President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting with members of the King family and organizers of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, including Reverend Al Sharpton, Founder and President of the National Action Network, Martin Luther King III, son of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Arndrea Waters King, President of the Drum Major Institute (2R), and Yolanda King (R), Granddaughter of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 2023. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images/TNS)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden lamented the racist shooting in Jacksonville, Florida, as he met with civil-rights leaders, including the relatives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., calling it a critical time for the U.S. and urging Americans to speak out against hate crimes.

“We can’t let hate prevail,” Biden said at a White House meeting Monday with Vice President Kamala Harris, joined by civil rights leaders who were marking the 60th anniversary of the landmark March on Washington. “Silence is complicity. We’re not going to remain silent.”

The meeting was intended to commemorate Monday’s anniversary of the march. On Saturday, thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, hearing speeches from King’s son, Martin Luther King III, granddaughter Yolanda Renee King, and veteran civil-rights leader Al Sharpton.

But that event was overshadowed by the racist attack in Jacksonville the same day, where local law enforcement officials say a shooter, armed with a handgun and an assault rifle that was emblazoned with a swastika, killed three Black people at a dollar store.

National Urban League President Marc Morial, former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation President and CEO Melanie Campbell, also attended Monday’s White House meeting.

“The bottom line is: a lot is happening around things you wouldn’t think would be happening today on the anniversary of the 60 years of the march,” Biden said.

The president said he had spoken to leaders in Jacksonville, as well as the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, a 2024 Republican presidential contender. Biden appeared to reference controversies over Florida’s educational curriculum, including efforts to restrict teachings on race and gender and to ban books on those subjects — measures he has criticized before.

“We have to speak out that there’s a whole group of extreme people trying to erase history,” Biden added. “I never thought that I’d be president let alone that I’d be president having a discussion on why books are being banned in American schools.”

The Jacksonville incident is under investigation as a federal hate crime, making it the latest U.S. community struck by racist violence.

Biden in 2022 visited Buffalo, where a gunman targeting Black people killed 10 at a grocery store. At the time, he denounced white supremacy as a “poison.” Earlier this year, he called white supremacy “the single most dangerous terrorist threat” during a speech at Howard University’s graduation.

The Justice Department estimates that hate crimes increased 11.6% from 2020 to 2021, resulting in 9,065 incidents that year.

“There are those that are intentionally trying to divide us as a nation,” Harris said. “Our diversity is our strength and our unity is our power as a nation,” she added. “We have so much more in common than what separates us.”

Monday’s meeting comes as Biden and Harris are seeking to improve their ties with civil rights groups, who have expressed frustration with the administration’s progress on many priorities such as on voting rights, gun violence and student loans. Biden credits Black voters for his 2020 White House victory, where exit polls showed he carried 87% of the vote. But that support has eroded, polls show.

The original 1963 demonstration, officially named the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, marked a watershed moment in the civil-rights movement, where King delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Biden was not at the Saturday event as he traveled back from a vacation at Lake Tahoe.