Special Series: The Election Day Massacre. Part 3.

After the horrific violence of Election Day, 1920, in Ocoee, Florida, hundreds of Black families fled the town, never to return. White farmers took ownership of their lands. And the crimes of the mobs of white vigilantes - lynching, murders, arson, theft - were covered up for almost a century. Until now. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
I'm Sean Braswell. Welcome to Flashback. We're doing something a
little different in this episode. We're running a special series
about the worst incident of election violence in American history,
an event that is almost forgotten today. It happened a
century ago on Election Day nine and the town of
a Koe, Florida. The victims were hundreds of black residents.

(00:28):
The perpetrators were their white neighbors. And the reason was
that black citizens had gone to the polls and tried
to vote. They said that you lack parish house was burned.

(00:54):
I'm shore it was. This oral history was recorded a
few years ago with the late Mildred Board. We're hearing
a courtesy of the Orange County Regional History Center. As
a little girl, Mrs Board lived a few miles from
a Koe, Florida. The morning after election Day, hundreds of
black families fled the town. She remembered one woman in particular.

(01:17):
I talked about how they got on the railroad track
and walked the railroad track. They walked so far and
then maybe they had a truck haws and blugget and
they would pick them up along the railroad track and
bring them here. Almost every surviving black resident fled a

(01:39):
Koe after a night of horrifying attacks by white vigilantes.
Their homes and churches were set on fire. The leader
of the community, July Perry, was lynched. Other neighbors were shot.
Estimates of the number of black people murdered that night
ranged from four to sixty. The reason for the massacre

(02:00):
m Coe's black residents had attempted to vote. I'm Eugenus Robinson.
You're listening to the election day massacre from Ozzie Media.

(02:33):
Cohe was a national and international story. And if you
look at any newspaper in around election Day, you can't
miss a cooee. Historian Paul Ortiz the University of Florida.
The stories in the New York Times, is in the
Chicago tribunits, in the European press, it's an the Latin
American press. Um, it's an international story. In other words,

(02:57):
newspapers called it the Cooe horror. But Florida's election day
violence wasn't limited to a Koe. So there was a
statewide reactionary movement against the black struggle to regain right
to vote, and there was violence all over the state. UM.
There were gun battles you know, their assassinations. As far

(03:18):
as I can tell in my research, the worst violence,
the most sustained anti black violence you know, appear to
happen at Choe. They call for able bodied ex servicemen
to come and create a perimeter around a Koe. Pamela Schwartz,
chief curator of the Orange County Regional History Center, put
together an exhibition on the Echoe massacre. Now they say

(03:41):
that's to lock down the crime scene, but it also
means black families can't go find their loved ones, get
to their possessions, see what's going on. Then a CP
sent in an investigator, Walter Francis White, later president of
the organization Heat Travel the US, investigating lynchings and other

(04:02):
acts of violence against Black Americans. At the time that
I visited O'koe, the last colored family of Okoe was
leaving with their good It's piled high on a motor
truck with six colored children on top. White children stood
around and g the Negroes who were leaving, threatened them
with burned if they did not hurry up and get away.

(04:22):
These children thought it a huge joke that some Negroes
had been burned alive. Walter white comes down. Uh, he's
a very light skinned black man. He can pass for white. Uh.
He uses the subject usure being a white man interested
in buying orange grows in western Orange County. And he
starts talking to white people about the mask, and they

(04:43):
tell him all sorts of details that I personally killed
or I know how many Negroes were killed. And he
finds that white people are very proud about what they
did on election Day. One man told him I shot
seventeen Negroes. He shot seventeen himself when he was bragging
about it. Pamela Grady isn't a COOEE resident and the

(05:05):
executive director of the July Perry Foundation. There was an
article in a newspaper that said, We're gonna have a
banquet for everyone who came, and we want we want
to reward you. The one is shot the most Negroes,
the one is shot the most is going to get
a reward. The reason that Koe Horror made headlines is
not that dozens of black people were murdered and hundreds

(05:27):
of black families were made homeless. It was because two
white members of the mob that lynch July Perry were
killed during a shootout there was the Corners in quest
which happens November three and four, and what is found
is no unknown parties killed the white individuals. Unknown parties
killed July Perry, which was a common report leading at dimensions.

