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. They said that you lack parish house was burned.
Speaker 1: I'm shore it was. This oral history was recorded a
Speaker 1: few years ago with the late Mildred Board. We're hearing
Speaker 1: a courtesy of the Orange County Regional History Center. As
Speaker 1: a little girl, Mrs Board lived a few miles from
Speaker 1: a Koe, Florida. The morning after election Day, hundreds of
Speaker 1: black families fled the town. She remembered one woman in particular.
Speaker 1: I talked about how they got on the railroad track
Speaker 1: and walked the railroad track. They walked so far and
Speaker 1: then maybe they had a truck haws and blugget and
Speaker 1: they would pick them up along the railroad track and
Speaker 1: bring them here. Almost every surviving black resident fled a
Speaker 1: Koe after a night of horrifying attacks by white vigilantes.
Speaker 1: Their homes and churches were set on fire. The leader
Speaker 1: of the community, July Perry, was lynched. Other neighbors were shot.
Speaker 1: Estimates of the number of black people murdered that night
Speaker 1: ranged from four to sixty. The reason for the massacre
Speaker 1: m Coe's black residents had attempted to vote. I'm Eugenus Robinson.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the election day massacre from Ozzie Media.
Speaker 1: Cohe was a national and international story. And if you
Speaker 1: look at any newspaper in around election Day, you can't
Speaker 1: miss a cooee. Historian Paul Ortiz the University of Florida.
Speaker 1: The stories in the New York Times, is in the
Speaker 1: Chicago tribunits, in the European press, it's an the Latin
Speaker 1: American press. Um, it's an international story. In other words,
Speaker 1: newspapers called it the Cooe horror. But Florida's election day
Speaker 1: violence wasn't limited to a Koe. So there was a
Speaker 1: statewide reactionary movement against the black struggle to regain right
Speaker 1: to vote, and there was violence all over the state. UM.
Speaker 1: There were gun battles you know, their assassinations. As far
Speaker 1: as I can tell in my research, the worst violence,
Speaker 1: the most sustained anti black violence you know, appear to
Speaker 1: happen at Choe. They call for able bodied ex servicemen
Speaker 1: to come and create a perimeter around a Koe. Pamela Schwartz,
Speaker 1: chief curator of the Orange County Regional History Center, put
Speaker 1: together an exhibition on the Echoe massacre. Now they say
Speaker 1: that's to lock down the crime scene, but it also
Speaker 1: means black families can't go find their loved ones, get
Speaker 1: to their possessions, see what's going on. Then a CP
Speaker 1: sent in an investigator, Walter Francis White, later president of
Speaker 1: the organization Heat Travel the US, investigating lynchings and other
Speaker 1: acts of violence against Black Americans. At the time that
Speaker 1: I visited O'koe, the last colored family of Okoe was
Speaker 1: leaving with their good It's piled high on a motor
Speaker 1: truck with six colored children on top. White children stood
Speaker 1: around and g the Negroes who were leaving, threatened them
Speaker 1: with burned if they did not hurry up and get away.
Speaker 1: These children thought it a huge joke that some Negroes
Speaker 1: had been burned alive. Walter white comes down. Uh, he's
Speaker 1: a very light skinned black man. He can pass for white. Uh.
Speaker 1: He uses the subject usure being a white man interested
Speaker 1: in buying orange grows in western Orange County. And he
Speaker 1: starts talking to white people about the mask, and they
Speaker 1: tell him all sorts of details that I personally killed
Speaker 1: or I know how many Negroes were killed. And he
Speaker 1: finds that white people are very proud about what they
Speaker 1: did on election Day. One man told him I shot
Speaker 1: seventeen Negroes. He shot seventeen himself when he was bragging
Speaker 1: about it. Pamela Grady isn't a COOEE resident and the
Speaker 1: executive director of the July Perry Foundation. There was an
Speaker 1: article in a newspaper that said, We're gonna have a
Speaker 1: banquet for everyone who came, and we want we want
Speaker 1: to reward you. The one is shot the most Negroes,
Speaker 1: the one is shot the most is going to get
Speaker 1: a reward. The reason that Koe Horror made headlines is
Speaker 1: not that dozens of black people were murdered and hundreds
Speaker 1: of black families were made homeless. It was because two
Speaker 1: white members of the mob that lynch July Perry were
Speaker 1: killed during a shootout there was the Corners in quest
Speaker 1: which happens November three and four, and what is found
Speaker 1: is no unknown parties killed the white individuals. Unknown parties
Speaker 1: killed July Perry, which was a common report leading at dimensions.
