for Julius “July” Perry (1868-November 3, 1920),
first African American killed in the Ocoee (FL) Massacre,
November 2-3, 1920

“When it came to Ocoee, we just didn’t go there, and we didn’t ask why.”
–– Francina Boykin, raised in nearby Apopka.

1. The First Day Women Could Vote Inspired Black Men

Go back to that
     eighty-one-degree

Election Day, 1920,
     cloudless morning

hot enough for summer.
     Watch poll workers

wipe their foreheads
     on their shirts’ 

starched sleeves while
     July Perry pulls 

from his pocket proof
     he and his wife 

Estelle paid their
     $2 poll taxes: 

same slips his workers got
     from white landlords 

after crating citrus in their groves.
     His shoulder leans 

into Estelle’s. His cracked
     hand cups hers 

while stiff-backed Klansmen
     turn those carbon copies

in the light and click
     their tongues

because they know who he is––
     fat-cat labor broker,

the go-between
     for Black workers 

and white employers
     who made sure 

everyone
     got paid,

loudmouth church deacon
     pumping up 

the North Quarters––
     hear slave quarters––

in this first year women
     can vote, taking care 

of taxes for neighbors,
     helping Black women 

register at four times
      the rate of white. 

If they come out, if
     Black men join them,

this is a
     whole new world.

***

2. Letter about “the Negroes of Orlando Voting” from the Florida Ku Klucks

The following is a letter sent to lawyer W.R. O’Neal and Judge John C. Cheney, a GOP Senatorial candidate, who held secret meetings at a North Quarters church to prepare African Americans to vote:

Orlando, Fla. Sept. 20, 1920

Mr. W.R.O’Neal, [sic]
City

Sir:

While stopping in your beautiful little city this week, I was informed that you are in the habit of going out among the Negroes of Orlando and delivering lectures explaining to them just how to become citizens, and how to assert their rights.

If you are familiar with the history of the days of reconstruction [sic] which followed in the wake of the Civil War, you will recall that the “Scallywags” of the north [sic], and the Republicans of the South [sic] proceeded very much the same as you are proceeding, to instill into the negro the idea of social equality. You will also remember that these things forced the loyal citizens of the south [sic] to organize clans of determined men, who pledged themselves to maintain white supremacy and to safeguard our women and children. 

And now if you are a scholar, you know that history repeats itself, and that he who resorts to your kind of game is handling edged tools. We shall always enjoy WHITE SUPREMACY in this country and he who interferes with it must face the consequences.

GRAND MASTER FLORIDA KU KLUCKS

Copy
Judge Jno.M.Cheney [sic]
You may accept this as a fitting message to you.

Copy
Local Ku Klucks
Watch these two.

***

3. July Read the Room. Mose Did Not.

Stand beside Estelle and July.
Stare until the poll workers’ 

squinting eyes disappear
within five hundred sheeted 

others’, snaking, sheened
in sweat, three days earlier 

down Orlando’s Orange Avenue.
[C]owled and gowned in flowing robes,

the Evening Reporter-Star said,
the Klan marched with dignity 

to remind the people that the South
was not dead or sleeping,

their fists choking
Christless crosses, droopy little US flags.

Hear July say Judge Cheney,
bucket hat in hand,

basement safe back home
bricked with cash

after his good sense
did the math:

Stay in South Carolina
and make 26¢ picking 

a pound of cotton
or head to the Everglades

for 75¢ an orange crate,
save up, buy land,

plant groves of his own.
Hear his boot scuff 

the threshold that his partner,
attorney Mose Norman,

will be turned from twice
that afternoon before 

a white vet, summoned
to assist with the coming riot,

finds in Norman’s car
a gun he brought just in case 

or one the white man planted
or imagined there,

and after he’s clubbed, kicked,
and chased, Mose will run

to Perry’s porch where July
will read the future 

in Mose’s eyes, in Mose’s welts
and blood, and whisper 

to his friend: Keep going.
So Mose will vanish 

down a path, then
into history, first gust 

in a coming hurricane,
abandoning the car 

whites hated him for––
cloth-top Columbia Six, 

white sidewalls, silver spokes,
side windows lost 

behind storm curtains––
keys still in it, up for grabs.

***

4. July Shows Coretha How to Shoulder a Shotgun

The storm hits that night around 11:

Sam Salisbury––

     Orlando police chief,
     Marine war vet,
     Klansman––

leads a deputized crew
of shotguns and cigarettes
to July’s front yard.

They yell for Norman.

When July says

It’s just me and my family.
I don’t know what this is about––

they start yelling for him.

Salisbury orders July outside,
says he’s under arrest for a crime 

someone will have to
make up after he’s killed,
as others lied

in Tulsa

          East St. Louis

                    Eufaula

                              Colfax

                    Vicksburg

          Bogalusa

                    Omaha

                              Baltimore

Chicago

          Knoxville

                    Elaine

                              Gadsden

                                        Houston

                              Charleston…

July stays inside and Salisbury
stomps up the steps.

Just after her father shows her
how to shoulder a shotgun, 

July’s 19-year-old daughter
Coretha squeezes an eye

and blasts a slug through the door
into Salisbury’s left arm.

