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He Tried to Vote Twice. By Morning, His Town Was Burning | Ocoee 1920
106 years ago today, on Election Day 1920, Mose Norman tried to vote in Ocoee, Florida. He got turned away, and he went back and tried again. By the next morning July Perry had been lynched in Orlando and Black Ocoee was burning.
Ocoee is in Orange County, Florida. I live in Orange County. This happened in my county, and it happened because people wanted to vote.
I tell it on one clock, from the poll tax Florida wrote into its 1885 constitution to the descendants still asking for their land back in 2025:
Who July Perry was, a landowner who paid other people’s poll taxes out of his own pocket…
The skinny
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