(05:50):
We had a black victim who was in police custody,
and all ways the result was killed that persons unknown.
Marvin Dunn is the author of a history of Florida
through Black Eyes. When those white men took to lay
from that jail, those jailers knew what every man who
was in that group. Oh, Cooy was a very small town.

(06:12):
Everybody knew everybody else. Prosecutors called a grand jury in
Orange County, there was always a grand jury convened. There
was always a grand jo have convened. And who were
the members of the grand jury? They would have been
all white men. So the convening of the grand jury
meant nothing. Historian Paul Ortiz, people will say, well, according

(06:36):
to this testimony, July Perry did this with a loaded weapon,
you know, and and did that in this and I say,
excuse me, whose testimony? And number one is a testimonies hearsay,
who's hearsay? Are you? Are you? Depending upon were they
white oh yes, well, come on, now, come please. One

(07:02):
of the biggest mysteries is that a grand jury was
conducted and there was some thirteen or fourteen witnesses, only
one black man thirteen or fourteen witnesses, and that's missing.
It's not in anybody's files anywhere. So there's a lot
of things, a lot of records that should have been
kept that weren't. The grand jury found quote no evidence

(07:24):
against any one or group of individuals as to who
perpetrated the fatalities. Again, I want us to be cautious
about relying on the words of white leaders, be they
in the Chamber of Commerce or political officials or whatever,
because they have a vested interest in jerrymandering the story

(07:49):
to make it appear as if July period is this
crazy negro, and that's how they that's how they referred
to him. Things would have been fine if it wasn't
for this crazy negro. The grand jury did exonerate the
only people who were imprisoned after election day, July Perry's
wife and daughter, Estelle and Caretha. Walter White concluded that

(08:13):
more than thirty black residents of Okoe were murdered on
election day. Other estimates put that number as high as sixty.
The n Double A CP sent White's damning report to
Congress when the CP goes before the House Census Committee,
when Congress convenes in you know, Florida is case number one.

(08:35):
Walter White had gathered affidavits, statistics, photographs, and witness testimony.
And so the Double AC Preventment presents all this amazing
evidence before the Census Committee about fraud and corruption and
anti black violence, including a COE. This is not merely
a question of the Negro by any means. James Weldon Johnson,

(08:58):
Double A CPS execut the Secretary, was a Floridian born
in Jacksonville. He too would one day be president of
the A c P. He was an attorney and also
the poet who wrote the lyrics to Lift of Your
Voice and Sing. He told the committee that the suppression
of black voters in the South undermined democracy across the
entire nation. It is a question of republican government and

(09:22):
the fundamentals of American democracy. It is a question which
is either going to come to this Congress or to
some other Congress in the future, and with increasing force
every time it comes up, and it seems to me
it is better to pass on the question fairly and
squarely and justly today and not wait until some unknown tomorrow.

(09:43):
But wait is exactly what Congress did, Northern Congressman or
and then the committee, they're like, well, I mean I
don't support negro suffrage. Do you talking to their colleague?
You know, Negroes don't go where I where I am.
Why should they have to do that in Florida, we
wouldn't put up at the Bureau of Investigation later named

(10:03):
the FBI launched an inquiry into Koe, but it was limited.
Was the state local governments suppressing black voters. That is
what the thing is about. Not about murder, not about terror,
not about our sin. It is about election broad The
Bureau of Investigation found that there was quote no attempt

(10:26):
to intimidate any Negroes in the casting of their ballots,
and that there was no interference with the voting of
qualified Negroes. Walter White is not able as much research
and work as he does, and he puts his own
life on the line time and again in Central Florida
to try to bring visibility to these um these stories
and these these events, and ultimately really doesn't get much

