In 2020, 100 years after the massacre, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proclaimed November 2 to be “Ocoee Massacre Remembrance Day.” Let us always remember to never forget.
The Ocoee massacre was a white mob attack on African-American residents in northern Ocoee, Florida, which occurred on November 2, 1920, the day of the U.S. presidential election. The town is in Orange County near Orlando. Most estimates total 30–35 Black people killed.
Most African American-owned buildings and residences in northern Ocoee were burned to the ground. Other African Americans living in southern Ocoee were later killed or driven out on threat of more violence. Ocoee essentially became an all-white town. The massacre has been described as the “single bloodiest day in modern American political history”.
The attack was intended to prevent Black citizens from voting. In Ocoee and across the state, various black organizations had been conducting voter registration drives for a year. Black people had essentially been disfranchised in Florida since the beginning of the 20th century. Mose Norman, a prosperous African-American farmer, tried to vote but was turned away twice on Election Day. Norman was among those working on the voter drive. A white mob surrounded the home of Julius “July” Perry, where Norman was thought to have taken refuge.
After Perry drove away the white mob with gunshots, killing two men and wounding one who tried to break into his house, the mob called for reinforcements from Orlando and Orange County. The whites laid waste to the African-American community in northern Ocoee and eventually killed Perry. They took his body to Orlando and hanged him from a lightpost to intimidate other black people. Norman escaped, never to be found. Hundreds of other African-Americans fled the town, leaving behind their homes and possessions.
“Most of the people living in Ocoee don’t even know that this happened there”, said Pamela Schwartz, chief curator of the Orange County Regional History Center, which sponsored an exhibit on it. For almost a century, many descendants of survivors were not aware of the massacre that occurred in their hometown.
Background
Orange County, as well as the rest of Florida, had been “politically dominated by Southern white Democrats” since the end of Reconstruction. But, in the weeks leading up to the presidential election of 1920, African Americans throughout the South were registering to vote in record numbers. At the same time the Ku Klux Klan was experiencing a revival and had established many new chapters since 1915. Three weeks before election day, the KKK warned the African American community that “not a single Negro would be permitted to vote.”
Judge John Moses Cheney, a Republican running for the United States Senate from Florida, had started a voter registration campaign to register African Americans to vote in Florida, because they had supported the Republican Party since Reconstruction. Mose Norman and July Perry, both “prosperous African American landowners in Ocoee,” led the local voter registration efforts in Orange County, paying the poll tax for those who could not afford it. In an effort to preserve white one-party rule, the Ku Klux Klan “marched in full regalia through the streets of Jacksonville, Daytona and Orlando” to intimidate opponents. The organization threatened Judge Cheney prior to the election.
Sam Salisbury was a police chief in Orlando Florida. A native of New York, Salisbury served in the U.S. military and was known as Colonel Sam Salisbury. A white supremacist and a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Salisbury bragged about his involvement in the violent oppression and intimidation of African Americans attempting to vote in the previous 1920 election. He was one of the leaders of the events leading up to the Ocoee massacre. He was injured in an attack he led on July Perry’s home in Ocoee.
Election day
African Americans were met with resistance from the white community when they attempted to vote on election day. Poll workers challenged whether African American voters were really registered. The voters had to prove they were registered by appearing before the notary public, R. C. Biegelow, who was regularly sent on fishing trips so that he was impossible to find. However, African Americans, including Mose Norman, persisted but were “pushed and shoved away” from the polls.
Norman contacted Judge John Cheney, who told him that interference with voting was illegal and told him to write the names of the African Americans who were denied their constitutional rights, as well as the names of the whites who were violating them. Norman later returned to the polling place in Ocoee with a shotgun. Whether the shotgun was taken from Norman is not entirely clear, but whites at the polls drove off Norman using his own shotgun.
