Special Series: The Election Day Massacre, Part 3

Procter and Gamble believes that words alone won't create change, but stories do seek share and expect the whole truth of black life. Widen the screen to widen our view. They said that you lack parish house was burned. I sure it were. This oral history was recorded a few years ago with the late Mildred Board. We're hearing a courtesy of the Orange County Regional History Center. As a little girl, Mrs Board lived a few miles from a Koe, Florida.

The morning after election Day nineteen hundreds of black families fled the town. She remembered. One woman in particular talked about how they got on the railroad track and walked the railroad track. They walked so far and then maybe they had a truck, haws and blugget, and they would pick them up along the railroad track and bring them here. Almost every surviving black resident fled a Koe after a night of horrifying attacks by white vigilantes. Their homes and

churches were set on fire. A leader of the community, July Perry, was lynched. Other neighbors were shot. Estimates of the number of black people murdered that night range from four to sixty. The reason for them Assaca Koe's black residents had attempted to vote. I'm Eugenus Robinson. You're listening to the election day massacre from Ozzie Media. Coe was a national and international story. And if you look at any newspaper in n around election Day, you can't miss

a Coe. Historian Paul Ortiz the University of Florida, the stories in the New York Times, is in the Chicago tribunits, in the European press, it's an the Latin American press. U it's an international story. In other words, newspapers called it the Coe horror. But Florida's election day violence wasn't limited to a Koe, So there was a statewide reactionary movement against the black struggle to regain right to vote, and there was violence all over the state. Um, there

were gun battles, you know, their assassinations. As far as I can tell in my research, the worst violence, the most sustained anti black violence, you know, appear to happen in a Choe. They call for able bodied ex servicemen to come and create a perimeter around a koee. Pamela Schwartz, chief curator of the Orange County Regional History Center, put

together an exhibition on the Echoe massacre. Now they say that's to lock down the crime scene, but it also means black families can't go find their loved ones, get to their possessions. See what's going on. The a CP sent in an investigator, Walter Francis White, later president of the organization, when he traveled the US investigating lynchings and

other acts of violence against Black Americans. At the time that I visited O'koe, the last colored family of Ocoe was leaving with their good It's piled high on a motor truck with six colored children on top. White children stood around in g The Negroes who were leaving threatened them with burned if they did not hurry up and get away. These children thought it a huge joke that some Negroes had been burned alive. Walter White comes down. Uh, he's a very light skinned black man. He can pass

for white. Uh. He uses the subject usure being a white man interested in buying orange grows in western Orange County. And he starts talking to white people about the mask, and they tell him all sorts of details that I personally killed or I know how many Negroes were killed. And he finds that white people are very proud about what they did on election day. One man told him I shot seventeen Negroes. He shot seventeen himself when he was bragging about it. Pamela Grady isn't a COOEE resident

and the executive director of the July Perry Foundation. There was an article in a newspaper that said, We're gonna have a banquet for everyone who came, and we want we want to reward you. The one is shot the most Negroes, the one is shot the most is going to get a reward. The reason that Koe Horror made headlines is not that dozens of black people were murdered and hundreds of black families were made homeless. It was because two white members of the mob that Lynch July

Perry were killed during a shootout. There was the Corners in quest, which happens November three and four, and what is found is no unknown parties killed the white individuals. Unknown parties killed July Perry, which was a common report leading at dimensions. We had a black victim who was in police custody, and all ways the result was killed that persons unknown. Marvin Dunn is the author of a

History of Florida through Black Eyes. When those white men took to lay from that jail, those jailers knew every man who was in that group. Oh, Cooy was a verse ball town. Everybody knew everybody else. Prosecutors called a grand jury. In Orange County, there was always a grand jury convened. There was always a grand jury convened. And who were the members of the grand jury. They would have been all white men. So the convening of the

grand jury meant nothing. Historian Paul Ortiz, people will say, well, according to this testimony, July Perry did this with a loaded weapon, you know, and and did that in this I say, excuse me, whose testimony and number one is a testimonies hearsay who's hearsay? Are you? Are you? Depending upon were they white? Oh yes, well come on now,

come please. One of the biggest mysteries is that a grand jury was conducted and there was some thirteen or fourteen witnesses, only one black man thirteen or fourteen witnesses, and that's missing. It's not in anybody's files anywhere. So there's a lot of things, a lot of records that should have been kept that weren't. The grand jury found quote no evidence against any one or group of individuals

