[4] 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".
In November 1920, Mose Norman, a prosperous African-American farmer, tried to vote, but was turned away twice after refusing to pay the poll tax on Election Day.
Later that day, some white Ocoee residents were deputized by Orange County Sheriff Deputy Clyde Pounds and charged with arresting Julius "July" Perry and Mose Norman.
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,[5] 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.
"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.
[4] Twenty-eight enslaved persons and Ocoee’s first white settler, the slave owner, James D. Starke, are included in the 1860 Orange County Census.
Beginning in 1888, many African American residents of Ocoee were able to purchase farmland, "bringing them wealth and security often denied to Black folks in the Jim Crow South".
[4] Orange County, as well as the rest of Florida, had been "politically dominated by Southern white Democrats" (also known as Dixiecrats) since the end of Reconstruction.
Three weeks before election day, the Ku Klux Klan threatened the African American community that "not a single Negro would be permitted to vote.
Mose Norman and July Perry, both "prosperous African American landowners in Ocoee," led the local voter registration efforts in Orange County, paying the poll tax for those who could not afford it.
[7] In an effort to preserve white one-party rule, the Ku Klux Klan "marched in full regalia through the streets of Jacksonville, Daytona and Orlando" to intimidate opponents.
[9] Because African Americans had supported the Republican Party since Reconstruction,[7] the Ku Klux Klan threatened Judge Cheney prior to the election.
[10][11] A white supremacist and a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Salisbury bragged about his involvement in the violent oppression and intimidation of African Americans attempting to vote in the previous 1920 election.
[15] Later during the evening, Sam Salisbury, the former chief of police of Orlando,[18] was called to lead a lynch mob to "find and punish Mose Norman.
[20] During the two- to three-hour lull while the whites were recruiting other men, July Perry, injured in the conflict, attempted to flee with the help of his wife into a cane patch.
[24] African-American residents fought back in an evening-long gunfight lasting until as late as 4:45 A.M.,[18] their firearms later found in the ruins after the massacre ended.
[25] The fleeing sought refuge in the surrounding woods or in the neighboring towns of Winter Garden and Apopka, which had substantial populations of black people.
[20] Maggie Genlack and her pregnant daughter died while hiding in her home; their bodies were found partially burned underneath it.
"[24] A local real estate agent and a taxi cab driver told him that about 56 African Americans were killed in the massacre.
Long, and a Baptist minister, Reverend H. K. Hill, both from Orlando, reported that they had heard of 35 African-American deaths in Ocoee as a result of the fires and shootings.
[29] A University of Florida student who interviewed local residents for a history term paper claimed in 1949 that "About thirty to thirty-five [murdered] is the most common estimate of the old timers.
[4] Supporters urged the House Election Committee of Congress to investigate the riot and voter suppression in Florida, with a view to suing under the Fourteenth Amendment, but it failed to act.