The white community began to form a mob and paraded up and down the streets, growing “more disorderly and unmanageable”. The rest of the African Americans gave up on trying to vote and left the polling place. Later during the evening, Sam Salisbury, the former chief of police of Orlando, was called to lead a lynch mob to “find and punish Mose Norman.” He later proudly bragged about his part in the events.
Invasion of Perry’s home
The white mob was on its way to Norman’s home when someone informed them that their target had been seen at the home of July Perry. The mob, by then numbering about 100 men, arrived at Perry’s house demanding that Perry and Norman surrender. When they received no answer, they attempted to break down the front door. Perry, who had been warned about the mob, fired gunshots from inside the home in self-defense. Exactly how many people were defending the house is uncertain; the whites estimated that there were several armed African Americans. Zora Neale Hurston wrote that Perry had defended his home alone. Sam Salisbury knocked the back door open and was shot in the arm, becoming the first white casualty. Two other whites, veterans Elmer McDaniels and Leo Borgard, were killed when they also tried to enter through the back door. Their bodies were found hours later in the backyard.
The white mob withdrew and put out a call for reinforcements to whites in Orlando, Apopka and Orange County, either calling them by phone or sending for them by car. During the two- to three-hour lull while the whites were recruiting other men, July Perry, injured in the conflict, attempted to flee with the help of his wife into a cane patch. He was found by the white mob at dawn and arrested. After Perry was treated at a hospital for his wounds, he was taken by a white mob from a vehicle while being transferred to a jail. They lynched him, “and left his body hanging from a telephone post beside the highway.” Norman was never found. Much of the trouble was attributed to “outsiders” from Winter Garden and Orlando.
Ocoee is razed
With reinforcements, the white mob took the conflict to the rest of the African-American community in northern Ocoee. The “white paramilitary forces surrounded the northern Ocoee black community and laid siege to it.” They set fire to rows of African-American houses; those inside were forced to flee and many were shot by whites. At least 20 buildings were burned in total, including every African American church, schoolhouse, and lodge room in the vicinity. African-American residents fought back in an evening-long gunfight lasting until as late as 4:45 A.M., their firearms later found in the ruins after the massacre ended. Eventually, black residents were driven into the nearby orange groves and swamps, forced to retreat until they were driven out of town. The fleeing sought refuge in the surrounding woods or in the neighboring towns of Winter Garden and Apopka, which had substantial populations of black people.
The siege of Ocoee claimed numerous African-American victims. Langmaid, an African-American carpenter, was beaten and castrated. Maggie Genlack and her pregnant daughter died while hiding in her home; their bodies were found partially burned underneath it. Roosevelt Barton, an African American hiding in July Perry’s barn, was shot after the mob set fire to the barn and forced him to flee. Hattie Smith was visiting her pregnant sister-in-law in Ocoee when her sister-in-law’s home was set on fire. Smith fled, but her sister-in-law’s family was killed while they hid and waited for help that never came.
Aftermath
Expulsion of African Americans
The African-American residents of southern Ocoee, while not direct victims of the massacre, were later threatened into leaving. Annie Hamiter, an African-American woman residing in southern Ocoee (sometimes referred to as Mrs. J.H. Hamiter), suspected that the massacre was planned so that whites could seize the property of prosperous African Americans for nothing. According to Hamiter, people in southern Ocoee were coerced by the threat of being shot and burned out if they did not “sell out and leave.” About 500 African Americans in total were rapidly driven out of Ocoee, resulting in its population being nearly all white. That fall, white residents had to work to harvest the citrus crop because black laborers had fled the region. No African-American residents settled there again “until sixty-one years later in 1981.”
Subsequent local events
July Perry’s body was found “riddled with bullets” and swinging on a telephone post by the highway. According to The Chicago Defender, his body was left near a sign reading, “This is what we do to niggers that vote”. Another source has said he was hanged near the home of a judge who supported the black voter franchise. A local photographer was selling photos of Perry’s body for 25 cents each; several stores placed the photo on exhibition by their windows. No one was prosecuted for his murder. Perry’s wife, Estelle Perry, and their daughter were wounded during the shooting at their home, but survived. The authorities sent them to Tampa for treatment in order “to avoid further disturbance.”