(10:50):
of anywhere with them. I mean basically, you know, white
supremacy against another four decades um of life. That's really
the most important, you know, kind of outcome. Uh. Politically speaking,
it's believed that not a single black citizen of Orange
County voted for nearly two decades after the massacre, and

(11:11):
not a single white person was ever charged with the crime.
Nobody's ever held responsible in any way, shape or form
for what happens out of Koe. Black residents continued to

(11:38):
flee a Koe in the months and years that followed
the massacre. July Perry's brother in law a year later,
they find him the next day, beaten with an announce
of his life, stripped painted red and white stripe, with
a bag over his head tied to a poll. He survives.
He says that the aggressors told him he had been

(11:58):
talking a little bit too much about what had happened
at a Koe. Last November. Cents is listed two d
and fifty five black residents of a Koe by There
were only two, both house servants. A lot of total
loss of topics because it didn't they went there to
be taxes. Historian Marvin Dunn so a lot of the

(12:21):
grooves that were on that Blacks were taken over in
that way. Within two weeks of the election day massacre,
there are advertisements in Orlando and Miami newspapers orange groves
for sale in a Koe, including July Perry's. It says,
beautiful little groves of the negroes who just fled a Koe.

(12:42):
That's what I said in the newspaper, Beautiful little groves
of the negroes who just fled a Kobe. That was
supposed to be attractive to people. The ad was placed
by Blueford Sims, one of the founders of the town
of a Koe. He was appointed by a local court
to execute the state of July Perry. A Black of

(13:02):
Koe resident, Mrs J. H. Hammelder wrote to a friend
a few weeks later, the people in the south of
town are being threatened that they must sell out and leave,
or they will be shot and burned as the others
have been. It seems to have been a prearranged affair
to kill and drive the colored people from their homes,

(13:24):
as they were more prosperous than the white folks. So
they are hoping to get their homes for nothing. Naked
on the conditions were often an underlying tractor in race riots.
I don't know about race riot that took place in
the poor black area during this period. Before nineteen twenty,
the black community and a KOE was thriving. July Perry

(13:47):
and his friend Mose Norman, who had tried to vote
an election day, were prosperous citizens, and there were jealous
among wits about about some of that, and particularly how
Perry and most normal so their wealth as con cars
and land at nice homes, and that really led some
white and KOE Leading up to this event, the exhibition

(14:10):
at the Orange County Regional History Center mapped the growth
of black land ownership around the KOE and then it's disappearance.
So you see this thirty years, slow rise and prosperity.
Then as you scroll away from November you come up
to nine thirty by all the properties have gone back

(14:30):
to white ownership. So thirty years you see this like
popping up prosperity, and then in just six years it's
wiped out. Many black of Koe residents, including the Perry family,
tried for years to get their property back. The Perry's
discovered that the deed had been restricted no black person
could buy the land in Stella and Karisa and family.

(14:56):
Sue said, well, they asked the courts. They say, we
need an account. You know what happened here, Like where
is the money? It's it's been four years at the end,
when all of said and done, twelve years later, twelve
years later, the seven or so descendants of July Perry
received one hundred and roughly a hundred and twenty six

(15:18):
dollars each for over thirty acres of land, all of
their personal property and the death of their patriarch. That
twelve years they fight to get a hundred and twenty
six dollars each. And the properties that changed hands weren't
scrub land or gravel patches. There orange groves and farming
lands and lakeside property just a dozen miles from the

(15:41):
spot where decades later a new resort would stand Disney World.
All of the land that had been owned by black
landowners at the time of the massacre that was taken
over the next six to seven years. It wasn't immediate,
like the story has always gone, but over the next
six years is worth well over nine million dollars today.

