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A White mob unleashed the worst Election Day violence in U.S. history in Florida a century ago
Source: Washington Post
A White mob unleashed the worst Election Day violence in U.S. history in Florida a century ago
By Gillian Brockell
11/2/2020, 7:00:32 a.m.
There are at least 129 accounts of what happened that day in Ocoee, and they vary wildly.
Some said the attack was a spur-of-the-moment reaction to a Black man trying to vote. Others said it had been carefully planned by White residents for weeks. Only a few Black folks were killed that day; or, dozens of bodies were piled into a mass grave. Every Black resident who survived fled the day after; or, survivors were harassed, threatened and cheated out of land for the next seven years until they all left.
This is what is certain: 100 years ago, on Nov. 2, 1920 — the same day women voted nationally for the first time — the worst instance of Election Day violence in American history unfolded in a small Florida town west of Orlando.
And the perpetrators got away with what they did for the rest of their lives. There are no roadside markers in Ocoee as you might find in Selma, Ala., no excavation projects to locate the purported mass grave as in Tulsa. Until recently, many descendants of survivors had no idea they were descendants of survivors or that they had been robbed of a valuable inheritance long before they were born.
Now, after years of research, a new exhibit at the Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando has unearthed a crime long buried.
-snip-
By Gillian Brockell
11/2/2020, 7:00:32 a.m.
There are at least 129 accounts of what happened that day in Ocoee, and they vary wildly.
Some said the attack was a spur-of-the-moment reaction to a Black man trying to vote. Others said it had been carefully planned by White residents for weeks. Only a few Black folks were killed that day; or, dozens of bodies were piled into a mass grave. Every Black resident who survived fled the day after; or, survivors were harassed, threatened and cheated out of land for the next seven years until they all left.
This is what is certain: 100 years ago, on Nov. 2, 1920 — the same day women voted nationally for the first time — the worst instance of Election Day violence in American history unfolded in a small Florida town west of Orlando.
And the perpetrators got away with what they did for the rest of their lives. There are no roadside markers in Ocoee as you might find in Selma, Ala., no excavation projects to locate the purported mass grave as in Tulsa. Until recently, many descendants of survivors had no idea they were descendants of survivors or that they had been robbed of a valuable inheritance long before they were born.
Now, after years of research, a new exhibit at the Orange County Regional History Center in Orlando has unearthed a crime long buried.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/11/02/ocoee-florida-election-day-massacre/
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Related: Yesterday, This Was Home: The Ocoee Massacre of 1920 (Orange County Regional History Center)
