By Rene Childress

We are returning to the early part of the twentieth century that has become my pattern to continue tying past white racial perdition that has continually been meted out to African-American in the United States well into the twentieth-first century.  We will focus our attention on the small Hamlet of Ocoee Florida in Orange County, Florida. 

Since the turn of the century there were  several successful black farmers that have attained property and are prospering as independent farmers. The Klan has reinvented itself as a modern version of its former self as a terrorist paramilitary force in this part of Florida. The rosters of the Klan are laden heavily with law enforcement officers. 

The best way to view this horrible racial orgy is to examine some of the main characters and see how their outcomes materialized. 

The first characters we want to observe are Mose Norman and July Perry, two prosperous African-American farmers residing around the Ocoee Hamlet. They are part of a group that were attempting to register African-Americans to vote. 

They actively persuaded 78 black citizens to register to vote. They even paid the poll tax for  the souls that didn’t have the funds to qualify for election rolls. 

Fast forward to the November 1st, 1920 election.  The streets around the town square are filled daily with Ku Klux Klan demonstrations denouncing blacks being allowed to vote. There are open threats to anyone black or white that attempt to aid blacks in their attempt to exercise their rights as citizens to vote in a national election. 

Both Norman and Perry are anathema to what white Southerners want to see and hear from their black neighbors. On election day Norman presents himself to the local polling officials. He is turned away. Several other black voters are also turned away. 

The polling officials claim that he and the other blacks  are not on the roll. Norman knows that they are registered to vote including paying the poll tax. Unperturbed he gets into his car and drives to see his friend who is a federal judge for the Southern District of Florida. 

Judge Cheney instructs Mose Norman to return to the polling station and get the names of all the officials that are refusing him the exercise of his right to vote. The poll workers refuse his entreaties.  A mob begins to gather and forces  him to flee. 

Norman seeks safe harbor with his friend July Perry.

The mob grows and is whipped into a frenzy by Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Salisbury who is a leading light of the reconstituted Ku Klux Klan. The mob moves from house to house in the black section of town searching for Norman. 

They arrive at the Perry house, They demand that July Perry  come out and answer for the actions of his friend Norman. He refuses and a gun battle ensues.

Perry's wife and daughter were wounded. Perry surrendered to protect his family and was taken into custody. It turns out that Norman had left the Perry household. He has never been heard of again in Florida. 

Mr. Perry was removed from the custody of the legal authorities and lynched within eyesight of Judge Cheney’s house.  His wounded wife and daughter were transported to Tampa to keep them safe from Klan activity in and around Ocoee. 

What transpires next is the wholesale terror of beatings and killings and burnings meted out to the black people of Ocoee. It is so complete and awful that the Ocoee black part of town becomes empty out of its entire black population. The Ku Klux Klan and its fellow travelers burn down over thirty homes,two churches and a Masonic Lodge. 

Every Black family in Ocoee was forced to flee for their lives,hiding in the forest and wilds. By the 1930’s Ocoee became an all white Sundown town.  There is not a single African-American residing in Ocoee for the next sixty  years. All the black property owners lost their property because the government refused to protect its citizens from Klan activity. 

The other character we observe is Lt. Col. Samuel Salisbury, a West Point Graduate. During this pogrom he is a former police chief from Tampa, a leading member of the American Legion, a member of the Masonic tradition and a leading member of the Ku Klux Klan.

He is wounded when trying to capture Mose Norman. He survives his wounds and later serves two terms as mayor of the town that he helped empty out of its African-American inhabitants. He not only survives, he spends the rest of his life being a beacon of White Supremacy in this part of Florida. 

The good old boy Colonel lives to age 84 becoming a grandfather and great-grandfather never having paid for the misery he helped foist upon his fellow black Americans.  He and his fellow white citizens take control of all the properties that were left behind without ever providing just compensation. 

What does justice look like for the displaced, murdered and disenfranchised citizens of Ocoee ? 

How do we address the failures of the state and local governments that continually lament about bad actors and claim the moral high ground while serving African-Americans platitudes that it wasn’t us? 

That it happened in the past. We need to move on. The problem is the mass murder and lynching continues on into the twenty-first century. Our journey continues.