FLORIDA RACIAL VIOLENCE

The Ocoee Massacre

November 3, 1920, was a horrific day in Florida history. A deadly race riot started in the previously unremarkable little town of Ocoee on that Election Day in central Florida and quickly spread to the surrounding communities of Orlando, Apopka and Winter Garden. By the time order was restored, approximately 50 to 60 innocent black men, women, and children had been attacked and murdered by raging mobs of white racists. Perhaps as many as a dozen white men also died in the fierce but unequal struggle.

At this late date it is difficult to establish without doubt the exact sequence of the violent events or the precise nature of the precipitating incidents. Most, if not all, of those involved in the riot are no longer alive. For obvious reasons few active participants on either side talked about the riot publicly during their lifetimes. That situation is further complicated because a number of contemporaneous accounts were from people who claimed to be eyewitnesses but proved not credible as they were found to be elsewhere during the riot.

However, little disagreement exists about the basic facts of the Election Day Ocoee Massacre. Prior to November 2, 1920, Ocoee had not yet been officially incorporated, it was merely an urbanizing settlement of citrus growers and farmers and their families about 15 miles northwest of Orlando. The 1920 U.S. Census recorded the population of Ocoee at nearly a thousand inhabitants, 495 of them African-American.

Days after the smoke cleared on November 3, the black population had been reduced to between zero and two individuals, depending on the source cited. Ten years later, in 1930, the U.S. Census of Population still listed only two African-Americans as residing in Ocoee, which remained an all-white town for over 50 years. That single fact in itself should be enough to make people pause and wonder what the hell happened.

What happened on that early November night was that a minimum of two dozen black-owned homes were burned and two churches, a school and the Masonic Lodge were destroyed by an enraged mob of violent whites. The most important social institutions that supported the African-American community in Ocoee were eliminated in a single stroke that also cut down many of the people who were served by them. Immediately after the riot, unofficial newspaper accounts in neighboring white cities differed on the number of dead but at least one listed “seven known dead: two white, five black.” Later, more reliable reports, recorded black deaths as high as 50 to 60.

The Ocoee Massacre didn’t develop in a vacuum or without numerous pre-catastrophe tremors. In 1920, the national Republican Party was busy conducting an extensive voter registration drive throughout the South. Yep, That’s right. The Republican Party. Engaged in liberal type activities like struggling for racial equality by endorsing African American voter registration. Makes you think that all those neat little pigeon holes that we try to shove people and political movements into are too frequently shabby constructions and false characterizations. Republicans as liberals is a concept with which Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Rockefeller, and Jack Danforth would have been very comfortable but not George W. Bush, John Boehmer, or Michele Bachmann and many other famous 21st Century Republicans.

In the years prior to the riot, much of Orange County was politically dominated by conservative white Democrats known as Dixiecrats, for their support of the old South. Perhaps Readers remember how Strom Thurman ran for President on the Dixiecrat segregation platform, trumpeting in the news media about keeping the ‘niggras’ in their place. Look it up; it’s part of American history.

But in the City of Orlando, two leading Orange County Republicans were instrumental in encouraging blacks to register and, more importantly, to cast their votes. In those days of brutal racial bigotry, even registering to vote was a revolutionary act that took great courage and even a willingness to die. In 1920, Judge John Cheney, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, and attorney William O’Neal, another leading Republican, met with Julius “July” Perry and Moses Norman, both prominent black residents of Ocoee. Judge Cheney’s voter registration activities did not go unnoticed and he received several threatening letters from the local Ku Klux Klan. Needless to say, tension mounted in the town of Ocoee as Election Day approached. Julius Perry, later described by white citizens as “crazy” and as “trouble,” was also widely recognized in the white community as having encouraged other blacks to vote and to become “first-class” citizens. Shades of the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

In the months leading to the violence, it is believed that Norman and Perry were actively recruiting blacks living in Ocoee to register and were networking with other black activists around the State. Recent research by historian Paul Ortiz from the University of Florida indicates that at that time those political activities would have been commonplace for black Florida men of some substance. Ortiz lists nearby Ocala, Florida, as one of the central organizing points for black political empowerment training and education during the time preceding the riot. Those activities were directly aided by the national Republican Party and by locally prominent Republicans. Impossible to believe that could happen in today’s political climate.