as to who perpetrated the fatalities. Again, I want us to be cautious about relying on the words of white leaders, be they in the Chamber of Commerce or political officials or whatever, because they have a vested interest in jerrymandering the story to make it appear as if July period is this crazy negro and that's how they that's how they referred to him. Things would have been fine if

it wasn't for this crazy negro. The and jury did exonerate the only people who were imprisoned after election day, July Perry's wife and daughter, Estelle and Caretha Walter White concluded that more than thirty black residents of Okoe were murdered on election day. Other estimates put that number as high as sixty. The n Double A CP sent White's damning report to Congress. When the CP goes before the House Census Committee, when Congress convenes in you know, Florida

is case number one. Walter White had gathered affidavits, statistics, photographs, and witness testimony. And so the Double AC Preventment presents all this amazing evidence before the Census Committee about fraud and corruption and anti black violence, including a COE. This is not merely a question of the Negro by any means. James Weldon Johnson Double a c p's executive secretary was

a Floridian born in Jacksonville. He too, would one day be president of the A c P. He was an attorney and also the poet who wrote the lyrics to Lift of Your Voice and Sing. He told the committee that the suppression of black voters in the South undermine democracy across the entire nation. It is a question of Republican government and the fundamentals of American democracy. It is a question which is either going to come to this Congress or to some other Congress in the future, and

with increasing force every time it comes up. And it seems to me it is better to pass on the question fairly and squarely and justly today and not wait until some unknown tomorrow. But wait is exactly what Congress did. Northern Congressman or and then the committee, They're like, well, I mean I don't support negro suffrage. Do you talking to their colleague? You know, Negroes don't go where I where I am. Why should they have to do that?

In Florida, we wouldn't put up with that. The Bureau of Investigation later named the FBI, launched an inquiry into Koe, but it was limited. Was the state local governments suppressing black voters. That is what the thing is about. Not about murder, not about terror, not about our sin. It is about election fraud. The Bureau of Investigation found that there was quote no attempt to intimidate any Negroes in the casting of their ballots, and that there was no

interference with the voting of qualified Negroes. Walter White is not able as much research and work as he does, and he puts his own life on the line time and again in Central Florida to try to bring visibility to these um these stories and these these events, and ultimately really doesn't get much of anywhere with them. I mean, basically, you know, white supremacy gets another four decades um of life. That's really the most important, you know, kind of an outcome.

H Politically speaking, it's believed that not a single black citizen of Orange County voted for nearly two decades after the massacre, and not a single white person was ever charged with the crime. Nobody's ever held responsible in any way, shape or form for what happens out of Coe. This three part limited series is brought to you by Procter

and Gamble. Procter and Gamble believes that words alone won't create change, but stories do seek share and expect the whole truth of black life widen the screen to widen our view. Black residents continued to flee Akoe in the months and years that followed the massacre. July Perry's brother in law. A year later. They find him the next day, beaten with an announce of his life, stripped painted red and white stripe, with a bag overs head tied to

a pole. He survives. He says that the aggressors told him he had been talking a little bit too much about what had happened at a Koe Last November, Cents is listed two hundred and fifty five black residents of a Koe by there were only two, both house servants. A lot of total loss of poppets because it didn't they went there to bet on taxes. Historian Marvin Dunn so a lot of the gloves that were on that

Blacks were taken over in that way. Within two weeks of the election day massacre, there are advertisements in Orlando and Miami newspapers orange groves for sale in a Koe, including July Perry's. It says, beautiful little groves of the negroes who just fled a cop That's what I said in the newspaper, Beautiful little groves of the negroes who just fled a Koe. That was supposed to be attractive to people. The ad was placed by Blueford Sims, one

of the founders of the town of a Koe. He was appointed by a local court to execute the estate of July Perry. A Black of Koe resident, Mrs J. H. Hammelur wrote to a friend a few weeks later, the people in the south of town are being threatened that they must sell out and leave or they will be shot and burned as the others have been. It seems to have been a prearranged affair to kill and drive the colored people from their homes, as they were more

prosperous than the white folks. So they are hoping to get their homes for nothing, nak it on. The conditions were often an underlying tractor in race riots. I don't know of a race riot that took place in a poor black area during this period. Before nineteen twenty, the

