WEBVTT - The Election Day Massacre: 3 Part Special Series Promo 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.880 We're running a special series about the worst incident of 0:00:02.920 --> 0:00:06.360 election violence in American history, an event that is almost 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:10.399 forgotten today. It happened a century ago on Election Day 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:14.200 nineteen twenty and the town of a Kohe, Florida. The 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:18.000 victims were hundreds of black residents. The perpetrators were their 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.600 white neighbors. And the reason was that black citizens had 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:33.200 gone to the polls and tried to vote. One hundred 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:35.960 years ago in the center of Florida, just a few 0:00:36.000 --> 0:00:40.640 miles from where Disney World stands today, there was an exodus. 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:50.400 Hundreds of black families piled their children into wagons. They 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.279 trudged all night along roads and railroad tracks and through 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:57.880 sugarcane fields. They barely escaped with their lives. Dozens of 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:01.840 their loved ones did not. They were lynched, shot, burned 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:09.959 to death in the wreckage of their own homes. Today, 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:13.520 this is forgotten, largely missing from history books, handed down 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:17.080 only as a secret memory between generations of the families 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:22.440 who escaped. But in nine November nine, the town of Okoe, Florida, 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:26.720 wasn't a secret. It made headlines around the world. There 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:30.160 was a grand jury investigation, even a hearing before Congress 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:34.400 and Americans black and white, knew exactly why it had happened. 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:38.399 They knew what it meant. This exodus was a warning 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:51.760 danny black citizen who dared to try to vote. I'm 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:56.360 Eugene S. Robinson and this is the election day massacre 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:10.639 from Ozzie Media. In two thousand and twelve, Randolph Bracy 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:14.040 became the first representative from a new state House district 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:17.160 in central Florida. Less than one sixth of the members 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:21.280 of the Florida House were black. I I was looking 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:25.080 for office space after I won my election, and I 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:28.320 had recently moved to Koe, and I decided to put 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.280 my office in Oh Koe Koe. It's just a dozen 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:34.000 miles from Disney World, but it still has the feel 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:37.480 of a small town. It's a pretty lake, splash park 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:40.760 for the kids, but beloved ice cream stand, the perfect 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:43.320 place to live and work. And I remember it was 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:47.760 an African American woman, older woman, and she almost lost 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.080 it when I thought I was moving my office to Koe. 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:54.440 But she was from the age where she the era 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:58.000 where she remembered that it was a sundown town where 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:02.440 you couldn't be Oh Koe unless you had some business 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:06.320 and you had to be going before dark. Bracy now, 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:09.960 a Florida State Senator, was shocked, but many people who 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:13.720 live in the area longer are not. Historian Marvin Dunn 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:17.480 is professor emeritus at Florida International University. He grew up 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:21.480 in Central Florida. My father told us told me and 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:25.720 my brothers about picking oranges in in Okoe. When they 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.079 would leave to come back to the land. If the 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:32.480 driver of the white drivit lanage until almost dark, they 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:35.800 would walk out of Okoe rather than be cought after dark. 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:39.240 Koe is a diverse community today, and it had a 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:43.280 thriving black population long ago, but for half a century 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:46.960 of Coe had almost no black residents. But this was 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:49.400 in the ninety late nineties, and they told me, please, 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:53.640 don't tell anyone now you're coming here, that we've invited 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:55.840 you here, that we're showing you where the black communities 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:59.000 used to be. Paul Ortiz is a professor of history 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.440 at the University of Florida. Don't tell anyone because it 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:06.280 could put your life in jeopardy. It could put in jeopardy. 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:08.840 There were good reasons why no black person wanted to 0:04:08.880 --> 0:04:11.920 live there for so many years. A Koe resident and 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:15.920 community historian Pamela Grady. You can see that's what happened there. 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:18.200 You can feel that energy there. It's still it's still 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:23.359 alive and well. What happened in a Koe year century 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:26.560 ago remains the worst incident of election day of violence 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:29.680 in US history. What happened in the Koe was not 0:04:29.880 --> 0:04:33.600 an altercation. It was more than a lynching or shooting 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:37.240 or riot. What happened in the Koe was a massacre. 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:44.120 And what happened is all too relevant today. Florida is 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:48.159 still actively involved in vota suppression. I didn't even get 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:52.080 why she was so scared for me, and then I 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:54.400 kind of learned the history, and I think it's so 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:57.920 appropriate to talk about it and this year election because 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:01.120 it is still to the state of bloody. It's day 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:05.159 in American political history have an on a presidential election. 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:16.440 One hundred years ago, African Americans in Florida were preparing 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:20.440 for an historic election. Soldiers had come home after serving 0:05:20.480 --> 0:05:24.400 their country in World War One, the local economy was booming, 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.039 women had earned the right to vote. The promise of 0:05:27.080 --> 0:05:31.680 America seemed closer than ever before. And then, in a 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:40.640 night of unspeakable violence, everything changed. There was no question 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:43.360 who was in charge in central Florida a century ago. 