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 ninety and the town of
Speaker 1: a Kohe, 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. One hundred years ago in the center of Florida,
Speaker 1: just a few miles from where Disney World stands today,
Speaker 1: there was an exodus. Hundreds of black families piled their
Speaker 1: chilled and into wagons. They trudged all night along roads
Speaker 1: and railroad tracks and through sugarcane fields. They barely escapped
Speaker 1: with their lives. Dozens of their loved ones did not.
Speaker 1: They were lynched, shot, burned to death in the wreckage
Speaker 1: of their own homes. Today, this is forgotten, largely missing
Speaker 1: from history books, handed down only as a secret memory
Speaker 1: between generations of the families who escaped. But in ninety
Speaker 1: that November nine, the town of Okoe, Florida, wasn't a secret.
Speaker 1: It made headlines around the world. There was a grand
Speaker 1: jury investigation, even a hearing before Congress, and Americans black
Speaker 1: and white, knew exactly why it had happened. They knew
Speaker 1: what it meant. This exodus was a warning Danny black
Speaker 1: citizen who dared to try to vote. I'm Eugene S.
Speaker 1: Robinson and this is the election day massacre from Ossie media.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and twelve, Randolph Bracy became the first
Speaker 1: representative from a new state House district in central Florida.
Speaker 1: Less than one sixth of the members of the Florida
Speaker 1: House were black. I I was looking for office space
Speaker 1: after I won my election, and I had recently moved
Speaker 1: to Koe, and I decided to put my office in
Speaker 1: oh Koe. Koe is just a dozen miles from Disney World,
Speaker 1: but it still has the feel of a small town.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty lake, splash park for the kids, but
Speaker 1: beloved ice cream stand, the perfect place to live and work.
Speaker 1: And I remember it was an African American woman, older woman,
Speaker 1: and she almost lost it when I thought I was
Speaker 1: moving my office Koe. But she was from the age
Speaker 1: where she the era where she remembered that it was
Speaker 1: a sundown town where you couldn't be in Okoe unless
Speaker 1: you had some business and you had to be going
Speaker 1: before dark. Bracy, now, a Florida State Senator, was shocked,
Speaker 1: but many people who live in the area longer are not.
Speaker 1: Historian Marvin Dunn is Professor emeritus at Florida International University.
Speaker 1: He grew up in central Florida. My father told us,
Speaker 1: told me and my brothers about picking oranges in in
Speaker 1: Okoe when they would leave to come back to the land,
Speaker 1: so driver of the white drive at Landridge until almost dark,
Speaker 1: they would walk out of Ocoe rather than be confident
Speaker 1: after dark. Cooee is a diverse community today, and it
Speaker 1: had a thriving black population long ago. But for half
Speaker 1: a century of Coe had almost no black residents. But
Speaker 1: this was in the ninety late nineties, and eight 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 us
Speaker 1: in jeopardy. There are good reasons why no black person
Speaker 1: wants to live there for so many years. A Koe
Speaker 1: resident and community historian Pamela Grady, you can see that's
Speaker 1: what happened there. You can feel that energy there. It's
Speaker 1: still it's still alive and well. What happened in a
Speaker 1: Koe a century ago remains the worst incident of election
Speaker 1: day of violence in US history. What happened in a
Speaker 1: Koe was not an altercation. It was more than a
Speaker 1: lynching or shooting or riot. What happened in a Koe
Speaker 1: was a massacre. And what happened is all too relevant today.
