Ocoee massacre of 1920

Ocoee massacre of 1920, deadly race riot that broke out in central Florida on November 2, 1920, when a white mob reacted violently to the news that an African American man had tried to cast his vote in an election. The riot, which scholar Paul Ortiz has called “the bloodiest election in modern American history,” began the evening of the 2nd, an election day, when a white horde—drawn largely from Orlando—descended on Ocoee, a small town just west of the city. Estimates vary on how many African Americans were killed. Some put the figure as high as 80, but in the years after the event, many locals said they believed the death toll had been about 30 or 35. Besides perpetrating this massacre, the mob torched at least two dozen houses along with Black churches and other buildings. See also list of race riots and massacres in the United States.

Ocoee had been established in the 1850s by a white settler who brought 23 enslaved African Americans with him. The town grew after the Civil War as more white Southerners—including many Confederate veterans—settled there and Black laborers worked their land. Eventually, African Americans were able to buy property in the town, and by 1920 the census indicated that Ocoee had a population of 815 people, including 257 Black residents. More than a third of the Black Ocoeeans owned their homes.

At the national level, a second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan had been established in 1915 (the original organization had dispersed in the 1870s). Racial violence was especially rampant in the years immediately following World War I (1914–18), as many whites felt threatened by the newly emboldened Black veterans who sought to exercise their voting rights. In Ocoee the Klan began threatening the Black community three weeks before the 1920 election, claiming that “not a single Negro would be permitted to vote.” Moreover, the Florida Klan’s grand master sent a letter to two local Republican officials, threatening to retaliate if Black and white officials continued instructing local African Americans on how to cast ballots and pay poll taxes. “We shall always enjoy WHITE SUPREMACY in this country,” the letter read, “and he who interferes must face the consequences.”

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Election workers in Ocoee also devised a plan to suppress the Black vote: they were to challenge every African American who tried to cast a ballot. On election day Black would-be voters were told they needed to appear before a notary public, but the notary was away on a fishing trip. Still, some Black residents would try to exercise their constitutional right to vote (see Fifteenth Amendment), and the scene was thus set for the violence that ensued.

Tensions came to a head when Mose Norman, the owner of a citrus grove, attempted to cast his ballot on election day. Although the exact details have been lost to history, it seems that Norman was initially turned away at the polls but later returned to take the names of the men who were suppressing his vote. Some accounts say that he brought a shotgun with him. Norman was again driven away, this time with gunfire and fury. A mob later went to the home of July Perry, a Black community leader who had been involved in a voter registration drive in the run-up to the election, where they expected to find Norman. When the mob broke down the front door, gunshots erupted—perhaps from Perry’s daughter or someone else inside, or perhaps from within the crowd—and two white men were killed. The Perry house was set on fire. The mob regrouped and called for reinforcements, and 50 carloads of men from Orlando came over. They surrounded the Black neighborhood in northern Ocoee and laid siege to it. They set fire to the fraternal lodge and the Black churches and schools, and they continued burning houses until nearly 5:00 am the next day. At least a few women and children were burned to death. In addition, the mob drove some of the fleeing African Americans into a nearby swamp, where the desperate citizens—many of whom were carrying their terrified children—navigated the alligator-infested waters by the light of their burning homes. Perry was beaten, jailed, shot, and lynched. Norman disappeared and was not heard from again.

A pastor in St. Augustine later reported that members of the mob had taken bones and other body parts of the deceased people away as souvenirs, which added to the difficulty of estimating how many had died. Walter White, who investigated lynchings on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), arrived several days after the massacre and was told by a real estate agent and cab driver that the African American body count was 56. The NAACP’s official estimate was that somewhere between 30 and 60 Black Floridians had died. Nearly all the Black residents who survived fled town immediately or were eventually forced out.

White found that many of the local whites were thrilled about what had happened. The United Confederate Veterans changed the timing of their convention in Orlando so the attendees could visit Ocoee and witness firsthand the victory for white supremacy. No one was ever prosecuted for the violence, murder, and arson.

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For decades, the massacre was largely forgotten. Author Zora Neale Hurston wrote about it in her 1939 work The Ocoee Riot, but the book remained unpublished until 1989. In the 1990s a local activist group called Democracy Forum pressed for town hall meetings dealing with the massacre. More recently, the group approached the Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando, which created an exhibit for the centennial of the event, in 2020. The center has also mapped out dozens of properties lost by Black residents, assessed their value in today’s dollars, and tracked down the descendants of survivors, informing them of how much the land is now worth. The properties are worth at least $10 million altogether.

In 2018 the city of Ocoee released a proclamation acknowledging the riot, and two years later it issued a formal apology for “the inhumane acts of terror committed against the African American community of Ocoee.” In March 2020 the Florida legislature passed a law requiring that the massacre be taught in public schools.