Speaker 1: As we draw closer to June tenth. On June nineteenth,
Speaker 1: the anniversary of the day when enslaved people in Texas
Speaker 1: were emancipated two and a half years after the Emancipation
Speaker 1: Proclamation was signed, we offer a remarkable story of the
Speaker 1: black residents of a small town in Florida who fought
Speaker 1: for their right to vote a century ago. This three
Speaker 1: part limited series is brought to you by Procter and Gamble.
Speaker 1: Procter and Gamble believes that words alone won't create change,
Speaker 1: but stories do seek share and expect the whole truth
Speaker 1: of black life. Widen the screen to widen our view.
Speaker 1: Our grandmother was one of the most greatest females, and
Speaker 1: the word grave is probably not strong enough. She was
Speaker 1: not afraid of anything, nor anybody nobody. That's Janice Nelson
Speaker 1: and her brother, Pastor Stephen Nunne. Their grandmother was Caretha
Speaker 1: Perry Caldwell. She was a constant presence in their lives
Speaker 1: growing up in Tampa, Florida. She just decided, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: to talk to Steve and I when we were kids,
Speaker 1: to just, you know, tell us this story, really, the
Speaker 1: story of what happened in Caretha's hometown of Koe, Florida,
Speaker 1: on election Day nineteen twenty. 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 Careta 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 panthom all of that Caretha told
Speaker 1: them she was shot in the arm. She wanted me
Speaker 1: to know about the bullet wound, 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 O Koe again. I'm Eugenius Robinson. You're listening
Speaker 1: to the election Day massacre from Ozzie Media. Warning, this
Speaker 1: episode contains graphic descriptions of racial violence. There was some
Speaker 1: sort of a confrontation, and they knew that July Hear
Speaker 1: and those nominal among the activists of I've been voting,
Speaker 1: so the attention of the white people sort of focused
Speaker 1: on them. Marvin Dunn is the author of a history
Speaker 1: of Florida through Black Eyes. The initial group that went
Speaker 1: out was led by a man named Sam Salisberry, who
Speaker 1: was a well known white man, very popular man, not
Speaker 1: a law enforcement officer, but was depotas to go out
Speaker 1: and find out what happened to the pole. Sam Salisbury
Speaker 1: was a veteran, a former Army colonel. Marvin Dunn says,
Speaker 1: a heavily armed white man he led to July Perry's
Speaker 1: farmhouse called themselves a posse. Paul Ortis, a historian at
Speaker 1: the University of Florida, did seminal research on the incident.
Speaker 1: In a sense where they're trying to just pacify him,
Speaker 1: to kind of take him out of the equation. They
Speaker 1: feel if they can silence him, then they can stop
Speaker 1: all this voting nonsense and save white supremacy. What happened
Speaker 1: at July Perry's house? Why Why did it get so
Speaker 1: violent so quickly? Pemla Schwartz, chief curate of the Orange
Speaker 1: County Regional History Center, put together a major exhibition of
Speaker 1: the Koe massacre. Who actually shot who? Who actually said what?
Speaker 1: There's so many different versions. July Perry's daughter, Caretha Janice
Speaker 1: Nelson and Stephen Nunn's grandmother was inside the house when
Speaker 1: the mob showed up. She told me that at a
Speaker 1: certain point in time, Um, some of the white residents
Speaker 1: men of the city of o Koe came to their
Speaker 1: home and basically made a demand for father to come outside,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to talk. I've always owned a gun,
Speaker 1: and you know, I grew up in a gun culture.
Speaker 1: And you know, someone comes up to my doorstep and
Speaker 1: tells me that I need to to come out of
Speaker 1: my house unarmed, and they want to talk with me. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a threat. And when Sam Salisbury demanded July Parry
Speaker 1: to come out of this house, Parry came out of
Speaker 1: his house and Um asked to go back inside and
Speaker 1: get his coat. And that's one of this this struggling food.
Speaker 1: Someone attempted to force their way in and there was
Speaker 1: some gunfire, both from um those outside of the house
Speaker 1: firing in, and from her and her father inside of
Speaker 1: the house firing out. She said that the gunfire was
Speaker 1: so great that you could see the bullet tracers coming
Speaker 1: through all angles in the house, just flying all over
Speaker 1: the places. Careita was not the only person shot that night.
