OCOEE, Fla. – The city of Ocoee marked the 105th remembrance of the 1920 Ocoee Massacre this weekend with a ceremony honoring the victims and descendants of a deadly and violent Election Day attack.
On Nov. 2, 1920, an armed white mob chased Black families and voting-rights advocates from their homes, burning much of Ocoee’s Black community to the ground. Many African Americans were killed or injured, and others were forced to flee the city for safety.
The remembrance ceremony took place Saturday from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Unity Park, 130 N. Cumberland Ave., where more than 200 names are engraved on the Ocoee Massacre Memorial Wall.
[VIDEO: Remembering Ocoee Massacre 105 years later]
Among the names is Richard Allen Franks, who was 18 years old during the attack. His daughter, Gladys Franks Bell, said her father escaped with his siblings by wading through swamps around Lake Apopka with his brother on his back and holding his other siblings’ hands to reach safety in the nearby community of Plymouth.
“My grandfather had told them, if you see any light, anything, you had to hide because the Klan was out there — they were trying to kill,” Bell said. “My father carried them right through the swamp, through the water, through everything around that lake, in order to get to safety.”
Before the massacre, the Franks family made a good living from their farms and orange groves. Bell said almost everything was lost that night.
“I think about it as if they could have done a lot,” she said.
In 2020, Florida officials issued a proclamation honoring the victims, and a scholarship was made in their honor, and the city of Ocoee created the memorial wall to recognize those who suffered.
Bell has also written a book about her family’s experiences named “Visions through my father’s eyes.”
“It’s good because I think people need to know what happened,” she said. “It’s been sugarcoated for too long, and it’s been kept under the rug too long.”
As the community gathers to remember, Bell said she hopes the state will go further in addressing the massacre’s legacy.
“To the legislators — I wish we’d get more than dinner during this time of celebration,” she said. “They should look into reparations.”
The “Ocoee Remembers Memorial Wall” ceremony will serve as both a tribute and a call to ensure that the massacre is never forgotten.