The Election Day Massacre: 3 Part Special Series Promo

A new OZY miniseries about the worst day of election violence in American history. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
One hundred years ago, in the center of Florida, just
a few miles from where Disney World stands today, there
was an exodus. Hundreds of black families piled their children
into wagons. They trudged all night along roads and railroad

(00:20):
tracks and through sugarcane fields. They barely escaped with their lives.
Dozens of their loved ones did not. They were lynched, shot,
burned to death in the wreckage of their own homes.
Today this is forgotten, largely missing from history books, handed

(00:40):
down only as a secret memory between generations of the
families who escaped. But in nineteen that November nine, the
town of Ocoee, Florida, wasn't a secret. It made headlines
around the world. There was a grand jury investigation, even
a hearing before Congress, and Americans, black and white, new
exactly why it had happened. They knew what it meant.

(01:03):
This exodus was a warning danny black citizen who dared
to try to vote. I'm Eugene S. Robinson and this
is the election day massacre from Assie media. In two

(01:35):
thousand and twelve, Randolph Bracy became the first representative from
a new state House district in central Florida. Less than
one sixth of the members of the Florida House were black.
I I was looking for office space after I won
my election and I had recently moved to Koe, and
I decided to put my office in Koe. Koe is

(01:58):
just a dozen miles from Disney World, but it still
has the feel of a small town. It's a pretty lake,
splash park for the kids, beloved ice cream stand, the
perfect place to live and work. And I remember it
was an African American woman, older woman, and she almost
lost it when I told her I was moving my
office to Koe. But she was from the age where

(02:21):
she the era where she remembered that it was a
sundown town where you couldn't be in Okoe unless you
had some business and you had to be going before dark. Bracy,
now a Florida State Senator, was shocked, but many people
who live in the area longer are not. Historian Marvin
Dunn is professor emeritus at Florida International University. He grew

(02:44):
up in Central Florida. My father told us told me
and my brothers about picking oranges in in Okoe when
they would leave to come back to the land. So
driver of the white drive at Lndriage until almost dark.
They would walk out of Oki rather than be caught
after dark. A Koe is a diverse community today, and

(03:06):
it had a thriving black population long ago. But for
half a century a Coe had almost no black residents.
But this was in the ninety late nineties, and they
told me, please, don't tell anyone that you're coming here,
that we've invited you here, that we're showing you where
the black communities used to be. Paul Ortiz is a
professor of history at the University of Florida. Don't tell

(03:28):
anyone because it could put your life in jeopardy. It
could put us in jeopardy. There are good reasons why
no black person wants to live there for so many years.
A Coe resident and community historian pam La Grady, you
can see that's what happened there. You can feel that
energy there. It's still it's still alive and well. What

(03:49):
happened in a Koe a century ago remains the worst
incident of election day violence in US history. What happened
in a Koe was not an altercation. It was more
than a eaching or shooting or riot. What happened in
the Koe was a massacre and what happened is all
too relevant today. Florida is still actively involved and vota suppression.

(04:14):
I didn't even get why she was so scared for me,
and then I kind of learned the history, and I
think it's so appropriate to talk about it in this
year election because it is still to this date of
bloody is day in American political history have an on
a presidential election. One hundred years ago, African Americans in

(04:42):
Florida were preparing for a historic election. Soldiers had come
home after serving their country in World War One, the
local economy was booming, women had earned the right to vote.
The promise of America seemed closer than ever before. And
then in the night of speakable violence, everything changed. There

(05:07):
was no question who was in charge in central Florida
a century ago. Often at the time, many of law
enforcement and local politicians here were also members of the
Ku Klux Klan. Pamela Schwartz is the chief curator of
the Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando, Florida. One
prominent white citizen at the time estimated that about nine

(05:29):
of law enforcement officers, judges, and lawyers, and their Coe
area were clan members. There's a new rise in the
Ku Klux Klan um. There's a resurgence of white supremacy. Uh,
there's an active movement for white supremacists to try to
disenfranchise black voters. In the days leading up to the
election in November ninety the k k k was especially active.

(05:54):
There are marches throughout the state of Florida, Jacksonville, Daytona,
Orlando of Ku Klux Klan sending that same message of
do you not get out to vote if you're black
or else? In Orlando, around five hundred hooded men paraded
behind three figures on horseback. They used megaphones to get
their message out. Pol Or tease Is, the author of Emancipation,

(06:17):
betrayed the hidden history of black organizing a white violence
in Florida from reconstruction to the bloody election of ninety.
In Daytona, the night before election day, they marched through
Mary McCloy Bethoon's campus, you know, and the municipal authority
controlling the electricity actually cut electricity, you know, to Daytona

(06:39):
Industrial World School so that the clan could march through
with their torches and terror tactics and and accurately scary.
It's just all of this stuff is boiling and boiling,
and the events of November two and third send it
over the top. This was an event hundreds of years
in the making, from the first enslavement here up through

(07:03):
black holes and Jim Crow laws, and the suppression of women,
the suppression of black voters, the suppression in all these
different ways leading up to something like this event erupting.
Five hundred years ago, Florida was under Spanish rule. It
was a sanctuary if the slaves were able to escape
the British colonies. But after Florida came under the control

(07:27):
of the United States in eighteen nineteen, President Thomas Jefferson
sent American troops to help capture former slaves and returned
them to their chains. Slavery ended with the Civil War,
but segregation and ideas of white supremacy remained strong. Canta
Florida was especially attractive to former Confederates. Marvin Dunn is

