Ocoee massacre and John Moses Cheney
Orlando, Orange County, Florida
Marker Inscription
Lynching of July Perry November 3, 1920 On Election Day, November 2, 1920, black residents in the Ocoee area who owned land and businesses were eager to vote. Despite a terrorizing Ku Klux Klan march through the streets of Orlando three days prior, Mose Norman and other African Americans attempted to vote. They were turned away. After seeking advice from Orlando Judge John Cheney, Norman again attempted to vote. Armed whites stationed at the polls immediately assaulted him. Reportedly, he fled to the home of his friend and business associate, July Perry. A mob seeking to capture Perry and Norman surrounded and burned Perry's home. Norman escaped, but Perry suffered a severe wound and was arrested, transported to Orlando, and jailed in the Orange County Jail, a block away from this site, on Orange Avenue. The next morning a lynch mob took Perry from his cell, beat him severely, and hanged him within sight of Judge Cheney's home. His lifeless body was shot repeatedly. For two days, a white mob burned 25 black homes, two black churches, and a masonic lodge in Ocoee. Estimates of the total number of black Americans killed during the violence range from six to over thirty. Survivors fled, never to return. The entire black community of Ocoee was driven out within a year, forced to abandon or sell land and homes they owned. The Ocoee Election Day Massacre represents one of the bloodiest days in American political history. July Perry is buried in Orlando's Greenwood Cemetery.
Erected by The Equal Justice Initiative
The Story
On Election Day 1920, Black residents of Ocoee who owned land and businesses sought to vote and were turned away; after Mose Norman persisted, white mobs unleashed days of terror. They surrounded and burned July Perry's home, and the next morning a lynch mob took the wounded Perry from the Orange County Jail and hanged him within sight of Judge Cheney's home. Mobs burned some two dozen Black homes, two churches, and a lodge, and within a year Ocoee's entire Black community was driven out.
Why it matters
The Ocoee Massacre was one of the bloodiest days in American electoral history, a stark reminder of the violence used to deny Black citizens the vote.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The autumn of 1920 fell within an era of deep and enforced racial hierarchy across the American South. The promises of Reconstruction had long since been rolled back, and a web of laws, customs, and outright violence worked to keep Black Americans from the ballot box and from the full rights of citizenship. Central Florida, with its groves and growing towns, was part of that world.
Yet 1920 was also a moment of Black aspiration. In and around Ocoee, there were African American residents who owned land and ran businesses, who had built something for themselves and who, on Election Day, were eager to vote. Their determination collided directly with a system built to deny them exactly that.
The marker records that a Ku Klux Klan procession moved through the streets of Orlando just days before the election, an unmistakable threat meant to terrorize Black citizens away from the polls. The violence that followed did not come out of nowhere; it came out of a climate deliberately engineered to intimidate.
People & events
On Election Day, November 2, 1920, Mose Norman and other African Americans in the Ocoee area attempted to vote and were turned away. Norman sought advice from an Orlando judge, John Cheney, and tried again. According to the marker, armed white men stationed at the polls assaulted him at once.
Reportedly he fled to the home of his friend and business associate, July Perry. A mob bent on capturing both men surrounded and burned Perry's home. Norman escaped, but Perry was severely wounded, arrested, and jailed in the Orange County Jail on Orange Avenue, a block from where the marker now stands. The next morning a lynch mob took him from his cell, beat him, and hanged him within sight of Judge Cheney's home; his body was then shot repeatedly.
The terror did not end with Perry's death. For two days a white mob burned some twenty-five Black homes, two Black churches, and a masonic lodge in Ocoee. Estimates of the total killed range from six to more than thirty. Survivors fled and never returned, and within a year the entire Black community of Ocoee had been driven out, forced to abandon or sell the land and homes they owned. July Perry is buried in Orlando's Greenwood Cemetery.
Its place in the American story
The Ocoee Election Day Massacre stands, in the marker's own words, as one of the bloodiest days in American political history. It is a stark record of what could happen when Black Americans insisted on the most basic right of citizenship: the right to cast a vote.
The events of Ocoee were not an isolated aberration but part of a broader national pattern of racial terror used to enforce white supremacy in the decades after Reconstruction. The details here, the courthouse advice, the mob, the jail cell, the driven-out community, put specific and unforgettable faces to a violence that too often remains an abstraction.
That this marker was placed by the Equal Justice Initiative reflects a national reckoning now underway, an effort to name victims like July Perry, to mark the ground where such crimes occurred, and to refuse the long silence that once surrounded them. Remembering Ocoee is part of understanding how hard-won, and how contested, the vote has been in America.
If you visit
This is a place for reflection, not spectacle. The marker sits near the site of the old Orange County Jail on Orange Avenue in Orlando, a block from where July Perry was held before he was killed. Approach it as you would any memorial to grievous loss: with quiet and with care.
Stand for a moment with the geography the inscription lays out, the jail, the short distance to where the mob did its work, the sight line to a judge's home. That closeness collapses the years and makes the injustice feel immediate. It is meant to.
If you are tracing the harder chapters of American history, this stop pairs naturally with a visit to Greenwood Cemetery, where July Perry is buried. Let the visit be an act of remembrance. To read his name, and to speak it, is part of what this memorial asks of you.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · July Perry
- · Mose Norman
- · John Cheney
Related events
- · Ocoee Election Day Massacre, 1920
Themes & tags
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