Walter White of the NAACP arrived in Orange County a few days after the riot to investigate events. He was traveling undercover as a white northerner interested in buying orange grove property in the county. He found that the whites there were “still giddy with victory.” A local real estate agent and a taxi cab driver told him that about 56 African Americans were killed in the massacre. White’s NAACP report recorded around thirty dead. A Methodist pastor, Reverend J. A. Long, and a Baptist minister, Reverend H. K. Hill, both from Orlando, reported that they had heard of 35 African-American deaths in Ocoee as a result of the fires and shootings. Charles Cowe in 1970 described 12 dead. A University of Florida student who interviewed local residents for a history term paper claimed in 1949 that “About thirty to thirty-five [murdered] is the most common estimate of the old timers.” The exact number could never be determined. White also learned that many black residents thought the massacre was due to the white community’s jealousy of prosperous African Americans, such as Norman and Perry.
No arrests, much less prosecutions
“No one was ever held responsible for any of the deadly violence. Agents for the Bureau of Investigation (later the FBI) showed up a few weeks later, but they made it clear they weren’t investigating murder, arson or assault. They were interested only in election fraud.” The leader of the mob later became mayor of Ocoee.
Supporters urged the House Election Committee of Congress to investigate the riot and voter suppression in Florida, with a view to suing under the Fourteenth Amendment, but it failed to act.
In 2018, the city of Ocoee released a proclamation acknowledging the massacre. A formal apology to descendants is “in the works”.
The Florida legislature has passed a law requiring that the Ocoee Election Day massacre be taught in Florida schools. On June 23, 2020, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law House Bill 1213 (2020), which directs the Commissioner of Education’s African-American History Task Force to determine ways in which the 1920 Ocoee Election Day Riots will be included in required instruction on African-American history.
Source: Wikipedia
Florida education board votes to keep critical race theory out of schools
Members stressed that the rule does not aim to keep Black history out of classrooms.
By Jeffrey S. Solochek for the Tampa Bay Times June 10, 2021
Lessons that deal with critical race theory and “The 1619 Project” are not welcome in Florida’s public schools following a State Board of Education vote on Thursday.
At the request of Gov. Ron DeSantis, the board unanimously adopted a rule that, in the words of member Tom Grady, emphasizes historical facts over “fiction, projects or theory masquerading as fact.”
Grady offered an amendment that named critical race theory and “The 1619 Project” as examples of two well-known educational approaches that would not be acceptable in classrooms.
Critical race theory is a perspective some teachers employ to explain how racism and race have impacted American life through history and continue to cause inequities.“The 1619 Project” is a New York Times initiative that re-centered the focus on the nation’s history on the year the first enslaved Africans arrived. It uses race as a lens to describe events since then, and includes a curriculum that can be used in schools.
Grady’s proposal also spelled out more specifically which subject areas would be required to be taught beyond the Holocaust, which was the only one mentioned in the original version of the rule.
Those include civil rights and slavery. Grady suggested that those additions spoke to critics who accused the governor and board of attempting to gloss overhistory, while at the same time clarifying for teachers what the state expects.
“I think our intent should be clear,” board member Ben Gibson said in support of the amendment.
The board, meeting in Jacksonville, did not offer details about how it expected the rule to be enforced. Teachers union leaders speculated that specifics would be left to districts, and largely center on complaints that come from students or parents.
State Sen. Janet Cruz, a Tampa Democrat who sits on the Senate Education Committee, said she worried the rule could give rise to more video recording of teachers in classrooms. That’s something the Republican legislative majority authorized this spring at the university level, where some contended liberal viewpoints were being advanced at the expense of conservative voices.
