Mayor Rusty Johnson: “You’ve got to let people know what happened.”
In the heart of downtown Ocoee, in the new Unity Park,
the city has erected a memorial to the 263 Black residents who were murdered, wounded or driven from their homes by a mob of armed white men on Election Day in 1920, an event considered the deadliest day in the history of Election Day violence — the 1920 Ocoee Massacre.
The memorial was unveiled Nov. 2 at a private event for descendants of survivors and invited guests.
There was confusion about whether the unveiling was open to the public. City Manager Craig Shadrix told VoxPopuli that he and the city commissioners were under the impression that the event was public. But VoxPopuli learned that people who wanted to attend had been told it was private and turned away, and city staff confirmed to VoxPopuli that the event was private. Shadrix told VoxPopuli that with the commission's blessing, the city would host a future event for the public to showcase the memorial.
The memorial, designed by Ginger Corless, acting development services director, is constructed of black metal panels and made to resemble the pages of a history book. It features all of the names of those residents who were killed or fled the town, according to the 1920 Census report.
“When you design a memorial, you do it for the purpose to set the tone so we don't forget something happened,” Corless said in a phone interview. “That's what our memorial is for, to really take the memory of that event and to understand it.”
Mayor Rusty Johnson said the memorial is a place for remembrance, where those who come can see the names and look into the history.
“Life goes on,” Johnson said. “But you got to let people know what happened. You can't hide things.”
The memorial was funded with $10,000 from the city’s Human Relations Diversity Board (HRDB) and an estimated $40,000 from the city’s capital projects fund. The two-panel installation stands as one of the city’s many reconciliation efforts, which includes the city’s official apology in 2020 on the 100th anniversary of the massacre and the declaration of Nov. 2 as an official Day of Remembrance.
Kenneth Thompson, a descendant of Julius “July” Perry who was lynched on that terrible November day, described seeing the memorial for the first time as “extraordinary.”
Perry had been a prominent community leader and property owner who helped Black residents find work and register to vote. On Nov. 2, 1920, he was dragged from his home by armed white men who were looking for his friend Mose Norman who they believed had sought refuge in his home. The Ku Klux Klan had staged demonstrations ahead of the election, threatening retaliation if any Black men tried to vote. It was estimated at the time that "90 percent of law enforcement officers, judges, public servants and lawyers in Winter Garden and Ocoee were Klan members," Pegasus Magazine reported. But Norman, who tried to vote earlier in the day and was rebuffed, had already fled town and was heading for Harlem.
Perry was lynched on the lawn of former U.S. District Judge John Moses Cheney, who supported Black voter registration drives during his campaign for the U.S. Senate — a race he lost.
While the massacre’s complete death toll remains uncertain — numbers range from 60 to 80 — what is known is that overnight, Ocoee’s Black population was eliminated. When the violence was over, the destruction included 25 Black homes, two churches, a fraternal order along with millions lost in generational wealth as white buyers scooped up “abandoned” land for cheap.
“It's not just to recompense the descendants for wrongdoings,” Thompson said, referring to the memorial. “I think it's to give them comfort, to let them know that the community is backing them. They are with us because they understand it, and I think because they understand the things invariably that happen in connection with it.”
After the massacre, it would take decades — not until the 1970s and 1980s — for Black families to begin returning to the city. In the intervening years, Ocoee was known as a sundown town — an area where Black people were not encouraged to stay overnight nor linger after dark and where the consequences could be fatal if they did.
Ages Hart, a former District 4 city commissioner, said in a phone interview that he grew up hearing about Ocoee from his father, who worked in the citrus groves. Hart said generation after generation was taught to stay away from Ocoee. But now, he said, the memorial feels like a step forward.
“The family secret is no more,” Hart said. “This will never happen again. One of the greatest influences, or the greatest powers to me, of the Klan is they do it in secrecy. Now it's exposed to the world.”
Those involved with creating the memorial, like HRBD member Bill Maxwell, hope it serves as an educational tool for the community.
“I want, more than anything in my lifetime, the youth to understand the history of what this town was about so that as they evolve through life and occupy those seats of leadership up there, they will have that background and understanding that people are people, and we all have a heartbeat,” Maxwell said. “We all have needs.”
Born in Selma, Maxwell said when he moved to Ocoee in 1995, he did not learn about its history until he became an HRDB member in 2007. Faced with reality, Maxwell said he found the stigma attached to Ocoee’s history difficult for others to talk about.
“To talk about it was almost impossible, and it was an impossibility to ask kids to do it,” Maxwell said. “Nobody wanted to be identified with it. The people who lived here didn't want to talk about it.”
While the memorial reconciles Ocoee’s history, people in Black communities across the nation reported receiving racist text messages after the 2024 election, that said they had been selected to pick cotton on a plantation and that "executive slave catchers" would pick them up, which underscores the need to continue teaching about this terrible event in Ocoee's history and other similar events in our nation's past.
Hart said he hopes people visit the memorial to learn what happened and why it happened to prevent it from happening again.
“When we don't talk about something, we empower it,” Hart said. “So when we talk about it, we can heal.”
Unity Park is located in downtown Ocoee at 130 N. Cumberland Ave.
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