Speaker 1: One hundred years ago, in the center of Florida, just
Speaker 1: a few miles from where Disney World stands today, there
Speaker 1: was an exodus. Hundreds of black families piled their children
Speaker 1: into wagons. They trudged all night along roads and railroad
Speaker 1: tracks and through sugarcane fields. They barely escaped with their lives.
Speaker 1: Dozens of their loved ones did not. They were lynched, shot,
Speaker 1: burned to death in the wreckage of their own homes.
Speaker 1: Today this is forgotten, largely missing from history books, handed
Speaker 1: down only as a secret memory between generations of the
Speaker 1: families who escaped. But in nineteen that November nine, the
Speaker 1: town of Ocoee, Florida, wasn't a secret. It made headlines
Speaker 1: around the world. There was a grand jury investigation, even
Speaker 1: a hearing before Congress, and Americans, black and white, new
Speaker 1: exactly why it had happened. They knew what it meant.
Speaker 1: This exodus was a warning danny black citizen who dared
Speaker 1: to try to vote. I'm Eugene S. Robinson and this
Speaker 1: is the election day massacre from Assie media. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve, Randolph Bracy became the first representative from
Speaker 1: a new state House district in central Florida. Less than
Speaker 1: one sixth of the members of the Florida House were black.
Speaker 1: I I was looking for office space after I won
Speaker 1: my election and I had recently moved to Koe, and
Speaker 1: I decided to put my office in Koe. Koe is
Speaker 1: just a dozen miles from Disney World, but it still
Speaker 1: has the feel of a small town. It's a pretty lake,
Speaker 1: splash park for the kids, beloved ice cream stand, the
Speaker 1: perfect place to live and work. And I remember it
Speaker 1: was an African American woman, older woman, and she almost
Speaker 1: lost it when I told her I was moving my
Speaker 1: office to Koe. But she was from the age where
Speaker 1: she the era where she remembered that it was a
Speaker 1: sundown town where you couldn't be in Okoe unless you
Speaker 1: had some business and you had to be going before dark. Bracy,
Speaker 1: now a Florida State Senator, was shocked, but many people
Speaker 1: who live in the area longer are not. Historian Marvin
Speaker 1: Dunn is professor emeritus at Florida International University. He grew
Speaker 1: up in Central Florida. My father told us told me
Speaker 1: and my brothers about picking oranges in in Okoe when
Speaker 1: they would leave to come back to the land. So
Speaker 1: driver of the white drive at Lndriage until almost dark.
Speaker 1: They would walk out of Oki rather than be caught
Speaker 1: after dark. A Koe is a diverse community today, and
Speaker 1: it had a thriving black population long ago. But for
Speaker 1: half a century a Coe had almost no black residents.
Speaker 1: But this was in the ninety late nineties, and they
Speaker 1: told me, please, don't tell anyone that you're coming here,
Speaker 1: that we've invited you here, that we're showing you where
Speaker 1: the black communities used to be. Paul Ortiz is a
Speaker 1: professor of history at the University of Florida. Don't tell
Speaker 1: anyone because it could put your life in jeopardy. It
Speaker 1: could put us in jeopardy. There are good reasons why
Speaker 1: no black person wants to live there for so many years.
Speaker 1: A Coe resident and community historian pam La Grady, you
Speaker 1: can see that's what happened there. You can feel that
Speaker 1: energy there. It's still it's still alive and well. What
Speaker 1: happened in a Koe a century ago remains the worst
Speaker 1: incident of election day violence in US history. What happened
Speaker 1: in a Koe was not an altercation. It was more
Speaker 1: than a eaching or shooting or riot. What happened in
Speaker 1: the Koe was a massacre and what happened is all
Speaker 1: too relevant today. Florida is still actively involved and vota suppression.
Speaker 1: I didn't even get why she was so scared for me,
Speaker 1: and then I kind of learned the history, and I
Speaker 1: think it's so appropriate to talk about it in this
Speaker 1: year election because it is still to this date of
Speaker 1: bloody is day in American political history have an on
Speaker 1: a presidential election. One hundred years ago, African Americans in
Speaker 1: Florida were preparing for a historic election. Soldiers had come
Speaker 1: home after serving their country in World War One, the
Speaker 1: local economy was booming, women had earned the right to vote.