Speaker 1: We had a black victim who was in police custody,
Speaker 1: and all ways the result was killed that persons unknown.
Speaker 1: Marvin Dunn is the author of a history of Florida
Speaker 1: through Black Eyes. When those white men took to lay
Speaker 1: from that jail, those jailers knew what every man who
Speaker 1: was in that group. Oh, Cooy was a very small town.
Speaker 1: Everybody knew everybody else. Prosecutors called a grand jury in
Speaker 1: Orange County, there was always a grand jury convened. There
Speaker 1: was always a grand jo have convened. And who were
Speaker 1: the members of the grand jury? They would have been
Speaker 1: all white men. So the convening of the grand jury
Speaker 1: meant nothing. Historian Paul Ortiz, people will say, well, according
Speaker 1: to this testimony, July Perry did this with a loaded weapon,
Speaker 1: you know, and and did that in this and I say,
Speaker 1: excuse me, whose testimony? And number one is a testimonies hearsay,
Speaker 1: who's hearsay? Are you? Are you? Depending upon were they
Speaker 1: white oh yes, well, come on, now, come please. One
Speaker 1: of the biggest mysteries is that a grand jury was
Speaker 1: conducted and there was some thirteen or fourteen witnesses, only
Speaker 1: one black man thirteen or fourteen witnesses, and that's missing.
Speaker 1: It's not in anybody's files anywhere. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things, a lot of records that should have been
Speaker 1: kept that weren't. The grand jury found quote no evidence
Speaker 1: against any one or group of individuals as to who
Speaker 1: perpetrated the fatalities. Again, I want us to be cautious
Speaker 1: about relying on the words of white leaders, be they
Speaker 1: in the Chamber of Commerce or political officials or whatever,
Speaker 1: because they have a vested interest in jerrymandering the story
Speaker 1: to make it appear as if July period is this
Speaker 1: crazy negro, and that's how they that's how they referred
Speaker 1: to him. Things would have been fine if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for this crazy negro. The grand jury did exonerate the
Speaker 1: only people who were imprisoned after election day, July Perry's
Speaker 1: wife and daughter, Estelle and Caretha. Walter White concluded that
Speaker 1: more than thirty black residents of Okoe were murdered on
Speaker 1: election day. Other estimates put that number as high as sixty.
Speaker 1: The n Double A CP sent White's damning report to
Speaker 1: Congress when the CP goes before the House Census Committee,
Speaker 1: when Congress convenes in you know, Florida is case number one.
Speaker 1: Walter White had gathered affidavits, statistics, photographs, and witness testimony.
Speaker 1: And so the Double AC Preventment presents all this amazing
Speaker 1: evidence before the Census Committee about fraud and corruption and
Speaker 1: anti black violence, including a COE. This is not merely
Speaker 1: a question of the Negro by any means. James Weldon Johnson,
Speaker 1: Double A CPS execut the Secretary, was a Floridian born
Speaker 1: in Jacksonville. He too would one day be president of
Speaker 1: the A c P. He was an attorney and also
Speaker 1: the poet who wrote the lyrics to Lift of Your
Speaker 1: Voice and Sing. He told the committee that the suppression
Speaker 1: of black voters in the South undermined democracy across the
Speaker 1: entire nation. It is a question of republican government and
Speaker 1: the fundamentals of American democracy. It is a question which
Speaker 1: is either going to come to this Congress or to
Speaker 1: some other Congress in the future, and with increasing force
Speaker 1: every time it comes up, and it seems to me
Speaker 1: it is better to pass on the question fairly and
Speaker 1: squarely and justly today and not wait until some unknown tomorrow.
