U.S. Racism - Massacre In Ocoee, Florida, 1920

Click here for a thoughtful, penetrating essay on racism in the U.S. today by Paul Ortiz, director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida in Gainseville, FL., entitled "Ocoee, Florida: Remembering 'the single bloodiest day in modern U.S. political history'." There's a great deal more to the article, but in relation to Ocoee (about 15 miles northwest of Orlando), it says:

In the midst of a national euphoria of forgetting, a town called Ocoee, Florida has taken the bold step of remembering an event in the nation's history that many had tried to cover up. On Election Day, November 2, 1920 African Americans in Ocoee and in other parts of Florida sought to cast their ballots for President.

...

State and local officials -- along with the Ku Klux Klan -- understood that white supremacy was in trouble. They responded mercilessly. African Americans who tried to go to the polls were attacked, driven out of the state, and assassinated. In several counties, armed Klansmen surrounded courthouses on Election Day to ensure that black Floridians did not vote. In Ocoee, a well-organized group of paramilitaries killed and drove African Americans out of the town. Houses were torched, and refugees streamed out of western Orange County for days.

Ocoee shared much in common with the thousands of other places in America that author James Lowen refers to as "sundown towns." These were areas where white residents colluded to drive African Americans out through coercion and violence in order to steal their land and resources.

Sundown towns were found in every state of the union and most of them were located outside of the South. Some of these all-white municipalities posted signs reading "'n----r' don't let the sun go down on you here," for generations. A resident of Ocoee wrote in 1969, "As recently as ten years ago a sign admonished the Ocoee visitor as he approached the city limits that Negroes and dogs were unwelcome."

Orange County kept the Election Day Riot under wraps. "The position among the old core of the community was: `Let's just not talk about it. What good will it do?'" remembered Rev. Bryan Stamper, the minister of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church in Ocoee. A critical step forward was taken when area resident--and future mayor -- Lester J. Dabbs pierced the veil of silence by writing his 1969 Stetson University M.A. thesis on the 1920 conflagration. Dabbs's work was titled, "A Report of the Circumstances and Events of the Race Riot on November 2, 1920 in Ocoee, Florida."

And:

Florida's Election Day in 1920 was the single bloodiest day in modern American political history. African Americans throughout Florida who were trying to register as well as to vote were beaten, driven out of their home counties, and assassinated.

Another quote from the essay: "I'm sorry, but anyone who claims we live in a post-racial era is a damn fool."