South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
100 years after Ocoee massacre
History Center’s sobering look at hatred — and hope
Nearly 100 years ago, white poll workers inwest Orange County blocked a Black businessman fromvoting and touched off theworst election-day violence inUnited States history, an ugly racial episode known today as the OcoeeMassacre of 1920.
Ignored until recently, the tragedy is remembered in powerful detail in “Yesterday, ThisWasHome,” a new exhibit at theOrange County Regional History Center in Orlando that examines the causes and legacy of a white mob’s attack on a prospering Black neighborhood.
The presentation provides original research that sheds new light on the century-old trauma and connects it with current conflicts.
“It’s very sobering to see the violence
and hatred that existed,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said after viewing the exhibit over theweekend with descendants of Julius “July” Perry, who was lynched near the Orlando Country
Club the morning after the rampage.
Perry, an influential labor broker, is the best known victim of the Ocoee
incident which has a documented death toll of six, including twowhite men involved in the attack, though some estimates say hundreds of Blacks may have perished from bullets or fire.
“Officially, we can’t say,” said PamSchwartz, who narrated the mayor’s tour. “But it’s likely many more than four [Blacks.]”
“But itwasn’t enough to just burn their churches and their community and murder people,” she said during the tour.
Within six years, all but two of the community’s estimated 300 Black residentswere gone, their lands pried from them.
Combined, the land would beworth an estimated $9 million today, said Schwartz, who traced records of 42 properties and created the exhibit’s interactive touch-screen map which allows visitors to see howproperty owners like July Perry acquired then lost their land.
The exhibit includes a blow-up of a newspaper ad placed by Bluford M. Sims, one of Ocoee’s founders, that proclaims “SPECIAL BARGAINS - SEVERAL BEAUTIFUL LITTLE GROVES BELONGINGTO THENEGROESTHAT HAVE JUST LEFT OCOEE MUST BE SOLD.”
The presentation pulls together views and reports of the tragedy from near and far.
A recollection of the Black exodus byNAACP Executive SecretaryWalter White is highlighted.
“At the time that I visited Ocoee, the last colored family of Ocoeewas leaving with their goods piled high on amotor truck with six colored children on top,” he documented in a field report. “White children stood around and jeered theNegroes whowere leaving, threatening them with burning if they did not hurry up and get away. These children thought it [was] a huge joke that some Negroes had been burned alive.”
Schwartz, chief curator and program manager at the History Center, led the research effort to create the exhibit, which uses interactive screens, oral histories and disturbing photographs to convey the terror Blacks have endured throughout Central Florida.
Some pieceswere bought on eBay,including racist post cards fromFlorida and a ticket to a legal Orlando lynching.
The gallery includes a book of racist musings called “Cogitations of Parson Ebony Snow,” the pseudonym of A. PhilMaurer, a frequent contributor to the former Evening Re
porter-Star newspaper in Orlando. Hewrote in a parlance to mock speech of Southern Blacks.
The exhibit also shows howdifferently Blacks and whites viewed the tragedy.
Whites often called it a “race riot,” but Blacks knew it as amassacre by a mob directed by a former Orlando police chief.
“This is not our story to tell, it’s yours,” Schwartz said to Perry’s descendants, inviting each to provide an oral history.
JaniceNelson, 65, greatgranddaughter of July Perry, said the exhibit provided her with new information to absorb.
“Overall, I think it’s a good start,” she said. “But it needs more voices.”
Nelson said she hopes soon to lend hers which the centermay add to the current exhibit.
“Yesterday, ThisWas Home” explores not only the Ocoee massacre but other historical episodes of racism, hatred and terror in
Central Florida, notably the injustice of theGroveland Four case in Lake County and the unsolved bombing on Christmas night 1951 of the home of educators and activistsHarry T. Moore and his wife, Harriette, who lived in Mims in Brevard County.
The exhibit touches on Black LivesMatter and features a photo of a protester at a demonstration this summer in Orlando holding a sign in homage to July Perry. The final mes
sage of the exhibit tries to drive home the importance of voting.
On display is a threat sent by the “GrandMaster of the FloridaKuKlucks” to local leaders sixweeks before the massacre.
“While stopping in your beautiful little city this week, Iwas informed that you are in the habit of going out among theNegroes of Orlando and delivering lectures explaining to them just howto become citizens, and howto assert their rights,” it began.
“We shall always enjoy WHITESUPREMACY in this country and he who interferes must face the consequences,” it ended.
The exhibit runs through Feb. 14 at the History Center, 65 E. Central Ave., Orlando. Tickets are required
with assigned times so that the museum can enforce social-distancing guidelines for guests. Face masks also are required. Preregistration is strongly encouraged.
For the run of the exhibition, the History Center has extended operating hours to create a safer viewing experience.
It is openMonday
Saturday10 a.m. to 5 p.m. But will stay open Thursdays until 9 p.m. Adult admission is $8, seniors 55 and older pay $7 and children under12 get in for $6. With paid admission, visitors receive validation for two hours of free parking in the Library Garage,
112 E. Central Blvd., Orlando.