Speaker 1: Her father was shot multiple times. He told her that
Speaker 1: he wanted her to get her mother and the children
Speaker 1: out of the house. Careita's mother, Estelle, was not in
Speaker 1: good health Careita's brothers and sister were young children. I
Speaker 1: felt like he was saying, you know what on the
Speaker 1: captain of the ship here, and so guess what, you guys,
Speaker 1: go get out if you can, But I've got to stay.
Speaker 1: I think even if he hadn't been wounded, he probably would.
Speaker 1: He was gonna stay in fight to the bitter end
Speaker 1: no matter what. She recalls asking herself and him, you
Speaker 1: know how we're going to get out because they were surrounded,
Speaker 1: and he said, pray, and the Lord I'll show you away.
Speaker 1: And she says she started praying, as the Lord, help
Speaker 1: us to get out of or help me to get
Speaker 1: my mom and my brother's and sister out of here.
Speaker 1: And she said, um, there was a cat hoole or
Speaker 1: some type of an opening in the bottom of the door.
Speaker 1: She lifted the little hatch, and she said that there
Speaker 1: was a beam of light like from the moon, but
Speaker 1: it was just this beam of light that shined the
Speaker 1: path through this particular high growth or corn field. And
Speaker 1: she said they proceeded on their stomachs to crawl through
Speaker 1: that path that had been illuminated. And she said while
Speaker 1: they were calling. She said, Um, we could see the
Speaker 1: feet of the men who were surrounding the home. Some
Speaker 1: of them, we could literally see their feet, and we
Speaker 1: could hear them talking and and still firing, and yet
Speaker 1: they never saw us. Caretha Estelle and the children escaped
Speaker 1: through the field. Members of the white mob would later
Speaker 1: claim that quote thirty seven armed negroes in quot participated
Speaker 1: in the shootout, but it's more likely that it was
Speaker 1: just the Perry family and a couple of hired hands
Speaker 1: who held off the assailants. At least six members of
Speaker 1: the white mob were wounded in the gun battle. Two
Speaker 1: others died. They were killed that friendless fire. Other white
Speaker 1: men shot through the house and killed their comrades. And
Speaker 1: I found us out by examining the funeral home records
Speaker 1: of the Manuel They which included a note from the
Speaker 1: sheriff documenting that the men had been killed that friendly fire.
Speaker 1: It's one of the few records of what happened that night.
Speaker 1: You know, there's all of these details that will never factually, no,
Speaker 1: there's just no way, because no records and accounts were kept,
Speaker 1: no full investigation was done. Perry's family made it to safety,
Speaker 1: but not for long. July, Perry's wife and daughter, a
Speaker 1: Stella and Caretha, respectively, are captured. They're taken to the
Speaker 1: jail in Tampa. Careta and a Stell were charged with
Speaker 1: murdering 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 returned to Oh Koe again.
Speaker 1: Years later, Careta Perry was asked by an Orlando newspaper
Speaker 1: if she had ever gone back to Koe. She replied, no, God,
Speaker 1: I don't ever want to see it, not even on
Speaker 1: a map. This three part limited series is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Procter and Gamble. Procter and Gamble believes that
Speaker 1: words alone won't create change, but stories do seek share
Speaker 1: and expect the whole truth of black life. Widen the
Speaker 1: screen to widen our view. In Mildred Board was a
Speaker 1: little girl in the next town over a Popca, Florida.
Speaker 1: Ms Board has since passed away, but she recorded in
Speaker 1: oral History a few years ago. We're playing excerpts of
Speaker 1: the courtesy of the Orange County Regional History Center. It's
Speaker 1: one of just a few first hand accounts of the
Speaker 1: events of that election day. The night of the riot,
Speaker 1: most Non came to this house, and I remembered that
Speaker 1: he had on a nightshirt. And I don't know whether
Speaker 1: my dad came with him or he got that fall.
Speaker 1: And they brought him on here, and my dad said
Speaker 1: to him, well, molest how did you get out of Okoe?
Speaker 1: He said, just like a rabbit in the wind. I
Speaker 1: shall never forget it. Most Norman escaped from a koe
Speaker 1: in his car. There were reports that he eventually settled
Speaker 1: up north in New York City. July Perry did not escape.
