Florida’s Board of Education recently released new Black history standards. They require that middle school students learn “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied to their personal benefit.” The board also mandated that the high school curriculum for the 1920 Ocoee, Florida Election Day Massacre include “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” The new standards, the director of communications for the Board declared, incorporated “all components of African American history: the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Apparently, Board members don’t know anything about — or want to erase — the actual history of slavery and racism in their state.
Here are some facts that should be included in the Florida public school curriculum:
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, about 12.5 million Africans were transported against their will to the Americas. About 1.8 million of them did not survive the journey, or have an opportunity to become “unpaid interns” and develop skills that could be applied to their personal benefit.
In 1845, when Florida became a state, its constitution forbade the General Assembly from passing laws for the emancipation of slaves. In 1847, the legislature required all free Blacks in the state to have a white guardian. In 1848, a felony committed by a free Black became punishable by a whipping not exceeding 100 lashes. That same year, all free Blacks were ordered to leave Florida; anyone who refused to comply could be sold into servitude for 99 years. In 1855, free Blacks were forbidden to enter the state. Little wonder that the fraction of Florida’s Black population that was free, 5.2 percent in 1830, had plummeted to 1.5 percent when the Civil War began.
In Florida, as elsewhere, slavery was a cruel and brutal institution. Enslaved people who tried to learn to read and write, skills that could be applied to their personal benefit, were routinely punished. In 1856, whether they were blacksmiths, carpenters, cooks or field hands, slaves were forbidden to hire out their time; masters allowing them to do so were subject to a fine. Plantations, where most enslaved persons worked, were usually run by overseers, most of whom did not hesitate to use whips, stocks, branding irons or other means of physical punishment. Many overseers and slave owners separated families, raped women, and kept their own children in bondage. The mortality rate for slaves in Florida was much higher than for whites. Of 122 deaths in Leon County in 1850, for example, 97 were slaves, 62 of them under the age of 6.
In the post-Reconstruction era, Jim Crow laws were enacted; schools and public transportation were segregated; poll taxes, grandfather clauses, intimidation and violence prevented Black Floridians from voting. Convict leasing (of individuals arrested on trumped up crimes like vagrancy) and debt peonage trapped Blacks in state-sponsored forms of involuntary servitude.
In the early twentieth century, a resurgent Ku Klux Klan contributed to race massacres like the 1920 election day outrage in Ocoee. The incident began when Moses Norman, a labor broker who negotiated on behalf of Blacks working on farms, was not permitted to vote because he allegedly had not paid his poll tax. After consulting with a local judge, Norman, who maintained he had paid the tax, tried again to cast his ballot, and was met by a large, angry crowd, including members of the KKK. Norman told Julius Perry, his business partner, that he had decided to leave town (and apparently moved to New York).
That night, an armed white mob appeared at Perry’s home, looking for Norman. Perry and members of his family stood their ground, shooting and killing two men. Perry was arrested, but about 250 vigilantes removed him from the county jail, lynched him, and placed a sign next to the body, which read, “This is what we do to niggers who vote.” The mob subsequently burned 22 homes, two churches, and a fraternal lodge. Newspapers reported that six Blacks were killed, but witnesses claimed that “wagonloads” with 30 to 60 bodies had been dumped into a trench near a lake. The leader of the mob was later elected mayor.
Blacks fled, often leaving their property behind or selling it at a loss. By 1930, the number of Blacks in Ocoee had dropped from 255 to 2. Ocoee remained a whites-only “sundown” town until the 1970s.
In 2018, Ocoee issued a proclamation acknowledging and expressing regret for the massacre. In 2020, the City Commission and mayor signed a formal apology. Neither document mentioned acts of violence perpetrated by African Americans.
Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, gave voice to what should be universal outrage. The new standards, he claimed, “are an attempt to bring our country back to a 19th century America where Black life was not valued, nor our rights protected. It is imperative that we understand that … slavery and Jim Crow … represent the darkest period in American history.”
Instead of doubling down on its white-washing of Black history mandates, Florida’s Board of Education should repeal them, and authorize instruction that enhances students’ understanding of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the 1920 Election Day Massacre in Ocoee.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Isaac Kramnick) of “Cornell: A History, 1940-2015”. David Wippman is President of Hamilton College.