JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—Florida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon’s “Cafe Resistance” bookstore features a memorial wall honoring several notorious black militants affiliated with the Marxist-Leninist organizations Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. The wall, which the Washington Free Beacon photographed during a recent visit to the café in Jacksonville, honors a rogues’ gallery of murderers, terrorists, and armed robbers, including four militants convicted of killing police officers.
Nixon, an avowed socialist and anti-Israel activist who won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Florida this month despite being far outspent by her establishment opponent, opened Cafe Resistance in June 2024, saying the space would empower the black community. Speaking to café guests shortly after opening, she explained that the store is important “because we had our freedoms coming under attack” and because of Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s (R.) actions to “ban” books (she was likely referring to the Florida Legislature’s passage—and DeSantis’s signing—of legislation restricting sexually explicit content from schools). “I wanted to open a space so everyone can feel welcome, and so where we can organize and build power,” she said.
The wall glorifying violent black militants, which is wedged between Cafe Resistance’s “spiritual emotional empowerment” and “civil rights justice” book aisles, appears to be a recent addition to the shop—it cannot be seen in photos and videos posted by visitors or on its official social media channels.
Among those the wall honors is Jamil Al-Amin, better known as H. Rap Brown, who died in a federal prison last year where he was serving a life sentence for murdering a sheriff’s deputy. Al-Amin was a major voice of the Black Power movement in the 1960s and ’70s, famously saying that violence is “as American as cherry pie.” In 1967, he was charged with incitement after a 45-minute speech in Maryland, where he called for violence: “I don’t care if you have to burn them down and run him out. You got to take over them stores. The streets are yours. Take them.”
The wall also honors Mumia Abu-Jamal, an NPR affiliate reporter and Black Panther who was convicted of the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer and sentenced to death (two witnesses at the hospital where Abu-Jamal was taken following the shooting testified that he admitted he “shot the motherfucker”). After decades as a cause célèbre of the left—during which he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize—his death sentence was thrown out, and he is now serving a life sentence without parole.
Another honoree of Nixon’s wall is Assata Shakur, the infamous Black Liberation Army member who was convicted of murdering a New Jersey state trooper during a traffic stop in 1973 while she was a wanted fugitive for bank robbery and other crimes. Heavily armed BLA operatives broke her out of prison in 1979, and she fled to Cuba, where she died peacefully last year.
The wall honors Kojo Bomani Sababu, who was convicted of murdering a drug dealer in the 1980s and of helping a Puerto Rican radical escape from federal prison. And it honors Mutulu Shakur (the stepfather of Tupac Shakur), who was part of a BLA group that, aided by militants from the May 19th Communist Organization, stole $1.6 million from a cash transport truck and killed one of its drivers in New York in 1981.
Mutulu Shakur died in 2023, shortly after being released from prison on compassionate grounds. Sabubu, whose supporters call him a “New Afrikan prisoner of war,” remains behind bars.
Also honored is George Jackson, a Black Panther Party “field marshal” who, while serving time for robbery in a California state prison, was charged with killing a guard in 1970. He was shot and killed during a 1971 prison escape attempt that left three guards and two other prisoners dead. Shortly before he died, Jackson reportedly screamed, “The Dragon has come,” a reference to the words of Vietnamese communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh.
The Cafe Resistance wall includes a picture of each individual, a label describing whether he or she was affiliated with a group like the BLA, and a short description of the crimes with which the honoree was charged. But in some cases, the descriptions withhold details—for example, Jackson’s merely states he was charged with a $71 robbery and was “murdered within the Jail.”
The wall provides a fresh insight into Nixon’s ideology as she seeks to defeat incumbent GOP senator Ashley Moody, whom the state’s largest police union endorsed, in increasingly Republican Florida.
The wall also clashes with the more moderate tone Nixon has adopted—even inside her resistance café—since winning the Democratic nomination.
“Here’s the thing, y’all—as Floridians, we have more in common than we have that’s different,” Nixon remarked during a rally at Cafe Resistance on Wednesday evening that the Free Beacon attended.
“Health care funding cuts don’t care if you are a Republican or a Democrat. The light bill doesn’t care what gender you are. Those gas prices don’t care what color you are. Those grocery costs don’t care about whether or not you have a college degree,” she continued. “At the end of the day, we are all in a struggle together while the ultra-rich at the top create fear and division between us about our very few differences so that they can make a profit. That ends today.”
Still, Nixon’s campaign website touts a number of her far-left priorities. Under a section labeled “Support Human Dignity,” the website says Nixon would end “mass incarceration,” begin “demilitarizing” the police, and abolish ICE.
The website also states she would support ending military aid to Israel that has “fueled the genocide in Palestine.” Nixon made a name for herself in 2023 as a fierce opponent of Israel. In November 2023, Nixon introduced a resolution in the Florida State House calling for a “de-escalation and ceasefire in the state of Israel and occupied Palestine,” a measure that was voted down in a 104-2 vote. The Free Beacon reported on Thursday that Nixon delivered a series of speeches in 2024 and 2025 at fundraising events for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the notorious pro-Hamas and virulently anti-Israel advocacy organization. Nixon concluded her speeches by quoting Shakur.
As for Cafe Resistance’s book selection, the shop mainly offers works across genres focused on black empowerment and history. The sports section, for example, features The Real Hoosiers, a book that seeks to correct the white-focused story told in the movie Hoosiers by telling the story of the all-black Crispus Attucks High School basketball team, indirectly depicted in the movie. The children’s section features The Brown Unicorn, a story about two unicorn sisters who “embark upon a courageous journey to confront colorism.”
Since Nixon opened it two years ago, the shop, which also sells coffee, smoothies, and sandwiches, has hosted a variety of community events such as an adult-only dance lesson, where participants were asked to wear “Black Panther attire”; a Jacksonville tenants’ union meeting; spoken word performances; concerts; group yoga; and a sex-focused trivia night. Shortly after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September 2025, the shop advertised a “Free Black History Class” by a professor “targeted by C. Kirk & Turning Point USA.”
Cafe Resistance also offers free female hygiene products, condoms, pregnancy tests, and Plan B contraceptive pills.
Another wall inside is dedicated to inspirational quotations and artwork, including a painting of George Floyd. In front of the wall is a large wooden throne with the phrase “dream, resist, flourish” emblazoned above.
The shop’s front façade features an image of a black panther and a closed fist, both of which were prominent symbols of the black militant movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Cafe Resistance is located about nine miles north of downtown Jacksonville in the downtrodden Sherwood Forest neighborhood and occupies a squat, cinderblock building that used to be home to a hair salon, across the street from a newly opened liquor store.
The Nixon campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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