The Helios Biblios Hour : ELECTION DAY PURGE 2020

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.Ocoee was founded in the 1850s by a White man who brought 23 enslaved African Americans with him, Schwartz said. After the Civil War, many Confederate veterans resettled there, hiring Black laborers to work their land. Starting in 1888, many of those laborers were able to purchase the very acres they had been toiling over from their White employers, bringing them wealth and security often denied to Black folks in the Jim Crow South.After World War I ended in 1918, the same trends happening nationally took hold in Ocoee, too. Black veterans returned home expecting better treatment like they got in Europe, but white-supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan resurfaced to keep that from happening. Racist violence erupted all over the country in what became known as the Red Summer of 1919. Dr. J. D. Starke and established the first citrus nursery in the United States. Sims had a number of other credits and accomplishments to his name including road commissioner, Freemason,about 179,000 Black men served the Army and 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 died over the course of the war.1920 election year, there was a big drive for Black voter registration in Florida since they historically voted Republican.