I'm Sean Braswell. Welcome to Flashback.

We're doing something a little different in this episode.

We're running a special series about the worst incident of election violence in American history,

an event that is almost forgotten today.

It happened a century ago on Election Day, 1920,

in the town of Ocogee, Florida.

The victims were hundreds of black residents.

The perpetrators were their white neighbors.

And the reason was that black citizens

had gone to the polls and tried to vote.

Our grandmother was one of the most bravest, females, and the word brave is probably not strong enough.

She was not afraid of anything nor anybody.

Nobody.

That's Janice Nelson and her brother, Pastor Stephen Nunn.

Their grandmother was Caritha Perry Caldwell.

She was a constant presence in their lives growing up in Tampa, Florida. She just decided for whatever reason to talk to Steve and I when we were kids to just, you know, tell us this story, really.

The story of what happened in Caritha's hometown of Coe, Florida on Election Day, 1920.

I remember driving over to her home that particular morning because I wanted her to make me breakfast.

She had the old iron skillet pan and she would fry up some rib bacon and grids and eggs.

Here's what Caritha Perry wanted her grandchildren to know.

When she was a teenager, her father, Julius July Perry and his good friend, Mose Norman,

were prosperous landowners.

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