Arthur Henry Memorial Dedication Ceremony
Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds
November 2, 1920: Election day in Ocoee, Florida.
Two African American men tried unsuccessfully to vote. One was lynched, the other escaped. The town was burned by a white mob. Over the next three days, from six to over thirty lost their lives. This story will be told.
By: Valada Flewellyn
January 28, 2020
We all have skin on the rope
Whether a neck on the rope
Or a hand on the rope
We all have skin on the rope
The pain of that connection
Grips us, entangles us
Compels us to examine
Our history, then construct
Tomorrow to manifest the
Wounds that need
More than a band-aid
Wounds that warrant more
Than a cursory examination
We must dissect the
Fibers of our history
Inspect our suspect
Moral Consciousness
Which allows sin to fester
As we turn our heads
Away from the atrocities
That grab our children
Drowning them in the muck
Of our making
Leaving them unprepared
Unprotected but infected
Generation after generation
From our refusal to acknowledge
How we have Failed
Our children…All
We ALL have skin on the rope.
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Coming soon!
A blueprint to provide guidance for folks in other towns who want to do similar work as ATJ, but aren’t sure where to begin.
Was He There?
By Harry Coverston
Was he there that night
When those angry white men strung up Sam Mosely,
His young black body
Glistening with a cold sweat of terror
Out on the edge of Lake City
In the same neck of the woods
Where lynchings always occurred
Hung from a tree and then riddled with bullets
As was the fashion
Across the former Slave Belt of Florida
That deadly Red Summer of 1919
When the Black veterans marched home
From the world war
Did my great uncle share
His brother’s despising of the Klan
My Grandfather’s defiant refusal to accede
To demands he join their clandestine group
(Their hooded membership the worst kept secret in Homestead, Florida)
Willing to risk the retribution
That refusal could have provoked
Retribution that could come in the dark of night
As grown men dressed in ghoulish costumes
Like those worn on Halloween
Would come to set fire to his home
With the torches they otherwise used to burn crosses
All in the name of Jesus, of course….
Was my kinsman at home that night
In this growing community to which he had just moved
Seeking a new start after his own time
In the great war to end all wars
His brand new furniture store downtown
His pride and joy
Had he heard of the deadly plans
To murder Sam Mosely and desecrate his body
Did he simply opt out
Perhaps out of fear
Perhaps out of conscience
Did he dare speak out against this malevolence?
Did he simply pretend not to know?
When news of the lynching
Spread around town the next day
Did he join in the confabulation explaining those bloody deeds
Echoing the talking points
That sought to legitimate them
Talking points for which the newspapers
Would offer a semblance of credibility
Publishing in a one-paragraph cryptic blurb
Buried on an inside page
The lie they had all agreed to –
That Sam Mosely had “forfeited his life”
By “allegedly assaulting a white woman”
Allegations never proven
About yet another Black man
Presumed guilty
His accusers proceeding directly to punishment
I wonder if the purveyors
Of their agreed upon lie
Realize that those who feel the need
To legitimate their attitudes, words or deeds
Unwittingly confess
That they recognize them to be illegitimate…
Was he there that night
Joining the angry mob
Fueled by fear and rage
Lubricated by cheap whiskey
Loudly reassuring themselves
They were rightfully protecting their property
As they saw their women and their children to be
Indeed, they told themselves,
Their very way of life was on the line
I wonder how difficult was the disconnect
From their consciences
That place deep inside where they knew
Knew
That what they were doing was wrong?
Was he swept away by the mindlessness
Of his new fellow townsmen
His own consciousness descending
To the lowest common denominator of the mob?
Was he there that night
Because he shared those racist views
That saw any means
To maintaining white domination
As fair game
Including the use of a human body
To drive home their point
As he attended the sunrise service that next Easter
On the shores of Alligator Lake
Would he make the connection of their deadly deeds
To the Romans who executed the Jesus
Whose resurrection they celebrated
An empire who perfected this terrorist tactic centuries before
The rotting bodies they left dangling from crosses
Lining the road into Jerusalem at Passover
Including the one above whose head a sign read
“This is Jesus, the King of the Jews…”
And whose unwritten post-script included the warning
“…and this is what happens to anyone
Who would presume to be king in Caesar’s Empire.
Do not challenge the imperial order.
We will crush you.”
That morning when they sang
“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”
How many truthfully raised their hands?
Was he there that night?
A century later, his great nephew –
Searching for traces
Of the truncated life of Sam Mosely
Wonders
All the while knowing
There is no way to answer that question now
His children all deceased
The family secrets they might have kept
Dying with them.
But even if my kinsman was not there
There were enough angry white men that night
To engage in an atrocity
One of many that bloody Red Summer of 1919.
And even as I ponder the question at hand
The queasy feeling in my gut
Poses a deeper, more troubling question:
Had our roles been reversed,
Would I have been there, too?
For now my calling is to tell the stories
Entrusted to me
To adamantly refuse
To let the Sam Mosely’s of our common history
Be lost to us
Erased from our collective memory
Repressed from our collective consciousness
Released from our collective conscience
A wise rabbi once said,
“Remembrance is the secret of redemption.”
This day I wrestle with my soul
Pondering the role my kinsman
Might have played in a public atrocity
But even as I do
I refuse to let death have the last word.
This day, I insist that we remember
The Sam Moselys of our state
Taking up once again
The long, hard work of redemption
Of our collective soul.