Speaker 1: Florida is still active involved in Phota suppression. I didn't
Speaker 1: even get why she is so scared for me, and
Speaker 1: then I kind of learned the history, and I think
Speaker 1: it's so appropriate to talk about it in this year
Speaker 1: election because it is still to this date of bloody
Speaker 1: It's day in American political history have an on a
Speaker 1: presidential election. One hundred years ago, African Americans in Florida
Speaker 1: were preparing for a historic election. Soldiers had come home
Speaker 1: after serving their country in World War One, the local
Speaker 1: 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 a night of unspeakable 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. Paul Ortiz is, the author of Emancipation,
Speaker 1: betrayed the hidden history of black organizing and white violence
Speaker 1: in Florida, from reconstruction to the bloody election of ninety
Speaker 1: in Daytona the night before election that they marched through
Speaker 1: Mary mccloyd Bethune's campus, you know, and the municipal authority
Speaker 1: um controlling the electricity actually kind of electricity, you know,
Speaker 1: to Daytona industrial world school, so that the clan could
Speaker 1: march through with their torches and terror tactics and and
Speaker 1: accurately scary. It's just all of this stuff is boiling
Speaker 1: and boiling, and the events of November two and third
Speaker 1: send it over the top. This was an event hundreds
Speaker 1: of years in the making, from the first enslavement here
Speaker 1: up through black holes and Jim Crow laws and the
Speaker 1: suppression of women, the suppression of black voters, the suppression
Speaker 1: in all these different ways leading up to something like
Speaker 1: this event erupting. Five hundred years ago, Florida was under
Speaker 1: Spanish rule. It was a sanctuary if the slaves were
Speaker 1: able to escape the British colonies. But after Florida came
Speaker 1: unto the control of the United States. In eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: President Thomas Jefferson sent the American troops to help capture
Speaker 1: former slaves and returned them to their chains. Slavery ended
Speaker 1: with the Civil War, but segregation and ideas of white
Speaker 1: supremacy remained strong. Centta Florida was especially attractive to former Confederates.
Speaker 1: Marvin Dunn is the author of a History of Florida
Speaker 1: through Black Eyes. Center Florida was a was a magnet
Speaker 1: for people who had lost the Civil War because keith A,
Speaker 1: Florida was untouched by the war. Uh and Center Florida
Speaker 1: the cattle. That said, the Confederate Army. So businessman in
Speaker 1: Santa Florida made money during the war while other parts
Speaker 1: of the South had being destimated by the war. By
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty or this economy was booming. The citrus industry
Speaker 1: was exploding, so a lot of black people were attracted
Speaker 1: into some to Florida for that reason to work. The
Speaker 1: town of a Koe, with its lush orange groves and
Speaker 1: farms nestled along Stark Lake, was especially attractive a number
Speaker 1: of black people, black men in particular, had managed to
Speaker 1: get property orange groves on their own. There's a man
Speaker 1: by the name of Moses Norman. Now Moses Norman had
Speaker 1: lived in this community for some thirty years. He was
Speaker 1: not just some you know, young guy. He was a
Speaker 1: well established individual, well known in town. He had his
Speaker 1: 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 Akoe.
Speaker 1: And here's this black guy driving through the town this
Speaker 1: nice car. You know, they had to infuriate him. The
Speaker 1: foundation is named from most Norman's good friend, another prominent
Speaker 1: black Cystan of the Koe, Julius July Perry. Nothing really
Speaker 1: happened in Okoe 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: history and Paul Artiz they were successful individuals. They're very
Speaker 1: hard workers, they were they're very good family men. Um
Speaker 1: they were highly respected. And the reason I mentioned the
Speaker 1: term highly respected, and this is the most important element
Speaker 1: I think about Most Norman and July Perry and why
Speaker 1: why they represent such a threat to white supremacy, Because
Speaker 1: these two exceptionally respected men were involved in an exceptionally
Speaker 1: threatening activity helping black citizens vote. In the wake at
Speaker 1: World War One, black Floridians had organized a remarkable statewide
Speaker 1: voter registration movement, and the movement really prested and built
Speaker 1: momentum as African American soldiers returned from from Europe. A
Speaker 1: lot of black pressions came back to the South and
Speaker 1: they had third in Europe and they were not going
Speaker 1: to accommodate themselves to the racism that was in there
Speaker 1: in that community. And Most Norman and Gelatter in particularly
Speaker 1: were among those who came back with that attitude. The
Speaker 1: two veterans joined hundreds of other Floridians who were mobilizing
Speaker 1: to combat white supremacy. In nineteen twenty, there is a
Speaker 1: shoot black voter registration drive that's supported not only by
Speaker 1: the black community, but also by white Republicans, not all
Speaker 1: of them, most of them. This was at a time
Speaker 1: when most African Americans were members of Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party.