black community and a KOE was thriving. July Perry and his friend Mose Norman, who had tried to vote an election day, were prosperous citizens, and there were jealous is among lights about about some of that, and particularly how Perry and most Normans showed their wealth as con Carsville land at nice homes, and that really led some white

and cooee. Leading up to this event, the exhibition at the Orange County Regional History Center mapped the growth of black land ownership around the KOE and then it's disappearance. So you see this thirty years slow rise and prosperity. Then as you scroll away from November, you come up to nineteen thirty. By all the properties have gone back to white ownership. So thirty years you see this like popping up prosperity, and then in just six years it's

wiped out. Many Black of Koe residents, including the Perry family, tried years to get their property back. The Perrys discovered that the deed had been restricted no black person could buy the land in Stella and Karifa and family sue said, well, they asked the courts. They say, we need an accounting of what happened here, like where is the money. It's it's been four years at the end when all is

said and done. Twelve years later, twelve years later, two the seven or so descendants of July Perry received one hundred and roughly a hundred and twenty six dollars each for over thirty acres of land, all of their personal

property and the death of their patriarch. That twelve years they fight to get a hundred and twenty six dollars each, and the properties that changed hands weren't scrub land of gravel patches, their orange groves and farming lands and lakeside property just a dozen miles from the spot where decades later a new resort would stand Disney World. All of the land that had been owned by black landowners at the time of the massacre, that was taken over the

next six to seven years. It wasn't immediate, like the story has always gone, but over the next six years is worth well over nine million dollars today. And to tell a descendant who should have inherited those lands, could have inherited those lands, that that's they could have been millionaires is a really, really difficult thing. What these massacres and and and programs are all about is that the attempt among white business supremacy to roll back black economic

social political games. It's redistribution of black wealth into white hands, is really what happens. And this is what makes a coe um almost a mundane story, because it's happening everywhere. One of the most disturbing aspects of the Echoe massacre is that it was not an isolated event. In the next few years, a cooee became a template for horrendous violence. Other white communities terrorized their black neighbors and then stole

their properties again and again. We know that there continues to be violence and antype like lynching in adjacent counties, kind of secondary effects of the Echoi massacre. There's a notorious lynching case in Cassim three which which we think is connected to to the Echoe massacre in some ways. And it happens in Tulsa, happens in the St. Louis, it happens in Chicago, happens along the Texas. It later

it happens in Rosewood. And that's another theme which ties a Coe to today, this question of you know where did that black land go? You know, any cases black people were driven out by terror tactics, the terror continues and continues and continues until it drives the black community out. For a half of a century, from up until around nineteen seventy six, there are no documented that we were aware of black individuals living and residing in Kobe. You

know where did everybody go? Pamela Greedy And then you look for the families and the histories, and you try to find where they are today and you can't find people. You can't find it. I'm I'm still doing research. You can't find them. They just lost and gone. Marvin Dunn, author of a history of Florida through Black Eyes. It was buried, It was not talked about. It was not in the newspapers after the event was over. It was

certainly not in textbooks. So, like many of the race wise in massacres in the South and in Florida, once the events left the front page of the newspapers, uh they were there, people didn't talk about them. We know that there was an ongoing attempt to cover up this event, to quiet this event, to get people to stop talking about what had happened. Because what happens when people talk the truth, the facts start to come out and become known.

For decades, black folks in central Florida knew that something very bad had happened in the Kowe, not just that it was a sundown town where they were not welcome after dark, but that there were other grave reasons to stay away. Then descendants of the victims began trying to learn more about the terrible stories handed down in their families. Students did research. Over the decades, groups of Orange County

residents investigated the rumors and conducted oral histories. Today's event will not be possible without the decades of community work by such grassroots groups as a Democracy Reform and the West Orange Reconciliation Task Force, which began to excavate the history in nineteen ninety seven. The Democracy Forum, the West Orange Reconciliation Task Force, the July Perry Foundation all pieced the story together. We have a d research team and we are uncovering or where a lot of this land

is at. It's just a tedious process because you have to go bit by bit and undercover. You know, you gotta go through obituaries and estates and sales and all that. People die and you can't have a wonder where would these families be had they had had this generational wealth that was strict from them. In two thousand and two,