For those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s and witnessed the efforts of nationally prominent liberal politicians from both parties in support of black voter registration drives and civil rights efforts, that information may seem to be 180º off the mark. But it’s the straight truth. The American history of segregation and racial hatred is complex indeed. Not to mention disheartening as hell.

At the same time, racially bigoted groups like the Ku Klux Klan were keenly aware of Republican voter registration efforts. They issued overtly threatening and racist statements that were easy to play in the media of the time. It may be hard for us to imagine today but in the 1910s and 1920s judges, prosecutors, police officers, educators, newspaper editors, business owners, and other prominent whites openly belonged to the KKK and other racist organizations. It was a fact that was accepted by many whites throughout the South as the BEST way to control members of the black community. Hey, the South was solidly white Democratic and the various KKK organizations were strong supporters of conservative white Democrat candidates. The two organizations frequently worked hand in glove.

Alexander Ackerman, a white Republican attorney, wrote in a letter dated November 6, 1920, just days after the violence in Ocoee, that “every Democratic speaker and every Democratic newspaper in the State set up a howl that the election of a Republican President or Republican officers meant Negro domination, black heels on white necks, Negroes in office and a return to carpet bag days.”

Sort of takes your breath away. Not many of us are accustomed to thinking of Democrats as jack-booted, violent thugs in white robes and masks or of Republicans as staunch civil rights activists wearing white hats. But that is exactly what history records.

Just days before the November election, a group of Klansmen marched through downtown Orlando in full regalia (500 strong according to the Orlando Morning Sentinel). Without any doubt the message of their march was simple and brutal. White Supremacy. But more chillingly it was a direct and unmistakable warning: No blacks should try to vote. Or else. In central Florida of the 1920s, the “or else” needed no clarification. Everyone could read the fiery writing on the wall. But, in that case, the Biblical phrase, Mene, Tikel, Peres, was translated, “You vote, nigger, you die.”

Land and social jealousy may be central to understanding some of the darker motivations for the Ocoee massacre. And they may also be keys to understanding why contemporary whites, especially Ocoee old timers, are so eager to dispute the claims of black wealth and economic standing. For example, July Perry’s prosperity is questioned even to this day by local whites who say he was just a grove overseer or manager. Which is almost certainly code for: Hey, What’s the big deal? Perry was just another nigger. I mean, even today we white folks can be subtle as a jack hammer. Yet in their research on City and County records, members of Democracy Forum discovered at least five separate tracts of land that were owned by July Perry in 1920. A substantial amount of investment that would have been impossible by a mere grove overseer.

It’s easy to imagine the linkage that may have occurred in the minds of Ocoee white racists. First, they start buying our land. Then, they get uppity and drive fancy cars up and down our streets. Now, they want to vote. Next thing you know, they’ll be fixing to marry our daughters and giving us thick-lipped, nappy-headed grandchildren. We gots to draw the line somewheres. Yes indeedy. Where’s them shotgun shells?

Like Perry, Moses Norman was a 51 year-old black male. Other members of the black community considered both Perry and Norman to be prosperous and successful businessmen. Norman is listed in the 1920 U.S. Census as a farmer and was described as such in the NAACP report to the U.S. Justice Department. He owned his own car, a convertible that was decked out by the standards of the day. A car would have been an exceptional item for anyone to own at that time, especially a black man. In articles published in the Crisis and the New Republic, the reporter Walter White wrote that Norman had previously refused offers of $10,000 or $1000 per acre for his orange grove, bean, and cucumber farm. Which would have been a very substantial amount of money in those days, well more than a year’s income for a very successful business executive.