Mixed reaction
The board’s action came after more than an hour of public testimony for and against the rule. Some residents called for the schools to remove any vestige of critical race theory, which one speaker called “a Marxist tactic to divide our country.”
“This is not something that we can stand for in our country,” said Keisha King, a Duval County parent representing Moms for Liberty. She objected to the idea of categorizing people into “oppressor” and “oppressed,” calling the concept dangerous and racist.
Others deemed the perspective important to understand the nation’s history.
“When people are too afraid to have the conversation, how will we ever progress?” Duval County student Grace May asked the board.
After Northside Coalition of Jacksonville founder Ben Frazier blasted the proposal as “Republican political propaganda” that aims to “whitewash, cover up and candy-coat history,” the room broke into a chant of “Allow teachers to teach the truth!” It prompted the board to take a five-minute break and clear the room.
The public comment and debate came after DeSantis addressed the board remotely. Florida must have an education system that is “preferring fact over narrative,” DeSantis said.
That means keeping “outrageous” approaches such as critical race theory out of the lessons, the governor said. He listed examples from New York and Arizona as objectionable, and said they should not occur in Florida.
Superintendents across the state have said they do not teach critical race theory in their schools. But that did not stop the State Board from considering the rule. RELATED: What is critical race theory, and why are conservatives blocking it?
Many teachers protested in the days before the session, saying they do not attempt to indoctrinate their students as the governor and others have suggested, but rather present facts and allow children to explore the ideas.
Some have said it appears the governor is seeking to keep important lessons about Black history out of the schools in order to paint a partisan “patriotic” vision of the nation.
DeSantis said that’s not the case. He noted that state law requires the teaching of slavery, civil rights and more. “It is required to be taught, and it absolutely should be,” he said.
Teachers simply must not depart from the historical record to present a narrative that says the nation is rotten, he added.
A national movement
DeSantis has been calling on schools to keep critical race theory out of schools for several months. His campaign falls in line with a national Republican effort to promote patriotism in civics and history lessons, while suggesting that school initiatives that focus on race and diversity engender hate and divisiveness. RELATED: Gov. Ron DeSantis targets critical race theory as Florida examines academic standards
Texas and Idaho are among the other states that have considered legislation barring schools from using the approach in which educators and students analyze U.S. law, culture and society through the lens of race.
DeSantis was unable to persuade Florida lawmakers to consider such a measure when he promoted a multimillion-dollar civics initiative earlier this year. So he looked to education commissioner Richard Corcoran and the State Board to implement a rule that targets the goal.
To have a long-lasting effect, lawmakers eventually will have to incorporate the rule into law, said Gibson, the State Board member.
Some critics suggested that the governor’s effort had little to do with what’s taught in Florida schools.
“I think it is a political statement,” Cruz said.
She and others observed that when DeSantis recently signed a social media oversight bill into law he declared, “Speech that is inconvenient to the narrative will be protected.” He also said, “We cannot have people whitewash the Holocaust in Florida schools” during a town hall meeting which Cruz also participated in.
Yet DeSantis, they argue, is doing what he criticizes in others — advancing a narrative of his own when it comes to race relations.
“It is indeed hypocritical,” Cruz said.
Keeping out the ‘crazy liberal stuff’
Other recent comments have led many observers to a similar conclusion. During a May speech to a conservative Michigan college, Corcoran spoke about the need to “keep all the crazy liberal stuff out” of instructional material.
The Department of Education took steps toward achieving Corcoran’s goal before the State Board met. On Wednesday, it sent a memo to math book publishers, telling them to not incorporate “unsolicited strategies,” such as social emotional learning and culturally responsive teaching, into the next wave of textbooks.
“These strategies are not called for in the specifications because they are not aligned to (Florida’s educational standards) and, therefore, should not be in your instructional materials,” chancellor Jacob Oliva wrote.
The State Board is scheduled to consider updates to standards relating to civics and Holocaust education in July.