My research started with the closest recorded lynching to where I now live in Florida, Isaac Barrett in St. Johns County. Once I identified Isaac’s name, it was relatively easy to find out the circumstances of his lynching and the trouble surrounding the County's recognizing that it happened. I decided to look further into the lynchings in surrounding counties —Volusia (Daytona Beach), Putnam County, Clay County, Duval County (Jacksonville), and Orange County (Orlando) —where I lived for over 20 years.
What I discovered was troubling, not so much for reading through the horrid details but for the lack thereof. In most incidents, there was only a notation that it had occurred. Far more often than not, the victims were unknown, and the date was only given a range, sometimes spanning years. I thought this was no different than the Casual Killing Act of 1669 and qualified immunity today. One thing all the lynchings had in common was that no one was held accountable, even in cases where the names of some of those responsible were publicly known.
In most cases, no reason was given for the murders. When a cause was given, it often had to do with insulting a white woman or man. Some involved financial disputes with the landowners, who treated their sharecroppers exactly like slaves, which allegedly ended in 1865. There are no records compiled on lynchings before 1877 and the end of Reconstruction. Not that lynchings didn’t happen, they were just called something else. Before 1877, lynchings were often referred to as “mob justice,” “summary executions,” “vigilante justice,” or simply “punishment by citizens.” These terms masked the racial and political violence of the acts, especially in the antebellum and Reconstruction-era South.
Another commonality was the lack of press coverage. When an article did appear, it was often from a paper hundreds of miles away. Lynchings were rarely given local coverage. Lynchings were rarely given local coverage because newspapers often acted as gatekeepers of community image, suppressing stories that exposed racial violence or implicated local authorities. When covered, lynchings were typically framed to justify the mob or obscure the brutality. When July Perry was dragged from an Orlando jail and lynched after attempting to vote in the 1920 election. The Orlando Sentinel called him a “Negro Rioter” and said he’d “shot and killed a white man,” omitting that he was standing his ground against a mob at his home.
On November 2, 1920, white citizens from Ocoee, Orlando, and nearby Winter Garden shot and killed an unknown number of black citizens after two men, Mose Norman and July Perry, tried to vote. In what the Orlando Sentinel called “The Ocoee Race Riot,” they treated it as if it were a black uprising. The headline the next day included, “RACE TROUBLE AT OCOEE CLAIMS 2 WHITE VICTIMS.” The number of black people murdered has never been verified. Estimates range from 37 to 500. Everyone who was not killed was burned out and forced to leave. The town remained all-white for the next 40 years. July Perry was initially arrested and taken to an Orlando jail. He was then taken from that jail by a mob, shot multiple times, and then strung up and left hanging from an Orlando light post. According to the Chicago Defender, a sign was left nearby saying, “This Is What We Do To Niggers That Vote.”
On Sunday, January 13, 2019, the Orlando Sentinel ran a front-page article, “It’s now our turn to apologize.” It came after the new Governor “pardoned” the Groveland Four, victims of a different event twenty miles away, when four young black men were falsely accused of raping a white girl. One was killed during his capture. The local Sheriff shot two while he transported them from the State Prison to testify in a hearing. He claimed they were trying to escape. Evidence that proved he actually murdered one and wounded the other was kept hidden by the FBI.
The Sentinel apologized for their role, including misleading coverage and looking the other way, which allowed that Sheriff, Willis V. McCall, to continue serving for 21 years after murdering one of the Groveland Four and seriously wounding another. The Sentinel never apologized for its coverage of what they have referred to as the Ocoee Race Riot.
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, roughly 1 in 4 victims were in police custody — either jailed, being transported, or under direct supervision — when abducted by mobs. In many cases, sheriffs and jailers either stepped aside or actively facilitated the mob’s access. What isn’t usually said out loud is that law enforcement was infiltrated by the Klan, Red Shirts, and White Leagues, often comprising the leadership. The police wasn’t where you went to get justice, they were the ones meteing it out as they saw fit. It’s why they can’t be trusted today in cases like Sandra Bland, George Floyd, Tyre Nichols, and Breonna Taylor. Police are doing now what they have always done.
The last thing I saw far too often were large crowds, all-white, usually containing children right up front so their view wouldn’t be obscured. People weren’t ashamed of what they were doing. They posed for the camera, some laughing while body parts including penises and skin were cut off and handed out as souvenirs. Before there was such a thing as flash mobs, there were lynch mobs where the whole town came out to enjoy the show, the white citizens, anyway.
Across time and geography, lynchings in America shared haunting commonalities: they were public spectacles of racial control, often carried out with impunity and framed as justice rather than terror. The victims — overwhelmingly Black men — were frequently accused without evidence, denied due process, and killed in front of crowds that included law enforcement, clergy, and children. Whether the pretext was an alleged crime, a breach of racial etiquette, or simply economic independence, the true purpose was always the same: to reinforce white supremacy through fear. The silence that followed — through press omission, legal inaction, and community complicity — was not incidental but integral to the violence itself. Naming these patterns is essential to honoring the dead and dismantling the systems that allowed such terror to flourish.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of William Spivey's work on Medium. And if you dig his words, buy the man a coffee.