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Black History Month
Florida's Ocoee community faces its bloody history of 1920's race riot.
Black History Month: The 1920 Ocoee Voting Day Massacre
A white mob burned a black Ocoee neighborhood after Election Day November, 1920 because black residents tried to vote. The attack led to the lynching in Orlando of July Perry, a successful black Ocoee businessman and voting-rights advocate. One hundred years later City Commissioners issued a proclamation apologizing for the massacre, often called “the single bloodiest day in American political history”.
SPEAKERS
Ocoee Commissioner George Oliver III, who made history last year when he became the first African-American elected to the five-member Ocoee City Commission.
Sha’ron Cooley McWhite, a great grandniece of July Perry. In November Mrs. McWhite was present when Ocoee City Commissioners officially expressed “regret and horror” for the community’s deadly violence on Election Day 1920.
Francina Boykin, a paralegal with Bogin, Munns & Munns, has spent more than 20 years studying and researching the Ocoee project. Francina is an active member of our local all-volunteer Truth and Justice Project of Orange County.
MODERATOR -- Senior Judge Emerson R. Thompson, former Chief Judge Ninth Judicial Circuit