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:47.799 Often at the time, many of law enforcement and local 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:50.719 politicians here were also members of the goog Lux client. 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:54.400 Pamela Schwartz is the chief curator of the Orange County 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:58.719 Regional History Center in Orlando, Florida. One prominent white citizen 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:03.960 at the time estimated at about nine of law enforcement officers, judges, 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:07.799 and lawyers and their Coe area were clan members. There's 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:11.120 a new rise in the Ku Klux Klan um. There's 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:16.000 a resurgence of white supremacy. Uh, there's an active movement 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:20.159 for white supremacists to try to disenfranchise black voters. In 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:23.440 the days leading up to the election in November nineteen twenty, 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:27.880 the k k k was especially active. There are marches 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:31.880 throughout the state of Florida, Jacksonville, Daytona, Orlando of Ku 0:06:31.960 --> 0:06:35.279 Klux Klan sending that same message of do you not 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:39.000 get out to vote if you're black or else. In Orlando, 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:43.880 around five hundred hooded men paraded behind three figures on horseback. 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.360 They used megaphones to get their message out. Paul Ortiz 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:51.640 is the author of Emancipation Betrayed The Hidden History of 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:55.240 black organizing and white violence in Florida from reconstruction to 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:59.000 the bloody election of nineteen twenty. In Daytona of the 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:03.520 night before election, they marched through Mary mccloyd Bethun's campus, 0:07:03.640 --> 0:07:09.880 you know, and the municipal authority um controlling the electricity 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.560 actually kind of electricity, you know, to Daytona industrial world school, 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:16.760 so that the clan could march through with their torches 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:22.640 and terror tactics and and accurately scary. It's just all 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:25.720 of this stuff is boiling and boiling, and the events 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:28.280 of November second and third send it over the top. 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:32.920 This was an event hundreds of years in the making, 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.840 from the first enslavement here up through black holes and 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:39.800 Jim Crow laws and the suppression of of women, the 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:42.840 suppression of black voters, the suppression in all these different 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:49.120 ways leading up to something like this event erupting. Five 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:53.080 years ago, Florida was under Spanish rule. It was a 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:57.280 sanctuary if the slaves were able to escape the British colonies. 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:00.200 But after Florida came outo the control of the United 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:05.200 States in eighteen nineteen, President Thomas Jefferson sent American troops 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:09.400 to help capture former slaves and returned them to their chains. 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:13.040 Slavery ended with the Civil War, but segregation and ideas 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:18.720 of white supremacy remained strong. Center Florida was especially attractive 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:22.320 to former Confederates. Marvin Dunn is the author of a 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:26.240 History of Florida through Black Eyes. Center Florida was a 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:30.240 was a magnet for people who had lost the Civil 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.280 War because Keith and Florida was untouched by the war. 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:38.280 Uh and Center Florida the cattle that said, the Confederate army. 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:42.200 So businessman in Center Florida made money during the war 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:45.040 while other parts of the South are being destimated by 0:08:45.080 --> 0:08:51.400 the war. By nineteen twenty, Florida's economy was booming. The 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:55.240 citrus industry was exploding, so a lot of black people 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.319 were chanted into Center Florida for that reason to work. 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:01.520 The town of a Koe, with its lush orange groves 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:06.160 and farms nestled along Stark Lake, was especially attractive a 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:09.440 number of black people, black men in particular, had managed 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:12.720 to get property orange grose on their own. There's a 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:15.880 man by the name of Moses Norman. Now Moses Norman 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.160 had lived in this community for some thirty years. He 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:21.880 was not just some you know, young guy. He was 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:25.040 a well established individual, well known in town. He had 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:27.640 his own car. He was known to be a labor broker. 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:30.920 Most Norman at the time was driving around in a 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:33.280 car that was worth about seventy five to a hund 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:36.480 thousand dollars. Pamela Grady is the executive director of the 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:41.080 July Perry Foundation. That's a Mercedes, that's a Jaguar, you know, 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:43.240 that's what he was driving around. And at a time 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:45.959 when nobody even had cars. There was only maybe one 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.439 or two other cars in the whole town of a Koe, 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:52.199 you know, And here's this black guy driving through the town, 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:54.439 this nice car. You know. They had to infuriate him. 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:58.040 The foundation is named for Mose Norman's good friend, another 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:02.720 prominent black Cystan of a Koe, Julius July Perry. Nothing 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:06.040 really happened in ol Koe without him. Florida State Senator 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:08.719 Randolph Bracy. He was kind of like a broker or 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:12.400 even white businessman who wanted to come in and do 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:16.680 some farming transaction of what have you. He ran the town. 