Speaker 1: But wait is exactly what Congress did, Northern Congressman or
Speaker 1: and then the committee, they're like, well, I mean I
Speaker 1: don't support negro suffrage. Do you talking to their colleague?
Speaker 1: You know, Negroes don't go where I where I am.
Speaker 1: Why should they have to do that in Florida, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't put up at the Bureau of Investigation later named
Speaker 1: the FBI launched an inquiry into Koe, but it was limited.
Speaker 1: Was the state local governments suppressing black voters. That is
Speaker 1: what the thing is about. Not about murder, not about terror,
Speaker 1: not about our sin. It is about election broad The
Speaker 1: Bureau of Investigation found that there was quote no attempt
Speaker 1: to intimidate any Negroes in the casting of their ballots,
Speaker 1: and that there was no interference with the voting of
Speaker 1: qualified Negroes. Walter White is not able as much research
Speaker 1: and work as he does, and he puts his own
Speaker 1: life on the line time and again in Central Florida
Speaker 1: to try to bring visibility to these um these stories
Speaker 1: and these these events, and ultimately really doesn't get much
Speaker 1: of anywhere with them. I mean basically, you know, white
Speaker 1: supremacy against another four decades um of life. That's really
Speaker 1: the most important, you know, kind of outcome. Uh. Politically speaking,
Speaker 1: it's believed that not a single black citizen of Orange
Speaker 1: County voted for nearly two decades after the massacre, and
Speaker 1: not a single white person was ever charged with the crime.
Speaker 1: Nobody's ever held responsible in any way, shape or form
Speaker 1: for what happens out of Koe. Black residents continued to
Speaker 1: flee a Koe in the months and years that followed
Speaker 1: the massacre. July Perry's brother in law a year later,
Speaker 1: they find him the next day, beaten with an announce
Speaker 1: of his life, stripped painted red and white stripe, with
Speaker 1: a bag over his head tied to a poll. He survives.
Speaker 1: He says that the aggressors told him he had been
Speaker 1: talking a little bit too much about what had happened
Speaker 1: at a Koe. Last November. Cents is listed two d
Speaker 1: and fifty five black residents of a Koe by There
Speaker 1: were only two, both house servants. A lot of total
Speaker 1: loss of topics because it didn't they went there to
Speaker 1: be taxes. Historian Marvin Dunn so a lot of the
Speaker 1: grooves that were on that Blacks were taken over in
Speaker 1: that way. Within two weeks of the election day massacre,
Speaker 1: there are advertisements in Orlando and Miami newspapers orange groves
Speaker 1: for sale in a Koe, including July Perry's. It says,
Speaker 1: beautiful little groves of the negroes who just fled a Koe.
Speaker 1: That's what I said in the newspaper, Beautiful little groves
Speaker 1: of the negroes who just fled a Kobe. That was
Speaker 1: supposed to be attractive to people. The ad was placed
Speaker 1: by Blueford Sims, one of the founders of the town
Speaker 1: of a Koe. He was appointed by a local court
Speaker 1: to execute the state of July Perry. A Black of
Speaker 1: Koe resident, Mrs J. H. Hammelder wrote to a friend
Speaker 1: a few weeks later, the people in the south of
Speaker 1: town are being threatened that they must sell out and leave,
Speaker 1: or they will be shot and burned as the others
Speaker 1: have been. It seems to have been a prearranged affair
Speaker 1: to kill and drive the colored people from their homes,
Speaker 1: as they were more prosperous than the white folks. So
Speaker 1: they are hoping to get their homes for nothing. Naked
Speaker 1: on the conditions were often an underlying tractor in race riots.
Speaker 1: I don't know about race riot that took place in
Speaker 1: the poor black area during this period. Before nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: the black community and a KOE was thriving. July Perry
Speaker 1: and his friend Mose Norman, who had tried to vote
Speaker 1: an election day, were prosperous citizens, and there were jealous
Speaker 1: among wits about about some of that, and particularly how
Speaker 1: Perry and most normal so their wealth as con cars
Speaker 1: and land at nice homes, and that really led some
Speaker 1: white and KOE Leading up to this event, the exhibition
Speaker 1: at the Orange County Regional History Center mapped the growth
Speaker 1: of black land ownership around the KOE and then it's disappearance.
