Speaker 1: I'm Sean Braswell. Welcome to Flashback. We're doing something a
Speaker 1: little different in this episode. We're running a special series
Speaker 1: about the worst incident of election violence in American history,
Speaker 1: an event that is almost forgotten today. It happened a
Speaker 1: century ago on election Day nine and the town of
Speaker 1: a Koe, Florida. The victims were hundreds of black residents.
Speaker 1: The perpetrators were their white neighbors. And the reason was
Speaker 1: that black citizens had gone to the polls and tried
Speaker 1: to vote. Our grandmother was one of the most rags females,
Speaker 1: and the word grave is probably not strong enough. She
Speaker 1: was not afraid of anything, nor anybody nobody. That's Janice
Speaker 1: Nelson and her brother, Pastor Stephen Nunne. Their grandmother was
Speaker 1: Caretha Perry Caldwell. She was a constant presence in their
Speaker 1: lives growing up in Tampa, Florida. She just decided, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, to talk to Steve and I when we
Speaker 1: were kids, to just, you know, tell us this story,
Speaker 1: really the story of what happened in Caretha's hometown of Koe,
Speaker 1: Florida on Election Day nineteen. I remember driving over to
Speaker 1: her home that particular morning because I wanted her to
Speaker 1: make me breakfast. She had the old iron skillet pan
Speaker 1: and she would fry up some reb bacon and grits
Speaker 1: and eggs. Here's what Caretha Perry wanted her grandchildren to know.
Speaker 1: When she was a teenager, her father, Julius July Perry,
Speaker 1: and his good friend Mose Norman were prosperous landowners. There
Speaker 1: were leaders of the sizable black community in a central
Speaker 1: Florida town called the Koe. On election day nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: Mose Norman tried to vote. A few hours later, an
Speaker 1: armed white mob surrounded the Perry's family farmhouse. Caretha Perry
Speaker 1: told her grandchildren that before long, the white men were
Speaker 1: shooting into the house. It was surreal. I really I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. I couldn't wrap my head around it.
Speaker 1: And yet I knew it was real. It makes sense
Speaker 1: to me now. Then it didn't really make sense. You know.
Speaker 1: I knew this, I knew it happened, but I just
Speaker 1: didn't take that in at that time. As a child,
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I couldn't fanthom all of that. Caretha told
Speaker 1: them she was shot in the arm. She wanted me
Speaker 1: to know about the bullet will so she would always
Speaker 1: show me in point to it, and then of course
Speaker 1: after she did that, she would tell me, um, you
Speaker 1: know about what took place. I saw her pain, but
Speaker 1: I also knew she wanted me to know how courageous
Speaker 1: she was, and she was willing to stay there next
Speaker 1: to her dad to the death if it. If it
Speaker 1: was going to take that, she had every intent to
Speaker 1: do that. It hurt her, and yet it drove her
Speaker 1: also to be very angry, and she did not really
Speaker 1: want to mention the name of o Koe or ever
Speaker 1: returned to Okoe again. I'm Eugenius Robinson. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the Election Day Massacre from Ozzie Media. Warning. This episode
Speaker 1: contains graphic descriptions of racial violence. There was some sort
Speaker 1: of a confrontation and they knew that July heard and
Speaker 1: those nominal among the activists, Bobbin thought, so the attention
Speaker 1: of the white people sort of focused on them. Marvin
Speaker 1: Dunn is the author of a history of Florida through
Speaker 1: Black Eyes. The initial group that went out was led
Speaker 1: by an n named Sam Salisberry, who was a well
Speaker 1: known white man, very popular man, not a law enforcement officer,
Speaker 1: but was deputized to go out and find out what
Speaker 1: happened to the the Poles. Sam Salisbury was a veteran, a
Speaker 1: former Army colonel. Marvin Dunn says, a heavily armed white
Speaker 1: man he led to July Perry's farmhouse called themselves a posse.
Speaker 1: Paul Ortiz, a historian at the University of Florida, did
Speaker 1: seminal research on the incident. In a sense, what they're
Speaker 1: trying to just pacify him, to kind of take him
Speaker 1: out of the equation. They feel if they can silence him,
Speaker 1: then they can stop all this voting nonsense and save
Speaker 1: white supremacy. What happened at July Perry's house? Why Why
Speaker 1: did it get so violent so quickly? Pamela Schwartz, chief
Speaker 1: your read of the Orange County Regional History Center put
Speaker 1: together a major exhibition of the Koe massacre. Who actually
Speaker 1: shot who? Who actually said what? There's so many different versions.