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:21.160 July Perry and most Norman were pillars of the Kohe community. 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:26.480 Historian Paul Artis they were successful individuals. They're very hard workers, 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.640 they were they're very good family men. Um they were 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.480 highly respected. And the reason I mentioned the term highly respected, 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:35.440 and this is the most important element I think about 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:38.160 Most Norman and July Perry and why why they represent 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:43.000 such a threat to white supremacy, Because these two exceptionally 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:47.320 respected men were involved in an exceptionally threatening activity helping 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:52.400 black citizens vote. In the wake at World War One, 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:59.800 black Floridians had organized a remarkable statewide voter registration movement, 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:05.880 and the movement really prested and built momentum as African 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:09.520 American soldiers returned from from Europe. A lot of black 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:13.000 pressions came back to the South and the third in Europe, 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:15.959 and they were not going into a commodate themselves to 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:18.880 the racism that was in there in that community, and 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:22.520 most Norman and Gelatter in particularly were among those who 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:26.240 came back with that attitude. The two veterans joined hundreds 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:29.720 of other Floridians who were mobilizing to combat white supremacy. 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:33.280 In nineteen twenty, there is a shoot black voter registration 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:35.600 drive that's supported not only by the black community, but 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.920 also by white Republicans. Not all of them, most of them. 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:42.719 This was at a time when most African Americans were 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:47.000 members of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party. In many places in 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:50.040 the South, blacks could not even join the Democratic Party, 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:53.120 and thanks to the Nineteenth Amendment, women would be voting 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:56.679 for president for the first time in nineteen twenty. This 0:11:56.760 --> 0:12:00.360 is a whole new voting block and that includes black women. 0:12:01.080 --> 0:12:03.600 And what it's doing is it's causing a lot of tension. 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:08.640 People don't always accept change, and so with this you 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:11.439 also see sort of a resurgence and an ongoing rise 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:15.360 with white supremacy in the Kuklux Klan clan members were 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.480 not the only white supremacists trying to hold back the 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:22.160 new wave of black voters. Once the white you know, 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:25.000 white white elites and white media and white leaders realize 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:28.480 this is happening, they use their op ed space, their 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:32.920 their banner headlines. White women, it's up to you to 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:37.720 save the republic. This is the greatest crisis in our 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:42.719 nation's history. And a typical op ed will say, h 0:12:43.280 --> 0:12:48.360 white ladies, do you want your Negro washer women to 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:52.640 lord over you, to take control? Do you want that 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:59.320 Negro custodian to marry your daughter. The threats heated up 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.640 as the election of approached. White supremacies in a crisis. 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:08.400 They're much more honest in races today because they're very 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:12.280 blunt about it. They're like, white supremacy is our way 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:16.199 of life as an American. Some white Republicans in Orlando, 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:20.199 including a local judge named John Cheney, helped July Perry 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:24.319 and most Norman organized black voters. About a month before 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:27.080 the Echoen massacre, they receive a letter from the Florida 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:30.600 ku Klux Klan signed by the ku Klux Klan that 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:37.079 basically says, stop or else, sir, while stopping in your 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:40.800 beautiful little city this week, I was informed that you 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:43.880 are in the habit of going out among the Negroes 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:48.400 of Orlando and delivering lectures explaining to them how to 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:52.440 assert their rights. The grand master of the Florida ku 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:55.480 Klux Klan reminded them what happened when white people tried 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:59.800 to help black voters during reconstruction. You will remember that 0:13:59.880 --> 0:14:02.920 these things forced the loyal citizens of the South to 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:08.080 organize clans of determined men who pledge themselves to maintain 0:14:08.120 --> 0:14:13.320 white supremacy and to safeguard our women and children. We 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:17.920 shall always enjoy white supremacy in this country, and he 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:22.720 who interferes must face the consequences. So there is a threat, 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:24.960 there is and this is this is a primary starts. 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:29.960 We have the original in our museum collection that that 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:33.920 that states this. Just days before the Echoe massacre, there 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.600 are marches throughout the state of Florida. If you ask 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:41.640 a black person to register about Florida, you're asking them 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:44.760 to take the risk. They're asking them to risk their lives. 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:47.840 You're asking them to risk their livelihoods, You're asking them 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:52.400 to risk their physical safety. On the morning of November, 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:58.120 two black citizens of a Koe, Florida made a heroic decision. 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:03.360 They ignored the clan marches, the torches, the letters, and 0:15:03.440 --> 0:15:08.479 the threats. They prepared to exercise their most fundamental democratic 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:12.680 right to vote. They knew it would be challenging, but 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:21.720 they had no idea of the horrors that awaited them. 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:25.040 You can hear the election Day massacre miniseries just search 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:27.840 for flashback wherever you find your podcasts.