Julius “July” Perry, was a prosperous Black landowner in the town of Ocoee. In the weeks leading up to the 1920 presidential election, July and Mose Norman, another Black landowner, were leading the local Black voter registration efforts in Orange County, paying the poll tax for those who could not afford it.
Black voters were met with resistance from the white community when they attempted to vote on election day. Some persisted, but many were pushed and shoved away from the polls. Norman later returned to the polling place in Ocoee with a shotgun but was drives away. In response, the white community began to form a mob and paraded up and down the streets, growing more disorderly and unmanageable.
The mob was on its way to Norman’s home when someone informed them that their target had been seen at the home of July Perry. The mob, by then numbering about 100 men, arrived at Perry’s house, demanding that Perry and Norman surrender. When they received no answer, they attempted to break down the front door.
Perry, who had been warned about the mob, fired gunshots from inside the home in self-defense, injuring one mob member and killing two others. The mob withdrew and put out a call for reinforcements to whites in Orlando, Apopka and Orange County.
During the 2- to 3-hour lull while the mob was recruiting other men, an injured July Perry attempted to flee with the help of his wife into a cane patch. He was found by the mob at dawn and arrested. After Perry was treated at a hospital for his wounds, he was taken by a white mob from a vehicle while being transferred to a jail. They lynched him and left his body hanging from a telephone post beside the highway with a sign around his neck threatening the same fate to any Black person who tried to vote. Mose Norman was never found.
With reinforcements, the mob proceeded to set fire to rows of Black houses; those inside were forced to flee and many were shot by whites. At least 20 buildings were burned in total, including every church and schoolhouse.
The Black residents of Ocoee residents fought back against the white mob in an evening-long gunfight lasting until as late as 4:45 A.M. Eventually, Black residents were driven into the nearby orange groves and swamps, forced to retreat until they were driven out of town.
The siege of Ocoee claimed numerous victims. A carpenter named Langmaid was beaten and castrated. Maggie Genlack died with her pregnant daughter, their bodies found burned under their home. Roosevelt Barton, hiding in July Perry’s barn, was shot after the mob set fire to the barn and forced him to flee. Hattie Smith was visiting her pregnant sister-in-law in Ocoee when her sister-in-law’s home was set on fire. Smith fled, but her sister-in-law’s family was killed while they hid and waited for help that never came.
One survivor suspected that the massacre was planned so that whites could seize prosperous Black farmland for nothing. About 500 African Americans in total were rapidly driven out of Ocoee, resulting in its being nearly all white. No Black residents lived there until 61 years later in 1981. In the fall of 1921, white residents had to work to harvest the citrus crop because Black labor had fled the region.
Photos of Perry’s bullet-riddled body hung from a telephone pole were sold for 25¢ each. Several stores proudly placed the photo on exhibition by their windows. No one was prosecuted for his murder.
Walter White of the NAACP arrived in Orange County a few days after the riot to investigate the events. He was traveling undercover as a white Northerner interested in buying orange grove property in the county and found that the whites there were “still giddy with victory.” A local real estate agent and a taxi cab driver bragged to him that about 56 Blacks were killed in the massacre, though exact number could never be determined.
He also confirmed what many Blacks believed about the massacre partly being due due to the white community’s jealousy of prosperous black landowners, such as Norman and Perry, in addition to being outraged by the idea of Black voters.
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