Speaker 1: So you see this thirty years, slow rise and prosperity.
Speaker 1: Then as you scroll away from November you come up
Speaker 1: to nine thirty by all the properties have gone back
Speaker 1: to white ownership. So thirty years you see this like
Speaker 1: popping up prosperity, and then in just six years it's
Speaker 1: wiped out. Many black of Koe residents, including the Perry family,
Speaker 1: tried for years to get their property back. The Perry's
Speaker 1: discovered that the deed had been restricted no black person
Speaker 1: could buy the land in Stella and Karisa and family.
Speaker 1: Sue said, well, they asked the courts. They say, we
Speaker 1: need an account. You know what happened here, Like where
Speaker 1: is the money? It's it's been four years at the end,
Speaker 1: when all of said and done, twelve years later, twelve
Speaker 1: years later, the seven or so descendants of July Perry
Speaker 1: received one hundred and roughly a hundred and twenty six
Speaker 1: dollars each for over thirty acres of land, all of
Speaker 1: their personal property and the death of their patriarch. That
Speaker 1: twelve years they fight to get a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: six dollars each. And the properties that changed hands weren't
Speaker 1: scrub land or gravel patches. There orange groves and farming
Speaker 1: lands and lakeside property just a dozen miles from the
Speaker 1: spot where decades later a new resort would stand Disney World.
Speaker 1: All of the land that had been owned by black
Speaker 1: landowners at the time of the massacre that was taken
Speaker 1: over the next six to seven years. It wasn't immediate,
Speaker 1: like the story has always gone, but over the next
Speaker 1: six years is worth well over nine million dollars today.
Speaker 1: And to tell a descendant who should have inherited those lands,
Speaker 1: could have inherited those lands. That that's they could have
Speaker 1: been millionaires is a really, really difficult thing. What these
Speaker 1: massacres and and and p grams are all about is
Speaker 1: that the attempt among white business supremacy to roll back
Speaker 1: black economic social political games, it's redistribution of black wealth
Speaker 1: into white hands, is really what happens. And this is
Speaker 1: what makes a Cooe um almost a mundane story because
Speaker 1: it is happening everywhere. One of the most disturbing aspects
Speaker 1: of the Echoe massacre is that it was not an
Speaker 1: isolated event. In the next few years, Akoe became a
Speaker 1: template for horrendous violence other white communities arise their black
Speaker 1: neighbors and then stole their properties again and again. We
Speaker 1: know that there continues to be violence and an type
Speaker 1: like lynching in adjacent counties, kind of secondary effects of
Speaker 1: the Echoing massacre. There's a notorious lynching case in Cassemree,
Speaker 1: which which we think is connected to to the Echoing
Speaker 1: massacre in some ways. And it happens in Tulsa, happens
Speaker 1: in St. Louis, it happens in Chicago, happens along the Texas.
Speaker 1: It later it happens in Rosewood. And that's another theme
Speaker 1: which ties a coe to today, this question of you
Speaker 1: know where did that black land go? You know, in
Speaker 1: many cases black people were driven out by terror tactics.
Speaker 1: The terror continues and continues and continues until it drives
Speaker 1: the black community out. For a half of a century,
Speaker 1: from until around nineteen seventy six, there are no documented
Speaker 1: that we're aware of black individuals living and residing in Kobe.
Speaker 1: You know, where did everybody go? Pamela Greedy? And then
Speaker 1: you look for the families and the histories and you
Speaker 1: try to find where they are today, and you can't
Speaker 1: find people. You can't find it. I'm I'm still doing research.
Speaker 1: You can't find them. They just lost and gone. Marvin Dunn,
Speaker 1: author of a History of Florida through Black Eyes. It
Speaker 1: was buried, It was not talked about. It was not
Speaker 1: in the newspapers after the event was over. It was
Speaker 1: certainly not in textbooks. So, like many of the race
Speaker 1: wise in massacres in the South and in Florida, once
Speaker 1: the events left the front page of the newspapers, uh,
Speaker 1: they were there, people didn't talk about them. We know
Speaker 1: that there was an ongoing attempt to cover up this event,
Speaker 1: to quiet this event, to get people to stop talking
Speaker 1: about what had happened. Because what happens when people talk
Speaker 1: the truth, the facts start to come out and become known.