Speaker 1: He made it out of the farmhouse into a nearby
Speaker 1: sugarcane field, but he was soon discovered. His little dog
Speaker 1: betrayed him. When July Perry was shot, he went down
Speaker 1: in the cane page and Jip was the little dog's name.
Speaker 1: He went down and barred, and that's when the mob
Speaker 1: found him in the cane page. The deputized mob arrested Perry.
Speaker 1: There's so many different stories they shot him there, but
Speaker 1: they supposed to have care of him. A thought two
Speaker 1: the police station in Okoe. But you know, as I
Speaker 1: can remember, there wasn't a police station in the course.
Speaker 1: More likely July Perry was taken to the police station
Speaker 1: in Orlando, a much bigger town. Word gets to Orlando,
Speaker 1: as far away as Orlando that there's a Negro uprise.
Speaker 1: Same but that's a code for negroes are trying to vote,
Speaker 1: and so carloads of white people begin h mobilizing from
Speaker 1: as far away as Orlando. I mean, drive to a koe.
Speaker 1: There's an electronic synboard in Orlando and it's used on
Speaker 1: election day, but not only to tally of votes. Then
Speaker 1: someone changes that sign board to direct people to a koe.
Speaker 1: All right, fifty carloads of white men from Orlando descended
Speaker 1: on the black neighborhoods and a kowe. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a third generation military veteran, and so when I
Speaker 1: look at places like a KOE, I see intelligence, I
Speaker 1: see supply, I see planning. And what I mean by
Speaker 1: this is that carloads of white individuals, many of them,
Speaker 1: start from Orlando, and they drive all the way into Koe,
Speaker 1: and they knew who to target, they knew who the
Speaker 1: leadership was. Then drive to a Koe and they begin
Speaker 1: to torch and burn and loot and village, this this
Speaker 1: entire community. That evening and into the night, white vigilantes
Speaker 1: sit fire to black people's homes, businesses, and churches in
Speaker 1: a cobe. They shot at people trying to escape the flames.
Speaker 1: I mean, basically, people are defending their homes as this
Speaker 1: white you know, pair of military operation is tearing through
Speaker 1: their their their neighborhoods. People put up a defense in
Speaker 1: a koe. They don't just lay down and offer themselves
Speaker 1: up today to the firing squad, if you will. But
Speaker 1: we could smell somebody say, well, how would you smell
Speaker 1: the smoke as they act and smell the smoke coming
Speaker 1: from Africa. So it was some thing that you could
Speaker 1: swme out with smoke. You knew something was going on.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most dramatic days in American history
Speaker 1: all across the state. You know what what happens in
Speaker 1: fo It is really an example. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: metaphor for American you know, American history and the systematic purging,
Speaker 1: ethnic cleansing of black people. That's really the outcome. We
Speaker 1: don't like to use the term ethnic cleansing unless we
Speaker 1: can use in Eastern Europe, right, We don't like to
Speaker 1: use the word wrong unless we can use it in
Speaker 1: you know, in Africa or you know, someplace else, but
Speaker 1: it happens here. There is no way we will ever
Speaker 1: factually probably know how many black people were killed that night.
Speaker 1: Records were intentionally they not kept. Given the current research,
Speaker 1: we as historians will say that at least four black
Speaker 1: people were murdered, but many accounts put the death toll
Speaker 1: much higher. Between thirty and sixty black residents were killed,
Speaker 1: historian Marvin Dunn. They burned the whole section of the
Speaker 1: black community. We don't know if these spokes burned up
Speaker 1: to those houses or not. Probably that weren't. Basically, you
Speaker 1: had a choice. You can leave and get shot, or
Speaker 1: you can stay and burn. Uh. And they burned to death,
Speaker 1: and they were put in Popper's caskets and buried in
Speaker 1: a mass grave. Once the white mob started burning people's
Speaker 1: homes and churches, people left. Every single black person in
Speaker 1: a koe that night, living or visiting, lost something, their
Speaker 1: sense of safety, their home, their property, whether they were
Speaker 1: a renter or a landowner, um sometimes their life. Those
Speaker 1: who survived the flames and gunfire escaped into the surrounding swamps.