(16:04):
And to tell a descendant who should have inherited those lands,
could have inherited those lands. That that's they could have
been millionaires is a really, really difficult thing. What these
massacres and and and p grams are all about is
that the attempt among white business supremacy to roll back

(16:27):
black economic social political games, it's redistribution of black wealth
into white hands, is really what happens. And this is
what makes a Cooe um almost a mundane story because
it is happening everywhere. One of the most disturbing aspects

(16:48):
of the Echoe massacre is that it was not an
isolated event. In the next few years, Akoe became a
template for horrendous violence other white communities arise their black
neighbors and then stole their properties again and again. We
know that there continues to be violence and an type

(17:08):
like lynching in adjacent counties, kind of secondary effects of
the Echoing massacre. There's a notorious lynching case in Cassemree,
which which we think is connected to to the Echoing
massacre in some ways. And it happens in Tulsa, happens
in St. Louis, it happens in Chicago, happens along the Texas.

(17:31):
It later it happens in Rosewood. And that's another theme
which ties a coe to today, this question of you
know where did that black land go? You know, in
many cases black people were driven out by terror tactics.
The terror continues and continues and continues until it drives
the black community out. For a half of a century,

(17:53):
from until around nineteen seventy six, there are no documented
that we're aware of black individuals living and residing in Kobe.
You know, where did everybody go? Pamela Greedy? And then
you look for the families and the histories and you
try to find where they are today, and you can't
find people. You can't find it. I'm I'm still doing research.

(18:14):
You can't find them. They just lost and gone. Marvin Dunn,
author of a History of Florida through Black Eyes. It
was buried, It was not talked about. It was not
in the newspapers after the event was over. It was
certainly not in textbooks. So, like many of the race
wise in massacres in the South and in Florida, once
the events left the front page of the newspapers, uh,

(18:37):
they were there, people didn't talk about them. We know
that there was an ongoing attempt to cover up this event,
to quiet this event, to get people to stop talking
about what had happened. Because what happens when people talk
the truth, the facts start to come out and become known.
For decades, black folks in central Florida knew that something

(19:00):
very bad it happened in the Koe, not just that
it was a sundown town where they were not welcome
after dark, but that there were other grave reasons to
stay away. Then descendants of the victims began trying to
learn more about the terrible stories handed down in their families.
Students did research. Over the decades, groups of Orange County

(19:24):
residents investigated the rumors and conducted oral histories. Today's event
will not be possible without the decades of community work
by such grassroots groups as a Democracy Forum and the
West Orange Reconciliation Task Force, which began to excavate the

(19:45):
history in nineteen seven. The Democracy Forum, the West Orange
Reconciliation Task Force, the July Perry Foundation all piece the
story together. We have a d research team and we
are uncovered, you know, where a lot of land is at.
It's just a tedious process because you have to go
bit by bit and undercover, you know, you gotta go

(20:06):
through obituaries and estates and sales and all that. People
die and you can't have a wonder where would these
families be had they had had this generational wealth that
was stripped from them. In two thousand and two, July
Perry's body was located in an unmarked grave. It was
discovered in Orlando at a cemetery there July Perry's great grandson,

(20:29):
Pastor Stephen Nunn, And so we went back my mom,
my dad and I and we um they had a
memorial service there at the grave site. Eight decades after
July Perry was lynched, his grandchildren and great grandchildren returned
to a koe. Yeah. When we finally started taking certain

(20:51):
turns in certain streets to finally get into the area
where we uh later ended up, quickly, I was like, wow,
this is not Disney World. It's definitely a Disney World. Um.
And then it hit It was like wow, So now
in my head I could see white sheets, I could

(21:12):
see guns, I could see extreme racism. I could see
area that still had a boy Mr kind of mindset
and some of the spirited people. It was crystal clear
to me at that point, just a few yards away
from July Perry's grave in Orlando's Greenwood Cemetery lies the

(21:32):
grave of Sam Salisbury, the man who led the mob
to Perry's house. Salisbury's grave is topped by a monument
and surrounded by the graves of his family and descendants.
July Perry's grave stands alone. Good morning, Orlando community, Welcome

(21:55):
to the historical marking unveiling for July Perry. It has
been a long road to this day to get here.
It took almost a century for a public remembrance of
July Perry. The sacrifice of Mr Perry so that African
Americans could vote is a dark and deadly part of