Speaker 1: For decades, black folks in central Florida knew that something
Speaker 1: very bad it happened in the Koe, not just that
Speaker 1: it was a sundown town where they were not welcome
Speaker 1: after dark, but that there were other grave reasons to
Speaker 1: stay away. Then descendants of the victims began trying to
Speaker 1: learn more about the terrible stories handed down in their families.
Speaker 1: Students did research. Over the decades, groups of Orange County
Speaker 1: residents investigated the rumors and conducted oral histories. Today's event
Speaker 1: will not be possible without the decades of community work
Speaker 1: by such grassroots groups as a Democracy Forum and the
Speaker 1: West Orange Reconciliation Task Force, which began to excavate the
Speaker 1: history in nineteen seven. The Democracy Forum, the West Orange
Speaker 1: Reconciliation Task Force, the July Perry Foundation all piece the
Speaker 1: story together. We have a d research team and we
Speaker 1: are uncovered, you know, where a lot of land is at.
Speaker 1: It's just a tedious process because you have to go
Speaker 1: bit by bit and undercover, you know, you gotta go
Speaker 1: through obituaries and estates and sales and all that. People
Speaker 1: die and you can't have a wonder where would these
Speaker 1: families be had they had had this generational wealth that
Speaker 1: was stripped from them. In two thousand and two, July
Speaker 1: Perry's body was located in an unmarked grave. It was
Speaker 1: discovered in Orlando at a cemetery there July Perry's great grandson,
Speaker 1: Pastor Stephen Nunn, And so we went back my mom,
Speaker 1: my dad and I and we um they had a
Speaker 1: memorial service there at the grave site. Eight decades after
Speaker 1: July Perry was lynched, his grandchildren and great grandchildren returned
Speaker 1: to a koe. Yeah. When we finally started taking certain
Speaker 1: turns in certain streets to finally get into the area
Speaker 1: where we uh later ended up, quickly, I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is not Disney World. It's definitely a Disney World. Um.
Speaker 1: And then it hit It was like wow, So now
Speaker 1: in my head I could see white sheets, I could
Speaker 1: see guns, I could see extreme racism. I could see
Speaker 1: area that still had a boy Mr kind of mindset
Speaker 1: and some of the spirited people. It was crystal clear
Speaker 1: to me at that point, just a few yards away
Speaker 1: from July Perry's grave in Orlando's Greenwood Cemetery lies the
Speaker 1: grave of Sam Salisbury, the man who led the mob
Speaker 1: to Perry's house. Salisbury's grave is topped by a monument
Speaker 1: and surrounded by the graves of his family and descendants.
Speaker 1: July Perry's grave stands alone. Good morning, Orlando community, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the historical marking unveiling for July Perry. It has
Speaker 1: been a long road to this day to get here.
Speaker 1: It took almost a century for a public remembrance of
Speaker 1: July Perry. The sacrifice of Mr Perry so that African
Speaker 1: Americans could vote is a dark and deadly part of
Speaker 1: our history and one that will not be forgotten. Jerry
Speaker 1: Demmings is the first black mayor of Orange County. His wife,
Speaker 1: Val Demmings, is a member of the United States Congress.
Speaker 1: But I want to be clear this morning that I
Speaker 1: have no illusions, our delusions that anything that we do
Speaker 1: here today will right the wrongs of a racist pass.
Speaker 1: But what we can do. What we can do is
Speaker 1: respect the attempt. What's interesting is so many of my
Speaker 1: colleagues have never even heard of the story. State Senator
Speaker 1: Randolph Bracy's district includes central and northwest Orange County. He
Speaker 1: introduced the bill in the Florida legislature to require that
Speaker 1: schools teach children about the Echoe massacre. A version passed,
Speaker 1: minus a provision to pay reparations to the descendants of
Speaker 1: the victims. As we moved the bill forward and it
Speaker 1: was talked about, debated, and um, they gained support for it.