Back to the story. It’s almost certain that Moses Norman, a registered voter who had paid his poll tax, attempted to vote that morning in Ocoee. But he was turned away by white election officials. Or was run off by white riff-raff and hangers-on. Or both. According to a credible newspaper account published shortly after the riot, Norman, (who was credited in the account as a prosperous black orange grove owner and the town’s most prominent black citizen), went to the polls in Ocoee on Election Day to exercise his constitutionally guaranteed rights at great personal risk given the nature of the well publicized KKK threats leveled against the black population. Zora Neale Hurston’s account suggests that after Norman was turned away, he drove to Orlando to consult John Cheney. According to Hurston, Cheney advised him to get the names of the people who weren’t allowed to vote and the names of those preventing them from voting.

If Norman returned to the polls on the advice of Cheney to collect names (which seems terribly naive now), that event certainly would have been viewed by whites as an overt physical confrontation. The Orlando Morning Sentinel described how a black man (the account fails to mention his identity) came back with a crowd and threatened those at the polls, “We will vote, by God,” he said and then went for his gun. In contrast, the Orlando Morning Star claimed that Norman started off waving a shotgun. In still another account, a document at the Orlando Historical Museum claimed that a group of white men from Winter Garden and not from Ocoee searched Norman’s car and found the weapon. Whatever happened, whites clearly felt threatened and angered by African-American residents who were determined to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

Whatever the true sequence of events it seems likely that Norman returned to the polls later that evening with a shotgun. An altercation ensued and Norman was pistol whipped by a number of the town’s racist white scumbags who had stationed themselves at the poll to prevent blacks from voting. Despite his injuries, Norman escaped with help from Reverend Edward Franks and went to the home of his friend, July Perry. Not coincidentally, Perry was also a land owner and probably had paid the poll tax and was also prepared to vote that Election Day.

After Norman was beaten at the polling place events become fairly difficult to track with much accuracy. What is certain is that Norman disappeared after going to Perry’s residence. Days later headlines as far away as Savannah, Georgia, proclaimed: “Moses Norman still not found.” For many years it was widely believed that Norman had been murdered by the KKK and buried in a secret grave outside Ocoee. In a surprising recent discovery, Allen Breed of the Associated Press uncovered information that indicated Norman had indeed survived the riot and fled in his car to New York City. According to Breed, Norman lived in New York for the rest of his life, working for the U.S. Post Office in the Harlem district until his death in 1949. It’s not known if he had children who survived him.

If the incident at the Ocoee polling place is obscured by time, violence, conflicting stories, and even by lies and deliberate cover ups, the scene at July Perry’s home is even more difficult to discern. According to the reporter, Walter White, and to writer Zora Neale Hurston, an enraged white mob, or a posse as reported in the Orlando Sentinel, or even the innocuous “few officials from Ocoee” (as some reports from white sources had it) then proceeded to search for Norman at Perry’s house. Hurston noted that “someone claimed to have seen Norman there.” A 1986 article published in the Sentinel reported that the FBI thought that Norman had returned to Perry’s house to plan an armed uprising. Yeah, right. The assertion that blacks were planning an armed uprising in 1920 seems absolutely ludicrous today. However it was precisely that type of fraudulent nonsense that fueled the massacres of blacks in such various cities throughout the country as Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898; East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1906; Atlanta, in 1906; and in the urban massacres of the red Summer of 1919. Stokley Carmichael was right: violence is as American as apple pie.

The Orlando Evening Reporter Star fanned the flames and the fears of an impending armed revolution by reporting that under questioning, Lucido Watkins, a 17-year-old black man who had earlier been driven out of a burning barn by a white mob, had given the names of 36 black men who had gathered in July Perry’s house. Furthermore, both the Sentinel and the Star reported that ammunition was supposedly found in the black churches and houses that had burned that night, further reinforcing white people’s perception that the African-American community was planning an armed uprising. It was the age-old white racist recipe at work: To get mob violence you start with rumor, add fear, mix with rage, and season with irrational hatred.