Speaker 1: The Florida Times Union reported the next day that black
Speaker 1: survivors were seen walking along highways many miles from a koe,
Speaker 1: and the weeks and months that followed, virtually every single
Speaker 1: black person fled the town. And then it looked like
Speaker 1: refugees from from a war zone. That those those are
Speaker 1: the descriptions. We have people leaving in wagons with all
Speaker 1: 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 cooee
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 lunch 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 role
Speaker 1: of block from Colonial There was an old tree. I
Speaker 1: don't know where the same old cree. There is a
Speaker 1: big old tree right now. They are tanned him up
Speaker 1: and let him hang from that tree for a while.
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 coal we vote. The story went that July was
Speaker 1: intentionally hanged, um what you know, in view of Chinese house,
Speaker 1: but that it was across this lake and it was
Speaker 1: up by country club at the time. The way the
Speaker 1: trees and everything were like when we look back at
Speaker 1: historic photos of that lake in different things like, I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody could have seen anything from the judge house.
Speaker 1: So I think that that is a thing that became
Speaker 1: part of the lore. But there was an unmistakable message.
Speaker 1: That's what Lynch was about. Historian Paul Ortiz. It was
Speaker 1: really about sending a lesson to the entire black and
Speaker 1: white and Hispanic communities. You know, whether it was in
Speaker 1: the Southwest or in Florida, wherever. We're in charge here
Speaker 1: and we don't follow the law, we are the law.
Speaker 1: A local black undertaker took down Parry's corpse from the
Speaker 1: tree the next day. Oh, he had done so many
Speaker 1: things to his body. There wasn't too much left hanging
Speaker 1: because they had just put his body up in pieces,
Speaker 1: but they took whatever they could and am show. They
Speaker 1: embombed him and they buried him. The terror inflicted on
Speaker 1: the Black Sitessens of Akoe didn't end with election day.
Speaker 1: The story has always gone that everybody left immediately, the
Speaker 1: black community left, they never came back. The story after
Speaker 1: is far more nuanced and horrific, I think, personally, um
Speaker 1: than that there's an official cover up that goes on
Speaker 1: for decades after the event. There's just so so much
Speaker 1: to the story. I think the most horrific thing is
Speaker 1: that we don't know, and we don't know by design.
Speaker 1: By design, we don't have records. We don't have names
Speaker 1: for the people who were killed. We don't know what
Speaker 1: homes burned and which ones don't. We don't know what
Speaker 1: happened to people and where they went. What we do
Speaker 1: know is that the terror in a Koe was not
Speaker 1: carried out only by people in masks and robes. Much
Speaker 1: of it was committed openly, and the campaign to keep
Speaker 1: black people from voting in Florida was not limited to
Speaker 1: anonymous letters from the ku Klux Klan. Editorials were rented
Speaker 1: in the most prominent newspapers in the state. When the
Speaker 1: Atlanto sentin older Mommy Harolds say that white supremacy, that
Speaker 1: our foundation, the foundation of our civilization, White supremacy is
Speaker 1: a danger. We have to take them seriously. And when
Speaker 1: we take them seriously, we realize that they're going to
Speaker 1: do anything they can to break up any challenge to
Speaker 1: their power system. And this is why so many white
Speaker 1: people descend upon it color, because they're trying to send
Speaker 1: a lesson to that not only are you not going
Speaker 1: to vote today, You're never going to vote. What happened
Speaker 1: in the Koe was not just about one election. What
Speaker 1: happened next would take years to orchestrate and execute. In
Speaker 1: part three of the election day massacre, where did everybody go?
Speaker 1: And you look for the families and the histories and
Speaker 1: you try to find where they are today and you
Speaker 1: can't find people. You can't find them. They just asso
Speaker 1: go on. Nobody's ever held responsible in any way, shape
Speaker 1: or form for what happens out of Koe. It was
Speaker 1: government supported landa. The scripture says, thou shalt not steal.
Speaker 1: They stole it, and they need to give it back.
Speaker 1: This episode of flashback. The election Day massacret was written
Speaker 1: by Sean Braswell and voiced by me Eugene S. Robinson,
Speaker 1: was produced by Maeve mcgren and Theory Oh Diggi Zula.
Speaker 1: Chris Haff engineered our show.