Speaker 1: In many places in the South, blacks could not even
Speaker 1: join in the Democratic Party, and thanks to the Nineteenth Amendment,
Speaker 1: women would be voting for president for the first time
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty. This is a whole new voting block
Speaker 1: and that includes black women. And what it's doing is
Speaker 1: it's causing a lot of tension. People don't always accept change,
Speaker 1: and so with this you also see sort of a
Speaker 1: resurgence and an ongoing rise with white supremacy in the
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan clan members were not the only white
Speaker 1: supremacists trying to hold back the new wave of black voters.
Speaker 1: Once the white you know, white white elites and white
Speaker 1: media and white leaders realize this is happening, they use
Speaker 1: their op ed space, their their banner headlines. White women,
Speaker 1: it's up to you to save the republic. This is
Speaker 1: the greatest crisis in our nation's history. And a typical
Speaker 1: op ed will say, uh, white ladies, do you want
Speaker 1: your Negro washer women to lord over you, to take control.
Speaker 1: Do you want that Negro custodian to marry your daughter?
Speaker 1: The threats heated up as the election approached. White supremacies
Speaker 1: in a crisis. They're much more honest and races today
Speaker 1: because they're very blunt about it. They're like, white supremacy
Speaker 1: is our way of life as an American. Some white
Speaker 1: Republicans in Orlando, including a local judge named John Cheney,
Speaker 1: helped July Perry and most Norman organized black voters. About
Speaker 1: a month before the Echoing massacre, they receive a letter
Speaker 1: from the Florida ku Klux Klan signed by the ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan that basically says, stop or else, sir, while
Speaker 1: stopping in your beautiful little city this week, I was
Speaker 1: informed that you are in the habit of going out
Speaker 1: among the Negroes of Orlando and delivering lectures explaining to
Speaker 1: them how to as their rights. The grand master of
Speaker 1: the Florida ku Klux Klan reminded them what happened when
Speaker 1: white people tried to help black voters during reconstruction. You
Speaker 1: will remember that these things forced the loyal citizens of
Speaker 1: the South to organize clans of determined men who pledge
Speaker 1: themselves to maintain white supremacy and to safeguard our women
Speaker 1: and children. We shall always enjoy white supremacy in this country,
Speaker 1: and he who interferes must face the consequences. So there
Speaker 1: is a threat, there is and this is this is
Speaker 1: a primary starch. We have the original in our museum
Speaker 1: collection that that that states this. Just days before the
Speaker 1: Echoe massacre, there are marches throughout the state of Florida.
Speaker 1: If you ask a black person to register a vote Florida,
Speaker 1: you're asking them to take the risk. They're asking them
Speaker 1: to risk their lives. You're asking them to risk their livelihoods,
Speaker 1: You're asking them to risk their physical safety. On the
Speaker 1: morning of November, two black citizens of a Koe, Florida
Speaker 1: made a heroic decision. They ignored the clan marches, the torches,
Speaker 1: the letters, and the threats. They prepared to exercise their
Speaker 1: most fundamental democratic right to vote. They knew it would
Speaker 1: be challenging, but they had no idea of the horrors
Speaker 1: that awaited them. Well on election day. From what we know,
Speaker 1: you know most Norman and July Perry are with African
Speaker 1: Americans who are trying to vote. Historian Paul Ortisse, and
Speaker 1: what happens in the Koe is again similar to what
Speaker 1: happens in many parts of the state. Um people are
Speaker 1: standing in a line. We don't know how many people,
Speaker 1: and if they're black, you're not allowed to vote. Historian
Speaker 1: Marvin Dunn. This was a plan attempt to challenge the
Speaker 1: the denial of the right to vote, and coy in
Speaker 1: center more broadly armed white deputies declared themselves poll monitors,
Speaker 1: poll workers challenged black voters. Names mysteriously disappeared from the
Speaker 1: voter rolls. Poll taxes, it was claimed, had not been
Speaker 1: paid and a coe anyone turned away from voting had
Speaker 1: to go to the local Justice of the peace to
Speaker 1: contest it, and he had conveniently gone fishing that day.