(22:18):
our history and one that will not be forgotten. Jerry
Demmings is the first black mayor of Orange County. His wife,
Val Demmings, is a member of the United States Congress.
But I want to be clear this morning that I
have no illusions, our delusions that anything that we do

(22:40):
here today will right the wrongs of a racist pass.
But what we can do. What we can do is
respect the attempt. What's interesting is so many of my

(23:03):
colleagues have never even heard of the story. State Senator
Randolph Bracy's district includes central and northwest Orange County. He
introduced the bill in the Florida legislature to require that
schools teach children about the Echoe massacre. A version passed,
minus a provision to pay reparations to the descendants of

(23:23):
the victims. As we moved the bill forward and it
was talked about, debated, and um, they gained support for it.
There were some colleagues of mine and say, hey, I
think we should look at reparations, even on the Republican side.
So I think there is an opportunity to look at
that again, and it's something I'll be pushing. Some of

(23:46):
the descendants of the Echoe victims are also fighting for reparations.
Janice Nelson is July Perry's great granddaughter and vice president
of the July Perry Foundation. The scripture says thou shalt
not steal. They stole it, and they need to give
it back. A century after a Cooe massacre, in another

(24:10):
presidential election year, the Cooe descendants and activists and historians
are thinking about what still hasn't changed. We're back at
this moment where a Coe becomes more important than ever.
Historian Paul Ortiz. Black people are still trying to register
to vote. Light authorities are trying to find different ways
to keep them from voting. Supervisors of Elections, Secretaries of

(24:33):
state scheming on a way is to try to prevent
them from participating in the democratic system. Florida is still
actively involved and vote of suppression. Historian Marvin Dunn overwhelming
majority of Pavillians, white and black, voted for excellence to
be able to vote. The Florida State Legislature comes back

(24:55):
immediately and passed the law that says all these excellence
must pay all the risk of ocean and court costs
before they can vote. So they were immediately read disenfranchised.
Pamela Grady of the July Perry Foundation, I look at
right now, at the times and were in right now,
and how important it is to vote, you know, and
how important how much went in for you know, us

(25:16):
to have that right to vote. We take it so lightly.
The town of a Koe is a modern, diverse community,
but there are remnants of the past. None of the
main streets in town is named for Blueford Sims, the
white man who sold July Perry's land after he was lynched.

(25:40):
But in the anniversary year of his death. Another road
in a koe A State highway is being renamed the
Julius July Perry Memorial Highway. I think he's a hero,
absolutely absolutely. Obviously he was overcome and lynched, but we're
still talking about my few years later. So I think

(26:04):
in that context, in that time period, the life that
he lived, the businessman that he was, and to have
the boldness to do what he did, I think it
it's heroic. It's really it really is. So July Perry
had to be and had to have been awesome man.
And I still constill your tear up thinking about it.

(26:24):
How what an amazing man this was, that was that
was gunned down, lynch drug and tortured, all for having
the courage, the courage to stand up and fight for
a cause, and and and and to put others first.
You know, so do My Parry deserves to be honest,
The legacy of him conserves to be um always remembered

(26:45):
throughout the rest of time. Our children need to know
this rich history. I grand children need to know. Okay,
good morning, good morning, til dren h. This morning we
will start our program with a musical solo of the

(27:06):
National Black anthem. Mm hmm. We must not forget the
sacrifice of July Period, his family, and other African Americans
killed in this horrific massacre as we stand here today

(27:28):
to honor their memory. I think it's important to knowledge
the history and the legacy of July Perry be celebrated
for for the risk that he took, because we're still
finding the same fight and he was bold enough to
to try to make changes years ago. This episode of

(28:16):
Flashback the Election Day Massacre was written by Sean Braswell
and voiced by me Eugene S. Robinson, was produced by
Mab mcgoran and your A Oh Diggi Zula. Chris Hoff
engineered our show.