Oddly, several civil rights memorials have excluded the Moores, one for dying too soon (SLPC) and one for dying too late. Stetson's dying wish was that the Moores and other civil rights heroes be remembered forever.
Stetson's widow, Sandra Parks, made a presentation to St. Johns County Commission this morning, handled diffidently by inattentive Commissioners. Sad.
Cemetery ceremony recalls sacrifice of July Perry, lynched in 1920 for encouraging blacks to vote
One by one, three dozen people, some black, some white, kneeled in the old black section of Orlando’s Greenwood Cemetery and filled a glass jar one scoop at a time with dirt from the grave of July Perry, who was lynched in Orange County 98 years ago for encouraging other blacks to vote.
Saturday’s ceremony honored the memory and sacrifice of Perry, whose bullet-riddled body was left swinging from a light post in Orlando the morning after Election Day 1920. No one was ever prosecuted for his killing.
“He gave his life so I could vote, so his descendants could vote, so people who look like me can vote,” said Erika Rembert Smith, who helped fill the 64-ounce jar marked with Perry’s name.
The event in the formerly segregated cemetery was inspired by the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., and the Equal Justice Initiative, which built the shrine honoring lynching victims. The advocacy group has organized “community remembrance” projects in places in the U.S. where lynchings have been documented. The initiative is an effort to recognize the 4,400 victims by collecting soil from lynching sites or graves and erecting historical markers.
Perry is among 33 lynching victims in Orange County, according to a count by the group, which lists him among 32 blacks killed by a white mob that attacked African-American residents in Ocoee on Nov. 2, 1920, the day of the U.S. presidential election.
Though the death count is disputed and Perry is the lone victim identified by name, Ocoee appears headed to public acceptance of the ugly incident, which also left two whites dead and branded the city for decades as a place for blacks to avoid.
Mayor Rusty Johnson led a contingent from Ocoee’s Human Relations Diversity Board to the lynching memorial’s opening in April.
The board, which also organizes the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday festivities, has unanimously recommended the city rename its Central Park for July Perry and pushed for a permanent historical marker.
George Oliver, who in March became the first African-American elected to Ocoee City Commission, attended the cemetery ceremony, where he scooped dirt and placed his palm on the face of the headstone in reverence.
He said city commissioners will adopt a special proclamation about the tragedy at their next meeting.
“That’s a big step, an important step for our community, as we try to push forth with a message of unity," he said of the town where census records counted 495 black residents in 1920 before the massacre and just two 10 years later.
Perry, who was married with a daughter, laid in an unmarked grave in Greenwood for 82 years until a volunteer group examining the Ocoee incident paid for a marker in 2002. His wife and child fled to Tampa where they stayed.
Fresh flowers often are left at Perry’s grave site, which is unusual for a plot as old as his.
At Saturday’s ceremony, Perry’s headstone was surrounded not only by sprays of white roses but also candles, candies, a small flask of gin and a roll of “I Voted” stickers.
Behind his marker, someone left a campaign photo of gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, who is black.
“This ceremony was a way of recognizing, of venerating July Perry,” said Josie Onifade Lemon Allen, who led the cemetery service.
Kristin Congdon, a humanities professor and member of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Orange County Task Force, said the soil collected from Perry’s grave will be part of “mini-exhibits” to raise awareness of his lynching and other racial terror in Central Florida.
A sample also will be sent to the lynching museum, which opened in April.
“We’re gathering steam,” she said of efforts to tell the stories of Perry and other victims of racial injustice. “Let people know: Reconciliation happens only after truth.”
Smith, pastor at Washington Shores Presbyterian Church in Orlando, wore a T-shirt supporting Florida Amendment 4, which, if approved, would restore voting rights for Florida felons who complete all terms of their sentence.
The group previously collected soil on behalf of the unnamed Ocoee victims and Arthur Henry, who was kidnapped in leg shackles from his room at Orange General Hospital on Nov. 27, 1925, by three white men who overpowered a guard.
Henry, according to newspaper accounts, was wounded by police in a gun fight during which two officers also were shot. He was never heard from again and his body was never found.
Some who attended the cemetery ceremony saw hope for the future in the vigil.
Dawn Neff, 67, who grew up in segregated Mississippi, brought her 8-year-old granddaughter Charlotte to participate.
“I am hoping and praying that the world she grows up in is very different than the one I grew up in,” she said.
shudak@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6361.
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