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