First black commissioner in Ocoee sees win as riot victims’ redemption
George Oliver III, the first African-American elected to serve on the Ocoee City Commission, talked on the campaign trail about the west Orange city’s future. But its racist past was never far behind.
“If I won, I thought, what kind of statement would that be?” Oliver recalled thinking during his bid to take the District 4 seat from incumbent Joel Keller. “Would it be redemption for the blood shed back in 1920? Hope for Ocoee’s future?”
Oliver, 51, who was sworn in Tuesday night, said he has tried not to trumpet the historical significance of his 41-vote win in a municipal race in which 706 ballots were cast.
David Porter, an African-American activist who fought last year to have a Confederate statue removed from Orlando’s Lake Eola Park, is
more than willing to do so.
“The story of Ocoee, what happened here nearly 100 years ago, the ‘Ocoee massacre,’ is one of the things black people would tell their kids as a cautionary tale,” said Porter.
The 1920 incident, also known as the Ocoee race riot, occurred on Election Day, when two black men, July Perry and Mose Norman, tried to vote in the presidential election and encouraged other blacks to follow suit.
Historical accounts differ, but at least six blacks and two whites were killed. Perry was lynched, and a white mob stormed the city, burning black homes and churches.
Ocoee’s black population fled the city, and census data shows it was decades before blacks returned to Ocoee to live.
“To people who know that story, this is a really, really big deal,” Porter said of Oliver’s election last week. “This vote was an awakening, new people moving in, attitudes changing.”
Porter, a former editorial board writer at the Orlando Sentinel and now owner of a communications business, produced an election spot for Oliver, who campaigned mornings and evenings at Silver Star and Clarke roads. His wife, Deborah, sometimes joined him.
Oliver, who works as a compliance officer and lost by 20 votes to Keller three years earlier, put Porter’s video on Facebook and posted a campaign platform as well as historical pictures and notes about the electionday violence almost 100 years ago.
“I’m running on the backs of those that died for the right to vote,” he wrote in a March 7 post featuring a photo of Perry’s headstone in Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando.
The Facebook message also told Oliver’s followers: “Within weeks of the Ocoee Massacre, only two blacks remained in town. And by the 1930 census there were none. In fact, not a single African-American dared live in Ocoee for sixty years until 1981. The city didn’t hire its first black worker until 1986. And for 18 years following the 1920 massacre, not a single black vote was cast in all of Orange County.”
Nowadays, about 17 percent of Ocoee’s 44,820 residents population identify as black, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data.
A white Ocoee voter posted a reply under Oliver’s message: “Are you running on anything besides just being the first black man on the ballot?”
He responded with a link to his agenda on his campaign website.
Ocoee Mayor Rusty Johnson, 73, who has served 26 years as a commissioner and as mayor since 2016, said he is prepared to work with and help Oliver, who rarely attended commission meetings and turned down an appointment to the planning and zoning board.
“To me, we’re all one Ocoee. It has nothing to do with a color,” Johnson said. “Whether or not he can do the job, we’ll see.”
Although Oliver is the first African-American to run for and to win a seat on the City Commission, Ocoee voters have participated in legislative elections that black candidates won.
State Sen. Randolph Bracy and state Rep. Kamia Brown, both Democrats, list Ocoee as their homes, with their district offices at City Hall, 150 N. Lakeshore Drive.
After his defeat, Keller revealed he wasn’t surprised to lose. The political district is the city’s most diverse and an antiincumbent sentiment didn’t bode well for his prospects, said Keller, who served 12 years on the commission.
He noted that Ocoee voters also approved a charter amendment on the same March 13 ballot that imposed term limits on the mayor and commissioners. Keller figured some voters may have decided he had already been in office four years too long.
At a candidates forum, Keller pointed out Oliver’s Ocoee home fell into foreclosure and his rival hadn’t paid property taxes for two years, charges Oliver didn’t deny but which he labeled as “mud-slinging” that voters don’t want to hear. Keller also criticized Oliver for failing to attend city meetings, which would have better prepared Oliver to succeed him on the commission.
Despite the criticism, Keller wished Oliver good luck and hoped he would embrace the opportunity voters gave him.
Keller also viewed Oliver’s win as a positive.
“If you look at the history of Ocoee — almost 100 years ago — someone went to vote and they were hung for it,” Keller said. “And now, not only are they voting, but they’ve won a seat … It goes to show just how much our city has changed. I think it is a milestone.”