Dawn of a new day
Ocoee, where massacre occurred in 1920, aims to shed former reputation as ‘sundown’ town
Tuesday should be the dawn of a new day in Ocoee, once reputed to be a “sundown town” that blacks were advised to avoid — especially after dark.
Ocoee city commissioners, prodded by the advisory Human Relations Diversity Board, are set to issue a proclamation acknowledging that an armed white mob on Nov. 2, 1920, chased black businessman and voting-rights advocate July Perry from his home, burned his Ocoee neighborhood to the ground and turned the city into an all-white place for more than a half century.
By the time the sun rose the next day, Perry was dead, lynched on a light post in Orlando.
Since then, Ocoee, about 12 miles west of Orlando, has been lumped in with hundreds of communities across the U.S. — predominantly but not exclusively in the South — known as “sundown towns,” alleged to practice a form of segregation usually enforced by discriminatory local laws, intimidation or violence. Some had actual signs at city limits warning blacks to stay out.
“If you were black, you didn’t want to go through here, day or night, but if you had to, you made sure if at all possible that you got out of town before the sun went down,” said George Oliver III, who made history this year when he became the first African-American ever elected to the five-member Ocoee City Commission. “That’s changed. It’s time we let people know.”
The proclamation aims to do that.
The first order of business on the commission’s Tuesday evening agenda, the declaration formally memorializes the notorious 1920 racially motivated massacre that led to the exodus of every black resident within the city limits but also sounds a hopeful note for the growing
“Let it be known that Ocoee shall no longer be known as a sundown city but the sunrise city with the bright light of harmony, justice and prosperity shining upon all our citizens.”
Ocoee City Commission proclamation, formally memorializing the 1920 racially motivated massacre
city’s future as it seeks to reconcile its ugly past.
The proclamation reads, “Let it be known that Ocoee shall no longer be known as a sundown city but the sunrise city with the bright light of harmony, justice and prosperity shining upon all our citizens.”
“Ninety-eight years we’ve been waiting on this,” Oliver said.
Mayor Rusty Johnson, a 60-year resident of the city, expects a big crowd for the meeting.
Johnson, who accompanied a contingent of Central Florida residents to the April opening of a national lynching memorial and museum in Montgomery, Ala., invited members of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Orange County Task Force to witness the vote on the
proclamation. He said the memorial dedicated to 4,400 lynching victims moved him.
“It sends chills down your back,” Johnson said.
The Equal Justice Initiative is a nonprofit group that built the lynching memorial, called the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
The group’s Orlando-area chapter honored Perry’s sacrifice with a soil-collection ceremony about two weeks ago at his plot in the former black section of Orlando’s historic and once-segregated Greenwood Cemetery. The glass jars of dirt will be part of local remembrance exhibitions, but last week Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer carried a vessel bearing Perry’s name to the memorial.
It will be displayed with jars of soil in memory of others who were hanged, burned alive, drowned or beaten to death from 1877 to 1950 because of their race.
“I was raised by a mother and father who taught me right from wrong and that was wrong,” said Johnson, mayor since 2015.
In a statement about the proclamation, the city also announced its intentions to dedicate a marker to the tragedy in 2020, the centennial anniversary of the massacre.
The announcement read: “In 1920, the historical record shows that African-American residents of West Orange County in and around what later became the city of Ocoee were grievously denied their right to vote, civil rights, their properties, and their very lives in a series of unlawful acts perpetrated by a white mob and government officials. The city believes that remembering and honoring those individuals who were killed, injured, driven from their homes, and had their property taken from them is a core requirement for ensuring that such acts do not occur again.”
About 500 blacks lived in Ocoee in 1920, before the massacre.
Ocoee had no black residents in 1940, 1950, 1960 or 1970, according to census figures. Census-takers found 29 in 1980.
Now, African Americans represent 21 percent of the city’s population of 46,000 residents and Hispanics make up 22 percent, according to the latest census data..
The city’s previous efforts to confront its painful past have been entangled in differences over the death toll of the massacre, sometimes identified as the Election Day Riot of 1920.
No definitive accounting has ever been accepted by city leaders — and the number of blacks killed range from a few to more than 50.
The proclamation and official recognition surprised Gladys Franks Bell, 79, Perry’s grand-niece, who doubted she would live long enough to see the city admit what happened.
“Sounds like a start,” said Bell, who lives in northwest Orange County.
Bell self-published a book, “Visions Through My Father’s Eyes,” a collection of newspaper articles about the incident and her father’s personal recollections.
She said her father, Richard Allen Franks, as a teen led his siblings out of Ocoee through woods and swampy wetlands before the fighting erupted.
“None of my family has ever forgotten,” Bell said. “It’s time for other people to remember.”
Sociologist Jim Loewen, author of the “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism,” said Ocoee’s epiphany is encouraging.
In an email, he said cities with racist pasts usually follow a three-step process: “Admit it. (”We did this.”) Apologize. (”We did this and it was wrong, and we are sorry.”) And move on. (”... and we don’t do it any more.”)
The final step can’t be just words, but needs action, too. Adopt diverse hiring practices, appoint an ombudsman or create a civil rights commission, he said.
He also tracks changes in former sundown towns on a website.
“It will be a wonderful sign for better race relations in America if Ocoee can take steps to apologize for its sundown past. Then it will have time to make the centennial of its race riot into a warm and healing gathering,” Loewen said.