Ocoee massacre facts for kids

The Ocoee massacre was a mass racial violence event which saw a white mob attack numerous African American residents in the northern parts of Ocoee, Florida, a town located in Orange County near Orlando. The massacre took place on November 2, 1920, the day of the U.S. presidential election.

By most estimates, a total of 30–35 black people were killed in the violence. 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 of town by the threat of further violence being used against them. Thus, Ocoee essentially became an all-white or "sundown" 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. Black people had essentially been disenfranchised in Florida since the beginning of the 20th century. In Ocoee and across the state, various black organizations had been conducting voter registration drives for a year.

In November 1920, 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 mob laid waste to the African American community in northern Ocoee and eventually killed Perry. They took his body to Orlando and lynched him 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.

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 events

According to The Chicago Defender, July Perry's body was left near a sign reading, "This is what we do to niggers that vote". 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 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.

Remembrance and study

• In 1969, Lester Dabbs, a future mayor of Ocoee, wrote his master's thesis on the massacre.
• In the 1990s, the Democracy Forum and West Orange Reconciliation Task Force, made up of residents of Ocoee and Orange County, organized discussions to explore the events and honor the victims.
• On Martin Luther King Day in 2010, the town of Ocoee sponsored a commemoration that included keynote speaker Professor Paul Ortiz from the University of Florida, author of a history of the events that occurred in the 1920 Election Day massacre.
• At 10:30 a.m. on June 21, 2019, a historical marker honoring July Perry was placed during a ceremony in Heritage Square outside of the Orange County Regional History Center.
• Melissa Fussell, a central Florida native and then William & Mary law student, wrote a law review piece exploring the details of the tragedy, including widespread concealment and property loss, and advocating redress for its victims and their descendants.
• The Peace and Justice Institute at Valencia College hosted a series of workshops in Central Florida titled "1920 Ocoee and Beyond: Paths to Truth and Reconciliation" in 2018 with digital archives, panel discussions, and group serial testimony to bring light to the massacre and the racial injustices still occurring today.
• 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.
• On October 3, 2020, the Orange County Regional History Center opened the landmark exhibition, "Yesterday, This Was Home: The Ocoee Massacre of 1920", recognizing the centenary of the massacre. It includes original research, an interactive land deed map of black landowners, testimony of family descendants, and a full series of educational programming.
• On November 2, 2020, 100 years after the massacre, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proclaimed "Ocoee Massacre Remembrance Day".

Representation in other media

• Bianca White and Sandra Krasa produced a documentary film about the riot and related events, Go Ahead On, Ocoee (2002), produced by the University of Florida.
• In the spring of 2020, a short docuseries entitled "The Ocoee Massacre" was posted on YouTube on May 25, 2020, relating the events of the Ocoee Massacre.
• On November 1, 2020, WFTV 9 (ABC) in Orlando broadcast a documentary on the Ocoee Massacre, which was subsequently released to many streaming services on the 100th anniversary the next day.