In contrast to the rumor that 36 men were hiding in Perry’s house, Zora Neale Hurston later collected information that established that Perry was alone that night with his wife and daughter when their house was stormed by a large mob of armed white bigots. Either Perry, or his wife, shot a Sam T. Salisbury as he attempted to force his way through Perry’s front door. Moments later, in the turmoil as the mob assaulted his home, Perry turned to shoot a man breaking into the back door and by accident hit his daughter, Coretha, in the arm. In 1986, the Orlando Sentinel interviewed Coretha Perry and included a picture of her pointing to the scar on her arm.

Most accounts agree that at least two white men died in the initial violence at the Perry house: Leo Borgard from Winter Garden and Elmer McDaniel, residence unattributed. Some accounts even suggest they were killed by “friendly fire” in the wild melee of shots that had been exchanged. As it turned out, Sam Salisbury, one of the first mob participants to reach Perry’s house, was only wounded. His daughter later stated that he had remained inside their home the rest of that night to tend to his injuries. Sounds like a good alibi, doesn’t it?

According to Hurston, there was a lull in the riot as some white men pursued African Americans who had hidden in the nearby swamps while others went to recruit armed reinforcements from neighboring towns. At that time, Perry, whose arm had been “shot away” in the action, either hid or tried to escape the mob hysteria. He was eventually found and hauled to the Orlando Jail. In an account written by Walter White, the next day the Sheriff willingly turned over the jail keys to the enraged mob of rednecks. Perry was forcibly removed from his cell, tied to the back of a car, and dragged through town. Although one account by a black witness had Perry being lynched in Ocoee before reaching Orlando, another account by a white witness stated that Perry was first taken to Orlando General Hospital and then to the Jail, which the mob stormed at 3:30 am. In any case, Perry appears to have been lynched in downtown Orlando near present day Lake Concord and the former Cheney home. Most accounts agree that July Perry was hanged from a utility pole on the road approaching John Cheney’s house, almost certainly as a brutal warning to Cheney to discontinue his efforts to help African-Americans register to vote. And also to warn local blacks in Orlando against trying to vote ever again. One newspaper in Chicago reported that a sign hung from Perry’s body read: “This is what we do to niggers who try to vote.”

An autopsy revealed that Perry’s body was riddled with bullets. Other members of Perry’s family, including his wife, Stella, and their daughter, Coretha, were able to escape and made their way safely to Tampa.

The mob then surrounded black neighborhoods in Ocoee and put them to the torch, burning over 30 homes and two churches, and tried to force the men, women, and children who were desperately trying to escape back into the flames. At least 40 people died in that senseless slaughter. The mob violence quickly spread to the surrounding cities and all blacks living in the area were forced from their homes and fled for their lives. Nearly a week went by as several hundred deputized Klansmen controlled the City, not allowing people to enter or exit without special permission. The land that had been owned by the black citizens who had fled for their lives was publicly sold for the incredibly low price of $1.50 an acre. And it is unquestionable that black Americans would not re-inhabit the City in any numbers until 1981, 61 years after the riot. And that for many years after the race riot, no blacks were permitted to live in the nearby cities of Orlando, Apopka, or Winter Garden.

July Perry is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in downtown Orlando, where he lies in an unmarked grave. In an ironical twist of circumstance, his assailant, Sam Salisbury, is buried in the same Cemetery some 100 yards from Perry’s gravesite. Salisbury’s grave is marked by a beautiful tombstone and is flanked by the graves of other family members. Perry’s grave site is just a patch of grass without a stone or marker. Cemetery records simply designated the plot as “Sect. K, Lot 40, Space F.” What a contrast, in life and in death.

That ghastly incident, and a similar massacre at the village of Rosewood, marked a state of brutal racial hatred and mindless violence in Florida that today we find reprehensible, horrifying, and beyond comprehension. But if we refuse to document and come to terms with our history, no matter how sordid, no matter how cowardly, no matter how violent, we are condemned to repeat it. And that’s why the Ocoee Riot is included in these pages. Because it is part of Florida’s history that must never be forgotten or dismissed as too horrible for polite society or for rational discussion.