Scene cut: July shoots dead
two men trying to break in
through the back.

Salisbury and his posse
figure a gang’s inside,
tear off to find backup.

Coretha will say later she lay low
and watched bullet tracers flash
through the house’s front walls.

She’ll one day show her
children where she’d been
shot in the bicep,

will tell them what July,
who’d been hit, too, and far worse, said next:

Take your mother and your brothers.
Go as fast as you can.

I’m not going to make it.

***

5. Swamp, Sugar Cane

     July’s family follows moonlight
across a field,

crawls into a Lake Apopka
swamp on their stomachs.

     They watch
a swarm of boots and shoes

     swirl past them
before it blasts hundreds

of bullets into their home.
They know they’ll never

     hold July again alive.
They know not to scream, 

     even when they see him
make it somehow 

     to a sugar cane patch
behind their barn

     without his right arm
before clouds blocked

     the moon and darkness
swallowed him.

     Some say when he was found,
he was taken to jail,

     where a doctor
reported that he’d die 

     from his wounds.
Some say he was already

bled-empty, gone.
     Alive or dead,
     he was dragged
behind a truck 

     straight to Cheney’s house,
which sat where

     a country club does now

     with no mention of the massacre,

     and raised up a pole,
a flag

     against Blacks voting

   through which Klansmen
blasted shells all night,

cheering deadeye friends 

     they’ll deny
knowing on a road 

they’ll say they’ve never  heard of 

     if any
lawmen come asking.

     But none will.

 ***

6. The End of Black Ocoee

The rest of the evening,

rest of the night until dawn,

     a blaze rises
               beyond
Perry and Norman,

sparks a smoldering
     ember’s idea: 

               No more.

               Time
               for the Lost Cause
               to have the last word,

               grind Reconstruction
               into the dirt

               like spit or shit
               scraped
from a shoe.

The night
     becomes a trail

of headlights
     and
fuel-filled Mason jars.

Salisbury, Sims,
     and Pounds

bark to their minions
their simple orders
     for Armageddon:

                             Shoot
stragglers
on the street
who don’t
leave town
fast enough.

                            Make
examples
of their corpses.

                            Burn
their stores, their school,
their Masonic lodge,
their churches. 

                            Burn
every home
whose owner ran off
after you pick it clean
of cash and jewels.

                            Burn
every home
whose owner
had the gall
to stay.

                            Break
windows
to feed
the fire.

                            Shoot
to kill
when they flee
the flames.

Blacks had awoken
that morning
in a mixed-race town.

Overnight,
every Black resident
died or
disappeared.

***

7. Special Bargains: The Clause in the Contracts for Those “Beautiful Little Groves”

The next month in the Sentinel:

See the clause
     in every
     new deed:

     Only to be sold to members
     of the Caucasian race.

See Ocoee
     become
     all-white
     for 60 years
     with no one
     asking
     how it happened.

***

Say
     Ocoee
     became
     all-white
     for 60 years
     and no one
     asked
     how it happened.

Say
     there was a clause
     in every
     new deed:

Only to be sold to members
of the Caucasian race.

Say
     his name,
     Julius “July” Perry,

     fat-cat labor broker,

     the go-between
     for Black workers
     and white employers,

     church deacon
     the Klan
     deemed dangerous

     for pumping up 

     the North Quarters––
     hear slave quarters––

     that first year
     women could vote,

     first year Black men
     and Black
     women could vote
     together
     toward a future
     that included them.

     Feel his shoulder      
     leaning
     into Estelle’s

     on that      
     eighty-one-degree
     Election Day, 1920,

     in Ocoee, Florida,
     cloudless morning
     hot enough
     for summer,

     his cracked
     hand cupping hers 

     while stiff-backed
     Klansman,

     who’d hurl torches
     that night,

     blast buckshot
     through his corpse 

     that night, then pin
     a note to his chest––

     This is what we do
     to n******
     who try to vote––

     lift our papers
     against 

     the day’s
     early light,

     chomping
     on wet cigars,

     sitting on crates
     of guns
     they brought
     just in case,

     like
     the White League
     in Eufaula

     and the militias
     that led the coup
     in Wilmington,

     purging
     the voter rolls
     for whatever reason
     they chose

     or for no
     reason except
     I said so,

     hellbent––

like others were
and would be,

in 1878
and 1898,
and each year
between
and since,

in small towns
and big cities,

on Martin’s balcony,
in Medgar’s driveway,
on Malcolm’s ballroom stage.

And so many gone
in Mississippi:

Reverend George Lee
while he drove
in Belzoni,

Lamar Smith
while dozens watched
on a Brookhaven
courthouse lawn,

Herbert Lee
at a Liberty cotton gin
by a state legislator
who was never charged,

Louis Allan,
who watched Lee fall
and feared he was next,
on a cattle grid across town
the day before he would
move to his brother’s
in Milwaukee.

All for the crime, like July,
of helping Blacks
register to vote.

On and on,
like rain
and flames
and pain,

in courtrooms
and in Congress,

country clubs
and the White House,
so many

     hellbent

     to make sure     
     they held off

     for as long as they could

     the start of a whole world.