AGN.News Team

December 27, 2022

OCOEE, ORANGE COUNTY, Florida (AGN.News) – On November 2, 1920, America was going to the polls in the 1920 United States presidential election between Republican Warren G. Harding, who was born exactly 55 years earlier, and Democrat James M. Cox.

Warren Gamaliel Harding (1865-1923) was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party,

James Middleton Cox (1870-1957), an American businessman (founded Cox Enterprises) and politician was the Democratic nominee for President of the United States at the 1920 presidential election. His running mate was future president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

America needed “healing” and “restoration”

As the campaign continued, Harding traveled to Boston, where he delivered a speech that, “would resonate throughout the 1920 campaign and history”.

There, Harding stated that “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration;…”

The spirit of healing … healing the wounds of racial oppression and economic racial deprivation was in need of solutions. Harding’s message resonated across the country. Women now had the right to vote. African Americans were registering to vote in large numbers.

Harding won the election with 60.4% in the popular vote. Cox won just 34.1% of the popular vote, and Socialist Eugene V. Debs won 3.4%, despite being in prison at the time.

African Americans had fought in World War I to secure the the country against those who wanted to destroy it. They lived, worked hard, and prospered in their Ocoee, Orange County, Florida communities, as all other Americans did in their communities.

What happened in the Ocoee?

On Tuesday morning, November 2, 1920, African Americans who had registered to vote gathered at the polling place in Ocoee. Having registered and paid the poll tax, they were eager to cast their vote on the 1920 ballot.

African Americans were met with resistance from the white community when they attempted to vote on election day. The white community led by the Ku Klux Klan, began to form a mob and paraded up and down the streets of Ocoee, growing restless and “more disorderly and unmanageable”.

The rest of the African Americans gave up on trying to vote and left the polling place, except an African American man name Mose Norman who demanded to exercise his right to cast his vote.

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.” Salisbury, the future mayor of Ocoee, later proudly bragged about his part in the events.

The Election Day Ocoee Violence

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 registration drive.

However, African Americans, including Mose Norman, persisted but were “pushed and shoved away” from the polls. Norman contacted Judge John Cheney who supported the right to vote for all registered voters.

Judge John Cheney 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 carrying a shotgun for protection. Racists whites took the shotgun from Norman at the polling place and drove him off using his own shotgun.

The Election Day Ocoee Massacre

Norman fled the scene as the mob chased him. Believing he was at the home of a Black man name Julius “July” Perry, the white mob surrounded the home where Norman was thought to have taken refuge.

Their thirst for African American blood still running through their ranks, egged on by the Ku Klux Klan decided to escalate the violence. The white mob, by then numbering about 100 men, demanded 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.

After Perry drove away the white mob with gunshots. He killed two men and wounding one as they tried to break into his house through the back door. After losing the initial confrontation, the mob called for reinforcements from Orlando and Orange County.

African Americans murdered in Ocoee

The mob laid waste to the entire African American community in northern Ocoee. Perry and his wife left the house during this lull. After additional people and Orange County Sheriff Frank Gordon arrived, the posse captured Perry’s daughter Caretha in the house.

July Perry was captured in a sugarcane patch near his house and transported to a hospital in Orlando to treat his gunshot wounds. After leaving the hospital, Perry, in the custody of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, was taken by a white mob, lynched by hanging, shot and hung on a lamp post.

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.

Norman escaped and was never heard from again. Hundreds of other African Americans fled the town, leaving behind their homes and possessions. The mob murdered about 35 Black people.

Who was July Perry on November 2, 1920

Julius P. Perry or July or J.P. Perry (b. 1870) came to Ocoee from South Carolina. He was a homeowner not a renter, a hard working family man, a husband, and a father.

His wife was Georgia Estella (Stella) Perry (b. 1884) and his oldest daughter was Corycha (Caretha) Perry (b. 1901).

His oldest son was Charles Perry (b. 1904), followed by his son Clifford Perry (b. 1906), his second oldest daughter was Louise Perry (b. 1908), and his youngest son was Adolf Perry (b. 1910)

When the Ku Klux Klan attacked his home because he simply wanted to vote in the 1920 presidential election he fought back killing two of their members, Leo R. Borgard and Elmer McDaniels. he also wounded Sam Salisbury, a future mayor of Ocoee.