Rosewood Massacre

Rosewood was a small, stable, racially and socially homogenous, self-sufficient black community. It was located in west-central Florida, on the edge of the cypress swamps on State Route 24 near Cedar Key. It had a thriving all-black population of at least 120. That is, until New Year’s Day, 1923. On that terrible day, Fanny Taylor, a white woman in the nearby predominantly white town of Sumner, ran out of her house screaming hysterically. She had been beaten rather badly and claimed that a black man had assaulted her. Although the beating was genuine it had been administered by her white lover not by the traditionally dreaded black rapist. The specter of the “Dangerous Other” so hated by whites in the South (and in the North, if truth be told). Fanny had lied so that her husband wouldn’t learn of her affair and beat the shit out of her himself.

Fanny’s accusations, the news that a black convict had recently escaped from a local chain gang, and Sumner residents’ long-simmering resentment of the more prosperous Rosewood combined to create the critical mass that erupted in a horrific explosion of bigotry and violent racism. The enraged whites formed a posse, led by none other than the County Sheriff, and marched three miles to the town of Rosewood, ostensibly in search of the escaped convict. And proceeded to wreck havoc on everyone and everything in their path.

By the end of the week, between 70 and 150 blacks, depending on whose account you accept, in the immediate area had been viciously murdered by the mob from Sumner. The blacks who had miraculously escaped the slaughter immediately fled the area. What was beyond all debate was that the village of Rosewood had been completely destroyed and burned to the ground for no reason other than racial hatred. After a go-through-the-motions only grand jury investigation resulted in no indictments, the Rosewood massacre was quickly forgotten by whites living in the area and by the State at large. Which had closed its official eyes and ears to the murders and tried its best to ignore them. What little remained of the once-prosperous all-black community was quickly forgotten and overgrown by vegetation. Out of sight, out of mind.

It wasn’t until 1983 that the terrible legacy of the massacre was revealed to the general public when investigative reporter Gary Moore of the St. Petersburg Times stepped up to the plate. After speaking with several survivors he wrote their story and it was published in the paper. His article was later followed by a segment on CBS-TV’s 60 Minutes and by a documentary on The Discovery Channel. Then another twelve years went by filled with intensive political haggling and legal wrangling as a restitution claim for the survivors was introduced in the Florida State Legislature and wound its agonizing way through the labyrinthine legislative process. But finally, on May 4, 1994, the Legislature voted to officially recognize the horrible injustice of the Rosewood massacre and pay a token $2 million reparation to the survivors and their families. What’s the old saw? Justice delayed is justice denied. What better illustration is there than what happened to the innocent residents of Rosewood?

At the end of summer 2003, I traveled southwest from Gainesville on State Route 24. I was looking for a State monument that documented what happened in that terrible January week of 1923. To my sorrow, I found nothing. No plaque, no marker, no nothing.

The Florida Division of Historical Resources has a formal program which recognizes historic resources in Florida. The program is called Florida Historical Markers. As this program is applied to Levy County, the State has officially honored the visit of John Muir, noted naturalist and conservation leader, to Cedar Key and the terminus of the Atlantic to Gulf Railroad, also in Cedar Key. However, it ignores the deaths of more than 100 innocent black people at the hands of a mob of white racists. As a test, just imagine what the situation would be today if the residents of Rosewood had been white and those of the Sumner mob had been black. Imagine the State’s response. Now imagine that there would be no monument commemorating that slaughter of innocent white people. Yeah, right. Okay, enough of that foolishness. You have to remember that, from the State’s historical point of view, they were only dead niggers.

According to the State of Florida, marker prices range from $1,440 to $1,600, varying on cost of materials, location where the marker would be shipped and length of text. The Rosewood dead are thought so little of that the State is today unwilling to spend about $2,000 for an historic marker to inform the traveling public about the Rosewood massacre. It is a textbook example of the care and concern that Florida has historically devoted to its African-American population. The State’s failure to acknowledge the massacre of innocents by whites who were given complete immunity from prosecution is appalling and constitutes an outrageous display of prejudice and indifference.