Speaker 1: July Perry's daughter, Caretha Janice Nelson, and Stephen Nunn's grandmother
Speaker 1: was inside the house when the mob showed up. She
Speaker 1: told me that at a certain point in time, um,
Speaker 1: some of the white residents men of the city of
Speaker 1: o Koe came to their home and basically made a
Speaker 1: demand for a father to come outside, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to talk. I've always owned a gun, and you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a gun culture. And you know,
Speaker 1: someone comes up to my doorstep and tells me that
Speaker 1: I need to to come out of my house unarmed,
Speaker 1: and they want to talk with me. Um, that's a threat.
Speaker 1: And when Sam Salisbury demanded July Parr to come out
Speaker 1: of this house, Perry came out of his house and
Speaker 1: Um asked to go back inside to get his coat.
Speaker 1: And that's one of this this struggling food. Someone attempted
Speaker 1: to force their way in and there was some gunfire,
Speaker 1: both from Um those outside of the house firing in,
Speaker 1: and from her and her father inside of the house
Speaker 1: firing out. She said that the gunfire was so great
Speaker 1: that you could see the bullet tracers coming through all
Speaker 1: angles in the house, just flying in all over the places.
Speaker 1: Careita was not the only person shot that night. Her
Speaker 1: father was shot multiple times. He told her that he
Speaker 1: wanted her to get her mother and the children out
Speaker 1: of the house. Careita's mother, Estelle, was not in good health.
Speaker 1: Careita's brothers and sister were young children. I felt like
Speaker 1: he was saying, you know what on the captain of
Speaker 1: the ship here and so guess what, you guys, go
Speaker 1: get out if you can. But I've got to stay.
Speaker 1: I think even if he hadn't been wounded he brought,
Speaker 1: he would he was gonna stay in fight to the
Speaker 1: bitter end no matter what. She recalls asking herself and him,
Speaker 1: you know how we're going to get out because they
Speaker 1: were surrounded, and he said, pray, and the Lord I'll
Speaker 1: show you away. And she says she started praying, as
Speaker 1: the Lord, help us to get out of or help
Speaker 1: me to get my mom and my brother's and sister
Speaker 1: out of here. And she said, Um, there was a
Speaker 1: caphole or some type of an open means in the
Speaker 1: bottom of the door. She lifted the little hatch, and
Speaker 1: she said that there was a beam of light light
Speaker 1: from the moon, but it was just this beam of
Speaker 1: light that shined the path through this particular high growth
Speaker 1: or corn field. And she said they proceeded on their
Speaker 1: stomachs to crawl through that path that had been illuminated.
Speaker 1: And she said while they were couli, she said, um,
Speaker 1: we could see the feet of the men who were
Speaker 1: surrounding the home. Some of them, we could literally see
Speaker 1: their feet and we could hear them talking and and
Speaker 1: still firing, and yet they never saw us. Caretha, A Stelle,
Speaker 1: and the children escaped through the field. Members of the
Speaker 1: white mob would later claim that quote thirty seven armed
Speaker 1: negroes in quote participated in the shootout, but it's more
Speaker 1: likely that it was just the Perry family and a
Speaker 1: couple of hired hands who held off the assailants. At
Speaker 1: least six members of the white mob were wounded in
Speaker 1: the gun battle. Two others died. They were killed that
Speaker 1: friendless fire. Other white men shot through the house and
Speaker 1: killed their comrades. And I found this out by examining
Speaker 1: the funeral home records of the Manuel Derek, which included
Speaker 1: a note from the sheriff documenting that the men had
Speaker 1: been killed by friendly fire. It's one of the few
Speaker 1: records of what happened that night. You know, there's all
Speaker 1: of these details that will never factually, no, there's just
Speaker 1: no way, because no records and accounts were kept, no
Speaker 1: full investigation was done. Perry's family made it to safety,
Speaker 1: but not for long. July, Perry's wife and daughter, Estella
Speaker 1: and Caretha, respectively, are captured. They're taken to the jail
Speaker 1: in Tampa, Caretha and a Stell were charged with murdering
Speaker 1: the two members of the white mob who were killed.
Speaker 1: The charges were eventually dropped, but not before Caretha and
Speaker 1: her mother had spent a month in jail. She said
Speaker 1: they came in and told them that they were free
Speaker 1: to go, but to never ever return to Okoe again.
Speaker 1: Years later, Careta Perry was asked by an Orlando newspaper
Speaker 1: if she had ever gone back to a Koe. She replied, no, God,
Speaker 1: I don't ever want to see it, not even on
Speaker 1: a map. H In Mildred Board was a little girl
Speaker 1: in the next town over a Papca, Florida. Ms. Board
Speaker 1: has since passed away, but she recorded in oral history
Speaker 1: a few years ago. We're playing excerpts of the courtesy
Speaker 1: of the Orange County Regional History Center. It's one of
Speaker 1: just a few firsthand accounts of the events of that
Speaker 1: election day. The night of the riot, most Non came
Speaker 1: to this house, and I remembered that he had on
Speaker 1: a night shirt. And I don't know whether my dad
Speaker 1: came with him or he got that ball, and they
Speaker 1: brought him on hire and my dad said to him, well,
Speaker 1: most how did you get out of Okoe. He said,
Speaker 1: just like a rabbit in the wind, I shall never
Speaker 1: forget it. Most Norman eskipped from a koe in his car.
