Remembering the 1920 Election Day lynching of July Perry
• Florida is embroiled in a recount process that’s taken over our newsfeeds and has every other elected official screaming “fraud,” but not too long ago on Election Day, Central Floridians left voting stickers on the grave of July Perry at Orlando’s Greenwood Cemetery. Close to a century ago, Perry was an African American man who was shot and lynched by a white mob in Orlando after encouraging Ocoee’s black residents to vote on Election Day in 1920. In the days before his murder, local Ku Klux Klan members had threatened terror against black people who dared to vote. On Election Day, white residents who resented the large number of African Americans voting tried to stop them at the polls. The …
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