Pillow Party Massacre

The Ocoee massacre was an act of mass racial violence in November 1920. During the massacre, a white mob attacked African American residents in the northern parts of Ocoee, Florida, a town located in Orange County near Orlando. Ocoee was the home to 255 African-Americans and 560 white residents according to the 1920 Census. The massacre took place on November 2, the day of the US presidential election, leaving a lasting impact; the 1930 census showed 1,180 whites, 11 Native Americans, and 2 African Americans (0.2%). By most estimates, a total of 30–80 black people were killed during what has been considered the "single bloodiest day in modern American political history". Most African American-owned buildings and residences in northern Ocoee were burned to the ground. Other African Americans living in southern Ocoee were later killed or driven out of town by the threat of further violence being used against them. Thus, Ocoee essentially became an all-white or "sundown" town. It is believed that the attack was intended to prevent black citizens from voting. Poll taxes had been imposed as de facto disenfranchisement in Florida since the beginning of the 20th century. In Ocoee and across the state, various black organizations had been conducting voter registration drives for a year. Those who registered to vote registered almost exclusively as Republicans because blacks were not permitted to join the all-white Democratic Party. Following a confrontation with a Black man named Mose Norman as he attempted to vote, reinforcements from Orlando and Orange County were called upon, contributing to a mob that laid waste to the African-American community in northern Ocoee and eventually lynching Perry, who was in custody at the Orange County Sheriff's Office, shooting and taking his body to Orlando, where he was hanged from a lightpost to intimidate other black people. Norman escaped, never to be found. Hundreds of other African Americans fled the town, leaving behind their homes and possessions. The white mobs burned at least twenty-five black-owned homes, two churches, and a black fraternal lodge. "Most of the people living in Ocoee don't even know that this happened there", said Pamela Schwartz, chief curator of the Orange County Regional History Center, which sponsored an exhibit on it. For almost a century, many descendants of survivors were not aware of the massacre that occurred in their hometown.