Speaker 1: There were reports that he eventually settled up north in
Speaker 1: New York City. July Perry did not escape. He meted
Speaker 1: out of the farmhouse into a nearby sugarcane field, but
Speaker 1: he was soon discovered. His little dog betrayed him. When
Speaker 1: July Perry was shot, he went down in the cane
Speaker 1: padge and Jip was the little dog's name. He went
Speaker 1: down and barred, and that's when the mob found him
Speaker 1: in the king page. The deputized mob arrested Perry. There
Speaker 1: are so many different stories they shot him there, but
Speaker 1: they supposed to have carried him at the two the
Speaker 1: police station in Okoe, but you know that can remember
Speaker 1: there wasn't a police station in the court. More likely
Speaker 1: July Perry was taken to the police station in Orlando,
Speaker 1: a much bigger town. Word gets to Orlando as far
Speaker 1: away as Orlando that there's a Negro uprising. But that's
Speaker 1: a code for Negroes are trying to vote, and so
Speaker 1: Carlo's of white people begin h mobilizing from as far
Speaker 1: away as Orlando. I mean drive to Koe. There's an
Speaker 1: electronic cybordin in Orlando and it's used in election day,
Speaker 1: but not only to tally votes. Then someone changes that
Speaker 1: sign board to direct people to a Koe. Fifty car
Speaker 1: loads of white men from Orlando descended on the black
Speaker 1: neighborhoods and a Kowe. It's like, you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: third generation military veteran, and so when I look at
Speaker 1: places like a Koe, I see intelligence, I see supply,
Speaker 1: I see planning. And what I mean by this is
Speaker 1: that carloads of white individuals, many of them, start from Orlando,
Speaker 1: and they drive all the way into Koe and they
Speaker 1: knew who to target, they knew who the leadership was named.
Speaker 1: Drive to a Koe and they began to torch and
Speaker 1: burn and loot and village this this entire community. That
Speaker 1: evening and into the night, white vigilantes sit fire to
Speaker 1: black people's homes, businesses, and churches. In a cold they
Speaker 1: shot at people trying to escape the flames. I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: people are defending their homes as this white you know,
Speaker 1: para military operation is tearing through their their their neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: People put up a defense in a koe. They don't
Speaker 1: just lay down and offer themselves up today to the
Speaker 1: firing squad, if you will. But we could smell somebody
Speaker 1: say well, how would you smell the smoke? As they
Speaker 1: act can sumel the smoke coming from Africa. So it
Speaker 1: was something that you could sume out of smoke. You
Speaker 1: knew something was going on. It's one of the most
Speaker 1: dramatic days in American history all across the state. You
Speaker 1: know what happens in for it is really an example.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a metaphor for American you know, American
Speaker 1: history and systematic purging, ethnic cleansing of black people. That's
Speaker 1: really the outcome. We don't like to use the term
Speaker 1: ethnic cleansing unless we can use in Eastern Europe, right,
Speaker 1: We don't like to use the word of gram unless
Speaker 1: we can use it in you know, in Africa or
Speaker 1: you know, someplace else. But it happens here. There is
Speaker 1: no way we will ever factually probably know how many
Speaker 1: black people were killed that night. Records were intentionally not kept.
Speaker 1: Given the current research, we as historians will say that
Speaker 1: at least four black people were murdered, but many accounts
Speaker 1: put the death toll much higher. Between thirty and sixty
Speaker 1: black residents were killed. Historian Marvin Dunn, they've learned such
Speaker 1: on the Black Union. We don't know if they were
Speaker 1: suppos burned up to those houses or not. Probably that weren't. Basically,
Speaker 1: you had a choice. You can leave and get shot,
Speaker 1: or you can stay and burn. Uh. And they burned
Speaker 1: to death, and they were put in Popper's caskets and
Speaker 1: buried in a mass grave. Once the white mob started
Speaker 1: burning people's homes and churches, people left. Every single black
Speaker 1: person in a Koe that night, living or visiting, lost something,
Speaker 1: their sense of safety, their home, their property, whether they
Speaker 1: were a renter or a landowner, um sometimes their life.