Local African Americans fought back

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.

The people inside were forced to flee and many were shot dead 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. the next day. Many of their firearms were later found in the ruins after the massacre ended.

Some African American residents were driven into Starke Lake and drowned, later to be buried in unmarked graves. The exact death toll is unknown, but estimates range from 30 to 35 Blacks and 2 whites.

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 expulsion of African American residents of southern Ocoee, while not direct victims of the Ocoee massacre, were later threatened into leaving.

Local, state and federal investigations

Federal agents were sent to Ocoee not to investigate the massacre but to investigate the voting issues. Concerning the murders and the property damage they reported, there was “…no attempt to intimidate any Negroes in the casting of their ballots, and that there was no interference with the voting of qualified Negroes.”

Additionally, an Orange County grand jury, empaneled by Judge Charles O. Andrews of the 17th Judicial Circuit Court, found “no evidence against any one or group of individuals as to who perpetrated the fatalities” that occurred on November 2, 1920.

The same grand jury exonerated Estelle Perry (wife) and Caretha Perry (daughter) from charges related to the deaths of Leo R. Borgard and Elmer McDaniels who were shot by July Perry at his back door and recommended they be released from jail in Tampa, where they were carried for their safety, which they were on Tuesday, November 30, 1920.

While no one was arrested and charged for the Ocoee Massacre, on August 14, 1921, the Orlando Sentinel reported that the Orange County sheriff had arrested five men and charged them with dynamiting and firing into an African American house near Ocoee in early July 1921. William Moore and Frank Saunders of Ocoee were found guilty of these charges in September 1921.

What happened to the family property?

County records indicate continued transfer of property once held by African Americans in Ocoee to new white owners from 1921 through 1925. By the end of 1925, no property was owned by any Black person.

In fact all of the property deeds for Ocoee property had been amended to state, “It is further agreed that the herein named property cannot be sold to or otherwise conveyed to a negro.” Thus, Perry’s family not only failed to inherit the property, they were excluded from purchasing it.

There’s no indication or legal records showing family members of African American property owners were properly compensated for the transfer of their real estate or personal property to white owners.

This was one of the largest land grab and theft of land and economic resources of African American homes and property in United States history.

What motivated this racist attack?

While there are many theories, one idea seems to top the list. Since the African Americans community consisted of prosperous farmers and craftsmen who enjoyed a degree of financial independence, jealous whites wanted to seize their land and possessions.

Annie Hamiter, an African American woman residing in southern Ocoee, 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.”

The Black community was on both the North and the South side of Ocoee, numbering over 500. Black life had to value to this Ku Klux Klan mob.

Under the guise of denying them the right to vote, their real intent was to take the land and possessions of Ocoee’s Black citizens without having to buy them legally. Because of these events, Black families were deprived of generational wealth.

The leader of the white mob, Sam Salisbury, the former Orlando police chief, later became the mayor of Ocoee. Under his leadership, Ocoee became a “sundown town” for the next 61 years.

What is a “Sundown Town”?

America’s Sundown towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of racial segregation by excluding non-whites via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation or racial violence.

The term came from signs posted that “colored people” (namely, Black people) had to leave town by sundown. Entire sundown counties and sundown suburbs were also created by the same process across the United states.

The Ocoee Massacre Remembered

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.

In 2018, the city of Ocoee released a proclamation acknowledging the massacre. A formal apology to descendants is “in the works”.

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.

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”.

Ocoee: “The Center of Good Living”

The City of Ocoee’s 15th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unity Parade & Celebration is scheduled for Monday, January 16, 2023, at 10 a.m. – Clarke Road.

The MLK Day Celebration will be held after the parade at 11 a.m. in the food court area inside the West Oaks Mall.

Today, the City of Ocoee’s population exceeds 15% African American. There is no evidence of the racist events of 103 years ago. Ocoee is a multi-cultural and a diverse community that celebrates all cultures and people. It’s a city that’s “The Center of Good Living”.

#GoldOverBlack

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