‘The sunrise city’: Florida community reconciles with history of 1920s race riot

Politicians and activists of Ocoee found recognition for victims of the ‘single bloodiest day’ in modern US political history

Richard Luscombe in Miami
Thu 3 Jan 2019 11.00 GMT

It has been almost a century since Gladys Franks Bell’s father fled an election day race riot in Florida, clutching his little brothers and sisters and wading through swamps and woodland to safety while the Ku Klux Klan razed the family’s home town of Ocoee.

By the end of the night his uncle July Perry was dead, lynched by a white mob and left hanging from a lamp-post next to a sign reading: “This is what we do to niggers who vote.” The murderous rampage, meanwhile, continued unchecked, claiming dozens of other black lives, according to many accounts, while hundreds of survivors were run out of what then became an all-white town for decades.

Until recently, one of the most shameful episodes of the deep south’s racist past looked destined to be forgotten forever.

But now, thanks to the efforts of local politicians, activists and the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, there is permanent recognition for the victims and their legacy, and an official expression of “regret and horror” from the city of Ocoee, near Orlando.

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