Ocoee, FL 1920

Before Ocoee, FL, became a sundown town, it consisted of three distinct communities. North Quarter and South Quarter were predominantly occupied by Black residents, with white residents living downtown between the two Black neighborhoods. The Black areas were quiet, independent, flourishing, and making significant progress. Could this have been the problem for the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and its supporters? In 1920 Jim Crow America, some whites may have felt that these thriving Black neighborhoods made white people appear inferior. We'll never know how much racial envy influenced the white psyche that led to a white mob violently attacking Black Ocoee. The exact number of dead remains unknown, but estimates range from 30 to 80 Black individuals and two white individuals. What we do know is that Black residents fled Ocoee amidst a hail of bullets and raging fires on Election Day 1920 because Black men attempted to vote.

The 15thAmendment (ratified in 1870) granted all men the right to vote. However, in many places, Black men exercising that right faced the threat of losing their lives. Still, they persisted. Few things infuriated the KKK more than Black citizens voting. When two respected and prosperous Black leaders from Ocoee, Julius “July” Perry and Mose Norman, prepared to vote and encouraged their neighbors to do the same, it was a bold challenge to the KKK’s overwhelming power and authority. Perry and Norman became easy targets.

Election Day 1920, in other locales, was a celebration of women casting their votes for the first time. But it was a history-making day in Ocoee. It was also the day a depraved, brutal white mob ambushed Black Ocoee to suppress their vote and reaffirm white supremacy. Records indicate that the night leading up to the election, the KKK marched in Ocoee’s black areas as a forewarning of their no-black voting demand. Norman and Perry were not deterred.

When Mose Norman tried to vote on election day, he was turned away and charged with failure to pay his poll taxes. His name and those of many Black citizens had been removed from the voter rolls due to the nonpayment allegation. For a man of Mose’s means, the charge was likely untrue. Mose left the voting site and sought the advice of Judge John Cheney, a white man running for a Republican office and heavily backed by Ocoee Blacks. Cheney advised Mose to try voting again and to note the names of those who prevented him. Mose’s second attempt was denied once more, but this time he also suffered a beating with the butt of a gun. Fearing a Cheney victory if Black citizens were allowed to vote, Ku Klux Klan Democrats had previously sent a letter to Cheney to inform him that he was under KKK watch and that it would not end well for his Black supporters if they persisted.

Documents state that as many as 50 cars carrying angry white men descended upon Ocoee on election day. The vigilantes stormed Perry's estate, where they believed the battered Mose Norman had taken shelter. At Perry’s house, shots rang out as Perry fired to protect his family. When the firing ended, two white men lay dead. Perry was beaten, arrested, and transported to a nearby jail in Orlando. When the throng attacked the jail, they removed Perry and strung him from a pole near Judge Cheney’s location, where they lynched him. His body was used for target practice and remained suspended for two days.

Perry’s lynching was not enough for the murderous mob.

To drive home their villainy, the KKK destroyed the northern quarter where Perry and Norman lived and worked. They indiscriminately fired into homes and shot those who tried to escape. They torched house after house even when they knew people were inside. These acts of unimaginable depravity for daring to vote accomplished several things. First, it underscored white supremacy. Second, it created a sundown town through the violent removal of its Black neighbors. Third, it stole the wealth of Black businesses and properties and any hopes of bequeathing family wealth. Fourth, it destroyed the lives of innocent Black men, women, and children. Fifth, it pioneered a conspiracy by fueling a collective silence to hide the truth of Election Day, 1920, when an entire town could be sacrificed, with impunity, for voting.

Election Day reinforced Chief Justice Roger Taney in 1857, who said, “…they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Sometimes, buried history has a way of surfacing. After all, what’s erased is never fully obliterated; traces can hide in the records, minds, and bodies of survivors and witnesses, as well as in the stories they share. Walter F. White of the NAACP, who could pass for white, did so during his investigation into the massacre. White’s report revealed some ugly truths about the Ocoee Massacre.

The only winners on election day were the Ku Klux Klan, its supporters, and women who, for the first time, could exercise their right to vote. In 1920 Ocoee, Black lives did not matter. And no one was ever held accountable for the massacre.