Speaker 1: Most Norman was among the people who tried to cast
Speaker 1: a ballot, and he um goes to the polls to vote,
Speaker 1: he has turned away. His name had been placed on
Speaker 1: the stricken list for a voting and he was never
Speaker 1: re stored. They claimed that most Norman, a wealthy landowner
Speaker 1: deeply involved in voter registration efforts, had somehow failed to
Speaker 1: pay his own poll tax. There are conflicting accounts of
Speaker 1: what happened after most Norman was turned away at the polls.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest problems with this event is how
Speaker 1: few true primary source documents there are because why they
Speaker 1: weren't kept intentionally. It's it's intentional erasure of the history.
Speaker 1: Black systems of a Koe and their descendants have spent
Speaker 1: decades trying to unearth what exactly happened on election Day
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty. Pamela Grady, I'm a resident of a Koe,
Speaker 1: and you know, nobody knows these people. You have forty
Speaker 1: thousand residents, you know, and most of them don't even
Speaker 1: know that the lands they're living on what happened to history?
Speaker 1: The rich history. Pamela Schwartz collected oral histories and documents
Speaker 1: for an exhibition at the Orange County Regional History Center.
Speaker 1: There are hundreds and hundreds of versions. We actually took
Speaker 1: one hundred and nine and synthesize them into one mega
Speaker 1: account in the exhibit. So it's this huge, like twenty
Speaker 1: ft wall. It's like fourteen pages of text and it's
Speaker 1: all in line. You can see where the twists and
Speaker 1: the faults of memory and the lies in all of
Speaker 1: these different ways. The story has um changed over one
Speaker 1: hundred years. In one version of the story, most Norman
Speaker 1: returned to the pulse with his shotgun, sparking an altercation
Speaker 1: with armed white deputies. In another more likely account, Norman
Speaker 1: took his case to Judge John Cheney and Orlando historian
Speaker 1: Paul artis again, he's trying to find ways to let
Speaker 1: you know, people in power know that this corruption is
Speaker 1: happening in a koe, you know. But the problem is,
Speaker 1: even he was able to contact similar Judge Chaney, there's
Speaker 1: really nothing Judge Chaney could do. Um If he's able
Speaker 1: to contact the super revisor of elections in Orange County,
Speaker 1: that guy is not going to do anything. Jud Cheney
Speaker 1: is said to have advised Norman to go back to
Speaker 1: the polls in a koe and get the names of
Speaker 1: people preventing black citizens from voting. This is likely to
Speaker 1: file a complaint to lawsuit, but it was a very
Speaker 1: dangerous errand according to one version of events, Norman enlisted
Speaker 1: his good friend July Perry to help. The most important
Speaker 1: thing I think about most Norman Julip Perry is that
Speaker 1: black people trusted them, and both men felt irresponsibility because
Speaker 1: of that trust to see things through. On election day,
Speaker 1: and that is a testament to their you know, their
Speaker 1: character and their courage. I mean, they could have stayed home.
Speaker 1: The safest thing for black people on election day was
Speaker 1: stay home. But neither man played it safe. Historian Marvin Dunn.
Speaker 1: The two men went back to the polls. Uh, they
Speaker 1: were harmed white men there who chased them away. There
Speaker 1: was some sort of a confrontation and this men, these
Speaker 1: two men went to his home retreated there. Pastor Stephen
Speaker 1: Nunn is the founder of the July Perry Foundation and
Speaker 1: president of its board. He's July Perry's great grandson. His grandmother,
Speaker 1: July Perry's daughter, Carritha, was a teenager when Mois Norman
Speaker 1: was turned away at the polls. She told me that, Um,
Speaker 1: he wasn't allowed to vote, and a conflict took place,
Speaker 1: and in the process there was a fight that broke out.
Speaker 1: That fight ended up at the Perry's front doorstep. She
Speaker 1: told me that ultimately, Uh, there was a rumor that
Speaker 1: spread around town that UM, the black residents of Okoe
Speaker 1: had gathered at July Perry's home to um discuss a
Speaker 1: revote to go back and demand their right to vote
Speaker 1: if you would, um, which she said was not true.