Speaker 1: The promise of America seemed closer than ever before. And
Speaker 1: then in the night of speakable violence, everything changed. There
Speaker 1: was no question who was in charge in central Florida
Speaker 1: a century ago. Often at the time, many of law
Speaker 1: enforcement and local politicians here were also members of the
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan. Pamela Schwartz is the chief curator of
Speaker 1: the Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando, Florida. One
Speaker 1: prominent white citizen at the time estimated that about nine
Speaker 1: of law enforcement officers, judges, and lawyers, and their Coe
Speaker 1: area were clan members. There's a new rise in the
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan um. There's a resurgence of white supremacy. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's an active movement for white supremacists to try to
Speaker 1: disenfranchise black voters. In the days leading up to the
Speaker 1: election in November ninety the k k k was especially active.
Speaker 1: There are marches throughout the state of Florida, Jacksonville, Daytona,
Speaker 1: Orlando of Ku Klux Klan sending that same message of
Speaker 1: do you not get out to vote if you're black
Speaker 1: or else? In Orlando, around five hundred hooded men paraded
Speaker 1: behind three figures on horseback. They used megaphones to get
Speaker 1: their message out. Pol Or tease Is, the author of Emancipation,
Speaker 1: betrayed the hidden history of black organizing a white violence
Speaker 1: in Florida from reconstruction to the bloody election of ninety.
Speaker 1: In Daytona, the night before election day, they marched through
Speaker 1: Mary McCloy Bethoon's campus, you know, and the municipal authority
Speaker 1: controlling the electricity actually cut electricity, you know, to Daytona
Speaker 1: Industrial World School so that the clan could march through
Speaker 1: with their torches and terror tactics and and accurately scary.
Speaker 1: It's just all of this stuff is boiling and boiling,
Speaker 1: and the events of November two and third send it
Speaker 1: over the top. This was an event hundreds of years
Speaker 1: in the making, from the first enslavement here up through
Speaker 1: black holes and Jim Crow laws, and the suppression of women,
Speaker 1: the suppression of black voters, the suppression in all these
Speaker 1: different ways leading up to something like this event erupting.
Speaker 1: Five hundred years ago, Florida was under Spanish rule. It
Speaker 1: was a sanctuary if the slaves were able to escape
Speaker 1: the British colonies. But after Florida came under the control
Speaker 1: of the United States in eighteen nineteen, President Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 1: sent American troops to help capture former slaves and returned
Speaker 1: them to their chains. Slavery ended with the Civil War,
Speaker 1: but segregation and ideas of white supremacy remained strong. Canta
Speaker 1: Florida was especially attractive to former Confederates. Marvin Dunn is
Speaker 1: the author of a History of Florida Through Black Eyes.
Speaker 1: Santa Florida was a was a magnet for people who
Speaker 1: had lost the Civil War because keep Amy Florida was
Speaker 1: on us by the war uh and sent to Florida
Speaker 1: was out of the cattle got to said the Confederate Army.
Speaker 1: So businessman and sent to Florida made money during the
Speaker 1: war while other parts of the South were being destimated
Speaker 1: by the war. By ninety Florida's economy was booming. The
Speaker 1: citrus industry was exploding. So a lot of black people
Speaker 1: were chanted into Center Florida for that reason to work.
Speaker 1: The town of a Koe, with its lush orange groves
Speaker 1: and farms nestled along Stark Lake, was especially attractive. A
Speaker 1: number of black people, black men in particular, had managed
Speaker 1: to get property orange rose on their own. There's a
Speaker 1: man by the name of Moses Norman. Now Moses Norman
Speaker 1: had lived in this community for some thirty years. He
Speaker 1: was not just some you know, young guy. He was
Speaker 1: a well established individual, well known in town. He had
Speaker 1: his own car. He was known to be a labor broker.
Speaker 1: Most Norman at the time was driving around in a
Speaker 1: car that was worth about semi five to her thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Pamela Grady is the executive director of the July Perry Foundation.
Speaker 1: That's a Mercedes, that's a Jaguar, you know, That's what
Speaker 1: he was driving around in at a time when nobody
Speaker 1: even had cars. There was only maybe one or two
Speaker 1: other cars in the whole town of a Koe, you know,
Speaker 1: and here's this black guy driving through the town, this
Speaker 1: nice car. You know. They had to infuriate them. The
Speaker 1: foundation is named for Most Norman's good friend, another prominent
Speaker 1: Bleaxis and of a Koe, Julius July Perry. Nothing really
Speaker 1: happened in ol Koe without him. Florida State Senator Randolph Bracy.
Speaker 1: He was kind of like a broker or even white
Speaker 1: businessman who wanted to come in and do some farming
Speaker 1: transactions of what have you. He ran the town. July
Speaker 1: Perry and most Norman were pillars of the Koe community.
Speaker 1: His story and Paul artis, they were successful individuals. They're
Speaker 1: very hard workers, they were they're very good family men. Um.