July Perry's body was located in an unmarked grave. It was discovered in Orlando at a cemetery there July Perry's great grandson, Pastor Stephen Nunn, And so we went back a mom and dad and I and we um they had a memorial service there at the grave site. Eat decades after July Perry was lynched, his grandchildren and great grandchildren returned to a koe. Yeah, when we finally started taking certain turns in certain streets to finally get into the area where we uh later ended up. Quickly, I

was like, wow, this is not Disney World. It's definitely Disney World. Um and then it hit It was like wow. So now in my head, I could see white sheets, I could see guns, I could see extreme racism. I could see area that still had a boy Mr kind of mindset and some of the spirited people. It was crystal clear to me at that point. Just a few yards away from July Perry's grave in Orlando's Greenwood Cemetery lies the grave of Sam Salisbury, the man who led

the mob to Perry's house. Salisbury's grave is topped by a monument and surrounded by the graves of his family and descendants. July Perry's grave stands alone. Good morning, Orlando community, Welcome to the historical marking unveiling for July Perry. It has been a long road to this day to get here. It took almost a century for a public remembrance of July Perry, the sacrifice of Mr Perry so that African Americans could vote. It's a dark and deadly part of

our history and one that will not be forgotten. Jerry Demmings is the first black mayor of Orange County. His wife, Val Demmings, is a member of the United States Congress. But I want to be clear this morning that I have no illusions, our delusions that anything that we do here today, well, right, the wrongs of a racist pass. But what we can do. What we can do is respect the atumn. What's interesting is so many of my colleagues have never even heard of the story. State Senator

Randolph Bracy's district includes central and northwest Orange County. He introduced the bill on the Florida legislature to require that schools teach children about the Echoe massacre. A version passed, minus a provision to pay reparations to the descendants of the victims. As we moved the bill forward and it was talked about, debated, and um, they're gained support for it. There were some colleagues of mine and say, hey, I think we should look at reparations, even on the Republican side.

So I think there is an opportunity need to look at that again, and it's something I'll be pushing. Some of the descendants of the Echoe victims are also fighting for reparations. Janie Nelson is July Perry's great granddaughter and vice president of the July Perry Foundation. The script is says thou shalt not steal. They stole it and they need to give it back. A century after the Echoe massacre, in another presidential election year, the Cooe descendants and activists

and historians are thinking about what still hasn't changed. We're back at this moment where a Coe becomes more important than ever, historian Paul Ortiz. Black people are still trying to register to vote. Light authorities are trying to find different ways to keep them from voting. Supervisors of elections, Secretaries of state scheming on ways to try to prevent them from participating in the democratic system. Florida is still

actively involved and vote of suppression historian Marvin Dunn. Overwhelming majority of Fillians, white and black, voted for excellence is able to vote. The Florida State Legislature comes back immediately and passed the law that says all these excellence must pay all their institutions and court costs before they can vote. So they were immediately read disenfranchised. Pamela Grady of the

July Perry Foundation. I look at right now at times and we're in right now, and how important it is to vote, you know, and how important how much went in for you know, us to have that right to vote. We take it so lightly. The town of a Koe is a modern, diverse community, but there are remnants of

the past. None of the main streets in town is named for Blueford Sims, the white man who sold July Perry's land after he was lynched, But in the anniversary year of his death, another road in a Kowe, a state highway is being renamed the Julius July Perry Memorial Highway. I think he's a hero, absolutely absolutely. Obviously he was overcome and lynched, but we're still talking about him hundred

years later. So I think in that context, in that time period, the life that he lived, the businessman that he was, and to have the boldness to do what he did, I think it it's heroic. It's really it really is. So July Perry had to be and had to have been awesome man. And I still can still your tear up thinking about it. How what an amazing man this was, that was that was gunned down, lynch drug and tortured, all for having the courage the courage to stand up and fight for a cause, and and

and to put others first. You know, so do My Parry deserves to be the legacy of him to be always remembered throughout the rest of time. Our children need to know this rich history, Our grandchildren need to know. Okay, good morning, good morning children. This morning we will start our program with a musical solo of the national Black anthem.

M hmm. We must not forget the sacrifice of July Period, his family and other African Americans killed in this horrific massacre as we stand here today to honor their memory. I think it's important to knowledge the history and the legacy of July Perry be celebrated for for the risk that he took, because we'll still find in the same fight and he was bold enough to to try to

make changes are years ago. This episode of Flashback the Election Day Massacre was written by Sean Braswell and voiced by me Eugene S. Robinson, was produced by Mab mcgoran and your a Oh Diggi Zula. Chris Hoff engineered our show on