Bookstore Shrine Sparks Law-And-Order War

Person reading a book in a bookstore aisle — Photo: LStockStudio / Shutterstock

A Florida Senate candidate’s bookstore displays portraits of Black militants convicted of killing police officers, and her Republican rival calls it a shrine to cop killers.

Quick Take

Florida Senate hopeful Angie Nixon runs Café Resistance, a Jacksonville bookstore-café with a wall of 12 portraits honoring Black Power-era figures.
Several of those pictured, including Assata Shakur, were convicted of killing police officers.
Senator Ashley Moody publicly branded the display a “shrine to cop killers” and pledged loyalty to law enforcement.
Nixon refuses to remove the wall, calling it honest history rather than celebration.

What the Wall Inside Café Resistance Actually Shows

The Washington Free Beacon photographed the wall inside Nixon’s bookstore and described a display of twelve portraits of Black militants, four of whom were convicted of killing police officers. The images carry labels naming group affiliations like the Black Panther Party and descriptions of the crimes each person was charged with. Figures identified include Assata Shakur, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jamil Al-Amin, Kojo Bomani Sababu, Mutulu Shakur, and George Jackson.

Assata Shakur gives Moody’s argument its sharpest edge. She was a Black Liberation Army member convicted of murdering New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster during a 1973 traffic stop, and she later fled to Cuba, where she remains a fugitive from American justice. Her portrait hanging on a public café wall is not a matter of interpretation. It is a documented fact tied to a dead trooper and an unserved sentence.

Moody’s Direct Attack and the Political Stakes Behind It

Moody posted that “Socialist Angie Nixon repeatedly quotes cop killers” and said her bookstore “celebrates them,” adding that she will “ALWAYS support” law enforcement officers and their families. She repeated the “shrine to cop killers” line in a Fox News interview with host Harris Faulkner. The attack lands squarely in the middle of a competitive Senate race where Nixon, a Democratic Socialists of America member, is challenging Moody’s law-and-order record.

Nixon herself has acknowledged the display includes people tied to violence against police. At a Café Resistance event, she described the wall as showing “civil rights leaders that wind up like getting convicted or like tried for like, you know, robbery or killing police officers.” That admission, offered in her own words, removes any ambiguity about what visitors see on her wall.

Nixon’s Defense Rests on History, Not Denial

Nixon refused to take the wall down after the Free Beacon’s report and instead added a sign reading “history is not always good.” She insists the display teaches “true and accurate history,” including what each figure “was convicted of” and “exonerated of,” and says hiding that record would amount to a whitewashed version of the past. At a heated Jacksonville exchange, she told critics plainly, “That is not a celebration”.

Her framing deserves a fair hearing, but it has real limits. Teaching history about violent figures is different from hanging their portraits with group-affiliation labels in a space she also uses for political organizing. Nixon herself has called the café “a safe space where people are learning their history” and can “power-build,” language that blurs the line between a classroom and a campaign headquarters.

Why the Dispute Will Not Settle Quietly

The wall reportedly includes figures like Angela Davis who were not convicted of killing officers, which gives Nixon’s allies room to argue Moody is painting with too broad a brush. That is a fair point of pushback. But it does not erase the fact that convicted cop-killers occupy the same wall, displayed without any visible condemnation of the murders themselves.

Research on policing attitudes shows Americans have grown sharply more divided along party lines since 2016, with confidence in police falling hardest among those most sympathetic to the causes Nixon’s wall represents. Museum professionals who study “contested figures” in exhibits say institutions must weigh context and intent carefully before public display, a standard a political candidate’s bookstore has never been required to meet.

Florida voters now face a plain choice: accept Nixon’s explanation that the wall teaches hard history, or side with Moody’s view that celebrating convicted cop-killers under any label is indefensible in a storefront run by a sitting legislator. Common sense suggests a serious history lesson would include the victims, not just the perpetrators’ causes.

Ashley Moody told Fox News that Democratic Socialist Angie Nixon runs a Jacksonville bookstore that features a wall of twelve figures, four of whom were convicted of killing police officers. pic.twitter.com/Ld6Eb2QUF2

— Terry Newberry (@TerryNewberry72) October 16, 2026

Trooper Werner Foerster never got a vote on how his killer would be remembered. That fact alone should weigh heavily as this Senate race, and this argument over a bookstore wall, plays out in the months ahead.