Speaker 1: They were highly respected. And the reason I mentioned m
Speaker 1: highly respected. And this is the most important element I
Speaker 1: think about Most Norman and life arean Why why they
Speaker 1: represent such a threat to white supremacy, Because these two
Speaker 1: exceptionally respected men were involved in an exceptionally threatening activity
Speaker 1: helping black citizens vote. In the wake at World War One,
Speaker 1: black Fluoridians had organized a remarkable statewide voter registration movement,
Speaker 1: and the movement really crested and built momentum as African
Speaker 1: American soldiers returned from from Europe. A lot of Black
Speaker 1: lessons came back to the South and the third in Europe,
Speaker 1: and they were not blando commodate themselves to the racism
Speaker 1: that was in there in that community, and most Norman
Speaker 1: latter in particular, were among those who came back with
Speaker 1: that attitude. The two veterans joined hundreds of other Fluoridians
Speaker 1: who were mobilizing to combat white supremacy. In nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: there is a shoot black voter registration drive that's supported
Speaker 1: not only by the black community, but also by white Republicans,
Speaker 1: not all of them, most of them. This was at
Speaker 1: a time when most African Americans were members of Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln's Republican Party. In many places in the South, blacks
Speaker 1: could not even join the Democratic Party. And thanks to
Speaker 1: the Nineteenth Amendment, women would be voting for president for
Speaker 1: the first time in nineteen twenty. This is a whole
Speaker 1: new voting block and that includes black women. And what
Speaker 1: it's doing is it's causing a lot of tension. People
Speaker 1: don't always accept change. Uh. And so with this you
Speaker 1: also see sort of a resurgence and an ongoing rise
Speaker 1: with white supremacy in the ku Klux Klan clan members
Speaker 1: were not the only white supremacists trying to hold back
Speaker 1: the new wave of black voters. Once the white you know,
Speaker 1: white white elites and white media and white leaders realized
Speaker 1: this is happening, they use their off ed space, their
Speaker 1: their banner headlines. White women, it's to you to save
Speaker 1: the republic. This is the greatest crisis in our nation's history.
Speaker 1: And a typical op ed will say, h white ladies,
Speaker 1: do you want your Negro washer woman to lord over you,
Speaker 1: to take control? Do you want that Negro custodian to
Speaker 1: marry your daughter? The threats heated up as the election approached.
Speaker 1: White supremacies in a crisis, they're much more honest and
Speaker 1: races today because they're very blunt about it. They're like,
Speaker 1: white supremacy is our way of life as an American.
Speaker 1: Some white Republicans in Orlando, including a local judge named
Speaker 1: John Cheney, helped July Perry and Most Norman organized black
Speaker 1: voters about a month before the echoing massacre. They receive
Speaker 1: a letter from the Florida ku Klux Klan signed by
Speaker 1: the ku Klux Klan that basically says stop or else, sir,
Speaker 1: while stopping in your beautiful little city this week, I
Speaker 1: was informed that you are in the habit of going
Speaker 1: out among the negroes of Orlando and delivering lectures explaining
Speaker 1: to them how to assert their rights. The grand Master
Speaker 1: of the Florida ku Klux Klan reminded them what happened
Speaker 1: when white people tried to help black voters during reconstruction.
Speaker 1: You will remember that these things forced the loyal citizens
Speaker 1: of the South to organize clans of determined men who
Speaker 1: pledge themselves to maintain white supremacy and to safeguard our
Speaker 1: women and children. We shall always enjoy white supremacy in
Speaker 1: this country, and he who interferes must face the consequences.
Speaker 1: So there is a threat, there is and this is
Speaker 1: a this is a primary Schurich. We have the original
Speaker 1: in our museum collection that that that states this. Just
Speaker 1: days before were the Echoe massacre. There are marches throughout
Speaker 1: the state of Florida. If you ask a black person
Speaker 1: to register about Florida, you're asking them to take the risk.
Speaker 1: They're asking them to risk their lives. You're asking them
Speaker 1: to risk their livelihoods, You're asking them to risk their
Speaker 1: physical safety. On the morning of November, two black citizens
Speaker 1: of a Koe, Florida, made a heroic decision. They ignored
Speaker 1: the clan marches, the torches, the letters, and the threats.
Speaker 1: They prepared to exercise their most fundamental democratic right to vote.
Speaker 1: They knew it would be challenging, but they had no
Speaker 1: idea of the horrors that awaited them. You can hear
Speaker 1: the election Day massacre miniseries just search for flashback wherever
Speaker 1: you find your podcasts.