As the 26th Annual Ocoee Founders’ Day Festival kicks off today, Mayor Rusty Johnson finds himself again defending the jamboree from detractors. State Sen. Randolph Bracy, D-Ocoee, is the latest critic to speak out, writing in an Orlando Sentinel op-ed the festival “irreverently marginalizes" horrors heaped on black residents a century ago. He wants the two-day festival renamed and moved to another time of year because it frequently falls on or near the anniversary of the Ocoee Massacre of 1920. An armed white mob rampaged through the community’s black quarters on Nov. 2, 1920, burning homes and churches and forcing hundreds of blacks to flee the area, never to return. Julius “July” Perry, a black labor broker, was wounded then captured by the mob -- and lynched several hours later in Orlando. “A little sensitivity is necessary to honor what happened,” Bracy said.
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