunderously clear.

During the 2018 to 2019 school year, African American students in Brevard County earned average C grades, and only 26 percent met or exceeded grade-level standards in English and Language Arts, compared to 68 percent of white students. While making up just 15 percent of the student body, Black students accounted for over 30 percent of all expulsions, according to U.S. Department of Education data. These disparities are not theoretical. They are lived realities that trace back through generations of policy, perception, and punishment.

Yet rather than confront these truths, figures like Representative Randy Fine and organizations like Moms for Liberty have attacked racial equity efforts in schools. They falsely accuse Brevard Public Schools of promoting “critical race theory,” weaponizing that term to suppress discussions about race and justice. Fine even went as far as to call “equity” itself racist. A statement that not only ignores the county’s documented disparities but willfully denies its past. The irony is glaring. The very data they dispute confirms the necessity of the efforts they seek to dismantle.

This is not just a local story. It is an American one.

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, we must ask: Who are we? And who do we want to be? If we are to truly honor our founding ideals of liberty and justice for all, we must be willing to engage in truth and reconciliation. That means naming the wrongs, not rewriting them. It means listening to the cries of protest not as threats to order but as calls for equity. It means creating systems that do not just open the doors of opportunity, but ensure that every child, regardless of race or background, has what they need to walk through them.

Brevard County’s story is not just about injustice. It is about resistance, resilience, and the enduring hope that this country can live up to its promise. But hope without truth is empty. And truth without reconciliation leads to cycles we have seen before. Cycles of denial, suppression, and backlash.

This moment calls for more than defensiveness. It calls for leadership. It calls for history to be taught fully, justice to be pursued boldly, and equity to be framed not as a threat but as the path toward the very unity we claim to seek.

Because until we reconcile with who we have been, we cannot truly become who we say we are.