(07:49):
the author of a History of Florida Through Black Eyes.
Santa Florida was a was a magnet for people who
had lost the Civil War because keep Amy Florida was
on us by the war uh and sent to Florida
was out of the cattle got to said the Confederate Army.
So businessman and sent to Florida made money during the

(08:09):
war while other parts of the South were being destimated
by the war. By ninety Florida's economy was booming. The
citrus industry was exploding. So a lot of black people
were chanted into Center Florida for that reason to work.
The town of a Koe, with its lush orange groves
and farms nestled along Stark Lake, was especially attractive. A

(08:33):
number of black people, black men in particular, had managed
to get property orange rose on their own. There's a
man by the name of Moses Norman. Now Moses Norman
had lived in this community for some thirty years. He
was not just some you know, young guy. He was
a well established individual, well known in town. He had
his own car. He was known to be a labor broker.

(08:55):
Most Norman at the time was driving around in a
car that was worth about semi five to her thousand dollars.
Pamela Grady is the executive director of the July Perry Foundation.
That's a Mercedes, that's a Jaguar, you know, That's what
he was driving around in at a time when nobody
even had cars. There was only maybe one or two
other cars in the whole town of a Koe, you know,

(09:16):
and here's this black guy driving through the town, this
nice car. You know. They had to infuriate them. The
foundation is named for Most Norman's good friend, another prominent
Bleaxis and of a Koe, Julius July Perry. Nothing really
happened in ol Koe without him. Florida State Senator Randolph Bracy.
He was kind of like a broker or even white

(09:36):
businessman who wanted to come in and do some farming
transactions of what have you. He ran the town. July
Perry and most Norman were pillars of the Koe community.
His story and Paul artis, they were successful individuals. They're
very hard workers, they were they're very good family men. Um.

(09:56):
They were highly respected. And the reason I mentioned m
highly respected. And this is the most important element I
think about Most Norman and life arean Why why they
represent such a threat to white supremacy, Because these two
exceptionally respected men were involved in an exceptionally threatening activity
helping black citizens vote. In the wake at World War One,

(10:21):
black Fluoridians had organized a remarkable statewide voter registration movement,
and the movement really crested and built momentum as African
American soldiers returned from from Europe. A lot of Black
lessons came back to the South and the third in Europe,
and they were not blando commodate themselves to the racism

(10:44):
that was in there in that community, and most Norman
latter in particular, were among those who came back with
that attitude. The two veterans joined hundreds of other Fluoridians
who were mobilizing to combat white supremacy. In nineteen twenty,
there is a shoot black voter registration drive that's supported
not only by the black community, but also by white Republicans,

(11:05):
not all of them, most of them. This was at
a time when most African Americans were members of Abraham
Lincoln's Republican Party. In many places in the South, blacks
could not even join the Democratic Party. And thanks to
the Nineteenth Amendment, women would be voting for president for
the first time in nineteen twenty. This is a whole
new voting block and that includes black women. And what

(11:28):
it's doing is it's causing a lot of tension. People
don't always accept change. Uh. And so with this you
also see sort of a resurgence and an ongoing rise
with white supremacy in the ku Klux Klan clan members
were not the only white supremacists trying to hold back
the new wave of black voters. Once the white you know,

(11:49):
white white elites and white media and white leaders realized
this is happening, they use their off ed space, their
their banner headlines. White women, it's to you to save
the republic. This is the greatest crisis in our nation's history.
And a typical op ed will say, h white ladies,

(12:12):
do you want your Negro washer woman to lord over you,
to take control? Do you want that Negro custodian to
marry your daughter? The threats heated up as the election approached.
White supremacies in a crisis, they're much more honest and

(12:33):
races today because they're very blunt about it. They're like,
white supremacy is our way of life as an American.
Some white Republicans in Orlando, including a local judge named
John Cheney, helped July Perry and Most Norman organized black
voters about a month before the echoing massacre. They receive
a letter from the Florida ku Klux Klan signed by

(12:56):
the ku Klux Klan that basically says stop or else, sir,
while stopping in your beautiful little city this week, I
was informed that you are in the habit of going
out among the negroes of Orlando and delivering lectures explaining
to them how to assert their rights. The grand Master

(13:19):
of the Florida ku Klux Klan reminded them what happened
when white people tried to help black voters during reconstruction.
You will remember that these things forced the loyal citizens
of the South to organize clans of determined men who
pledge themselves to maintain white supremacy and to safeguard our
women and children. We shall always enjoy white supremacy in

(13:44):
this country, and he who interferes must face the consequences.
So there is a threat, there is and this is
a this is a primary Schurich. We have the original
in our museum collection that that that states this. Just
days before were the Echoe massacre. There are marches throughout
the state of Florida. If you ask a black person

(14:04):
to register about Florida, you're asking them to take the risk.
They're asking them to risk their lives. You're asking them
to risk their livelihoods, You're asking them to risk their
physical safety. On the morning of November, two black citizens
of a Koe, Florida, made a heroic decision. They ignored

(14:27):
the clan marches, the torches, the letters, and the threats.
They prepared to exercise their most fundamental democratic right to vote.
They knew it would be challenging, but they had no
idea of the horrors that awaited them. You can hear

(14:49):
the election Day massacre miniseries just search for flashback wherever
you find your podcasts.