Speaker 1: Those who survived the flames and gunfire escaped into the
Speaker 1: surrounding swamps. The Florida Times Union reported the next day
Speaker 1: the black survivors were seen walking along highways many miles
Speaker 1: from a Koe. In the weeks and months that followed,
Speaker 1: virtually every single black person fled the town. And then
Speaker 1: it looked like refugees from from a war zone. Now
Speaker 1: those those are the pans. We have people leaving in
Speaker 1: wagons with all of their possessions. White people lining the roads, cheering, jeering,
Speaker 1: you lost. We won. A day that had begun with
Speaker 1: hopes of a better life and a stronger democracy in
Speaker 1: Florida came to an almost unthinkable end as a coe
Speaker 1: burned into the night. Back in Orlando, another violent crowd
Speaker 1: had gathered. July Perry is in mortal danger in the
Speaker 1: jail in Orlando. He is taken by a lynch mom,
Speaker 1: Pamela Schwartz. He is brutalized. There are many versions of
Speaker 1: what happened to him, some very very descriptive and graphic,
Speaker 1: but he is taken, is lynched. He's hanged. If you
Speaker 1: leave a Papa and going through the country Club road
Speaker 1: of block from Colonial, there was an old tree. I
Speaker 1: don't know where's the same old creep, but there is
Speaker 1: a big old tree right now. They are turned him
Speaker 1: up and let him hang from that tree for a wow.
Speaker 1: The tree was near the entrance to the Orlando Country Club,
Speaker 1: by some accounts, in view of the house of John Cheney,
Speaker 1: a white judge who tried to help black citizens of
Speaker 1: a coale vote. The story went that July was intentionally hanged, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in view of Chinese house, but that it
Speaker 1: was across this lake and it was up by Country
Speaker 1: Fund at the time, the way the trees and everything were,
Speaker 1: like when we look back at historic photos of that
Speaker 1: lake in different things like, I don't think anybody could
Speaker 1: have seen anything from the judge's house. So I think
Speaker 1: that that is a thing that became part of the lore.
Speaker 1: But there was an unmistakable message. That's what was about
Speaker 1: historian Paul Ortiz. It was really about sending a lesson
Speaker 1: to the entire black and white and his communities. You know,
Speaker 1: whether it was in the Southwest or in Florida, wherever.
Speaker 1: We're in charge here and we don't follow the law,
Speaker 1: we are the law. A local black undertaker took down
Speaker 1: Perry's corpse from the tree the next day. Oh, he
Speaker 1: had done so many things to his body. There wasn't
Speaker 1: too much left hanging because they had just put his
Speaker 1: body up in pieces, but they took whatever they could
Speaker 1: and am show. They embombed him and they buried him.
Speaker 1: The terror inflicted on the black sessens of a coo.
Speaker 1: We didn't end with election day. The story has always
Speaker 1: gone that everybody left immediately the black community left, they
Speaker 1: never came back. The story after it's far more nuanced
Speaker 1: and horrific. I think personally um then that there's an
Speaker 1: official cover up that goes on for decades after the event.
Speaker 1: There's just so so much to the story. I think
Speaker 1: the most horrific thing is that we don't know, and
Speaker 1: we don't know by design. By design, we don't have records,
Speaker 1: We don't have names for the people who were killed.
Speaker 1: We don't know what homes burned and which ones don't.
Speaker 1: We don't know what happened to people and where they went.
Speaker 1: What we do know is that the terror in a
Speaker 1: Koe was not carried out only by people in masks
Speaker 1: and robes. Much of it was committed openly, and the
Speaker 1: campaign to keep black people from voting in Florida was
Speaker 1: not limited to anonymous letters from the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1: Editorials were printed in the most prominent newspapers in the state.
Speaker 1: When the Atlanto Sentinel, the Mommy Heralds say that white supremacy,
Speaker 1: that our foundation, the foundation of our civilization, White supremacy
Speaker 1: is in danger. We have to take them seriously. And
Speaker 1: when we take them seriously, we realize that they're going
Speaker 1: to do anything they can to break up any challenge
Speaker 1: to their power system. And this is why so many
Speaker 1: white people descend upon it color because they're trying to
Speaker 1: send a lesson to that not only are you not
Speaker 1: going to vote today, You're never going to vote. What
Speaker 1: happened in the Koe was not just about one election.
Speaker 1: What happened next would take years to orchestrate and execute.
Speaker 1: In Part three of the Election Day Massacre, where did
Speaker 1: everybody go? And then you look for the families and
Speaker 1: the histories and you try to find where they are
Speaker 1: today and you can't find people. You can't find them.
Speaker 1: They just lost and gone. Nobody's ever held responsible in
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form for what happens out of Koe.
Speaker 1: It was government supported landa The script is says thou
Speaker 1: shalt not steal. They stole it and they need to
Speaker 1: give it back. M This episode of Flashback, The Election
Speaker 1: Day Massacre was written by Sean Braswell and voiced by
Speaker 1: me Eugene S. Robinson, was produced by Maeve mcgoran and
Speaker 1: or A Oh Diggi Zua. Chris Haff engineered our show.
Speaker 1: H