Speaker 1: There were some colleagues of mine and say, hey, I
Speaker 1: think we should look at reparations, even on the Republican side.
Speaker 1: So I think there is an opportunity to look at
Speaker 1: that again, and it's something I'll be pushing. Some of
Speaker 1: the descendants of the Echoe victims are also fighting for reparations.
Speaker 1: Janice Nelson is July Perry's great granddaughter and vice president
Speaker 1: of the July Perry Foundation. The scripture says thou shalt
Speaker 1: not steal. They stole it, and they need to give
Speaker 1: it back. A century after a Cooe massacre, in another
Speaker 1: presidential election year, the Cooe descendants and activists and historians
Speaker 1: are thinking about what still hasn't changed. We're back at
Speaker 1: this moment where a Coe becomes more important than ever.
Speaker 1: Historian Paul Ortiz. Black people are still trying to register
Speaker 1: to vote. Light authorities are trying to find different ways
Speaker 1: to keep them from voting. Supervisors of Elections, Secretaries of
Speaker 1: state scheming on a way is to try to prevent
Speaker 1: them from participating in the democratic system. Florida is still
Speaker 1: actively involved and vote of suppression. Historian Marvin Dunn overwhelming
Speaker 1: majority of Pavillians, white and black, voted for excellence to
Speaker 1: be able to vote. The Florida State Legislature comes back
Speaker 1: immediately and passed the law that says all these excellence
Speaker 1: must pay all the risk of ocean and court costs
Speaker 1: before they can vote. So they were immediately read disenfranchised.
Speaker 1: Pamela Grady of the July Perry Foundation, I look at
Speaker 1: right now, at the times and were in right now,
Speaker 1: and how important it is to vote, you know, and
Speaker 1: how important how much went in for you know, us
Speaker 1: to have that right to vote. We take it so lightly.
Speaker 1: The town of a Koe is a modern, diverse community,
Speaker 1: but there are remnants of the past. None of the
Speaker 1: main streets in town is named for Blueford Sims, the
Speaker 1: white man who sold July Perry's land after he was lynched.
Speaker 1: But in the anniversary year of his death. Another road
Speaker 1: in a koe A State highway is being renamed the
Speaker 1: Julius July Perry Memorial Highway. I think he's a hero,
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely. Obviously he was overcome and lynched, but we're
Speaker 1: still talking about my few years later. So I think
Speaker 1: in that context, in that time period, the life that
Speaker 1: he lived, the businessman that he was, and to have
Speaker 1: the boldness to do what he did, I think it
Speaker 1: it's heroic. It's really it really is. So July Perry
Speaker 1: had to be and had to have been awesome man.
Speaker 1: And I still constill your tear up thinking about it.
Speaker 1: How what an amazing man this was, that was that
Speaker 1: was gunned down, lynch drug and tortured, all for having
Speaker 1: the courage, the courage to stand up and fight for
Speaker 1: a cause, and and and and to put others first.
Speaker 1: You know, so do My Parry deserves to be honest,
Speaker 1: The legacy of him conserves to be um always remembered
Speaker 1: throughout the rest of time. Our children need to know
Speaker 1: this rich history. I grand children need to know. Okay,
Speaker 1: good morning, good morning, til dren h. This morning we
Speaker 1: will start our program with a musical solo of the
Speaker 1: National Black anthem. Mm hmm. We must not forget the
Speaker 1: sacrifice of July Period, his family, and other African Americans
Speaker 1: killed in this horrific massacre as we stand here today
Speaker 1: to honor their memory. I think it's important to knowledge
Speaker 1: the history and the legacy of July Perry be celebrated
Speaker 1: for for the risk that he took, because we're still
Speaker 1: finding the same fight and he was bold enough to
Speaker 1: to try to make changes years ago. This episode of
Speaker 1: Flashback the Election Day Massacre was written by Sean Braswell
Speaker 1: and voiced by me Eugene S. Robinson, was produced by
Speaker 1: Mab mcgoran and your A Oh Diggi Zula. Chris Hoff
Speaker 1: engineered our show.