Speaker 1: In the following hours that this white mob, actually they
Speaker 1: called themselves the posty had been deft as actually to
Speaker 1: go and find out about the disturbance of the polls,
Speaker 1: and they knew that July Parry and those Normen were
Speaker 1: among the activists involved in voting. So the attention of
Speaker 1: the white people sort of focused on them, but they
Speaker 1: weren't really sure about it was involved in terms of
Speaker 1: the the rumor that blacks were armed at July Parry's
Speaker 1: home that circulated very quickly in the white community following
Speaker 1: the confrontation at the polls. Now Anna's Burly Jones, black
Speaker 1: man who was a former slave who was owned ettle
Speaker 1: white man, and Burnie Jones, who was a quintesidential Uncle
Speaker 1: Tom told the white people that blacks were arming themselves
Speaker 1: and were ensconced in July Parry's home, and that's where
Speaker 1: the mob went to Julia Parry's house. At some point
Speaker 1: later that night, after the polls closed, a white mob,
Speaker 1: an armed white mob, goes to the home of his
Speaker 1: friend and fellow labor broker, July Perry, and violence breaks out.
Speaker 1: Bull shots are fired. She told me that at a
Speaker 1: certain point in time, Uh, some of the white residents
Speaker 1: men of the city of Okoe came to their home
Speaker 1: and basically made a demand for father to come outside,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to talk, and of course he refused
Speaker 1: and said no. And she did tell me that there
Speaker 1: was an attempt to force someone attempted to force their
Speaker 1: way in, and there was some gunfire. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are still trying to cover up the
Speaker 1: story and so because so for example, when I first
Speaker 1: came to Florida in the summer um, I was told
Speaker 1: by white middle class people, even scholars, Oh, Paul, why
Speaker 1: are you coming to Florida. We've had such progressive race
Speaker 1: relations here. We didn't have jim role like they had it.
Speaker 1: You know, you should go to Uh, We're not nearly
Speaker 1: as bad as Mississippi. Pall Uh, you know, you should
Speaker 1: go to Georgia. What was this funny? Because I had
Speaker 1: already been I've already done field work in Mississippi. Are
Speaker 1: already done at field work in Georgia. Because when I
Speaker 1: talked to black Floridians, they told me, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: who was telling you this nonsense? You know? Or it
Speaker 1: was just as bad as any other state in terms
Speaker 1: of race relations. So there was really no place where
Speaker 1: black people to find sanctuary from that. That kind of
Speaker 1: the kind of white violence. You know that that occurred
Speaker 1: in Orange County and other places. So it's an organized attack.
Speaker 1: It's organized assault on neighborhoods, you know, on on a community.
Speaker 1: And the next episode of the election day massacre, she
Speaker 1: said that, um, the gunfire was so great that you
Speaker 1: could see the League tracers coming through all angles in
Speaker 1: the house, just flying all over the place. I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: people are defending their homes as this white you know,
Speaker 1: a pair of military operation is tearing through their their
Speaker 1: their neighborhoods, and they begin to torch and burn and
Speaker 1: loot and pillage this entire community. There is no way
Speaker 1: we will ever factually probably know how many black people
Speaker 1: were killed that night. Records were intentionally not kept. One
Speaker 1: man told him I shot seventeen negroes. He shot seventeen himself,
Speaker 1: and he was bragging about it. Basically, you had a choice.
Speaker 1: You can leave and get shot, or you can stay
Speaker 1: and burn. Uh. And they burned to death. We don't
Speaker 1: like to use the term ethnic cleansing unless we can
Speaker 1: use in Eastern Europe, right, but it happens here. This
Speaker 1: episode of flash Back, The Election Day Massacre, was written
Speaker 1: by Sean Braswell and voiced by me Eugene S. Robinson,
Speaker 1: was produced by Maeve mcgoran and your A Oh Diggi Zua.
Speaker 1: Chris Hoff engineered our show.