Chapter 4: Religious and Fraternal Organizations

Posted by Geoffrey Cravero

Like other rural Black communities, Ocoee was not isolated from the national dialogue on race, equality, and the vote. Although Black citizens faced enormous barriers to voting and political engagement, they protested the violations and prohibitions of their citizenship and they provided social and charitable relief through religious and secular organizations. Churches, mutual benefit societies, and women’s groups were at the heart of the Black community. The overlap of Black fraternal, religious, and humanitarian organizations with groups such as the NAACP meant that even if a community did not have a lodge, branch, or club for all national organizations, they had access to, knowledge of, and participation in initiatives and efforts for political, social, and economic equality.

Prince Hall Masonic Lodge

Prince Hall Masons of Ocoee Lodge, No. 66. July Perry is listed as Senior Warden and Valentine Hightower as Treasurer.

Many community leaders were members of the Prince Hall Masons, the Knights of Pythias and other fraternal organizations who played an integral role in challenging oppression. Grand Master David Daniel Powell of the Brothers of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida set forth an initiative to encourage his fellow Prince Hall Masons to register voters for the 1920 Presidential Election. Ocoee Lodge #66 was burned to the ground during the Ocoee Massacre.

Knights of Pythias

Knights of Pythias lodge and the home of W.W. Andrews – Jacksonville, Florida. c.1919. (Courtesy of Florida Memory.)

The Colored Knights of Pythias played a pivotal role in registering Black members across the state of Florida to vote. A national fraternal organization founded in the 1880s after Black men were denied membership in the White brotherhood of the same name, by the early twentieth century the Pythians boasted the highest rates of membership of Black individuals of any fraternal order in Florida. The Pythians operated under the three core tenets of friendship, charity, and benevolence that inspired the organization’s activism.

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1912 Orlando City Directory. (Image courtesy of STARS, UCF.)

Self-empowerment and empowering others shaped the political and social activities of the group. Though the order provided practical needs such as insurance and welfare to members’ widows and children, the Knights of Pythias also engaged in a program of uplift that promoted Black empowerment.  When it came to voting on Pythian issues, they championed full participation where every member had an equal voice. This same spirit seems to have applied to Pythians’ attitudes about voting rights, and it especially was the case for the 1920 election.

In the years leading up to the election, Florida Grand Chancellor W.W. Andrews declared that Black Americans were duly authorized citizens and participants in American democracy and “What the [N]egro will be in this country depends more on what he does for himself than on what others may do for him.” At the annual state lodge convention in 1920, a Florida woman’s club praised the Colored Knights of Pythias for requiring every member of the organization to be a registered voter and to pay their poll taxes.

National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (1896-1914), National Association of Colored Women (1914-present)

Meeting of the Southeastern Branch of the National Association of Colored Women. (Photo courtesy of RICHES.)

Founded in 1896 in Washington, D.C., the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs organized around the principles that included protection for women and children, education, racial harmony, and woman suffrage.  Their motto, “Lifting as We Climb,” indicated that while they fought for the rights of women, they believed that all Blacks should enjoy the benefits of equality and full citizenship.  The first president of NACWC was Mary Church Terrell whose diplomatic and organizational skills enabled the organization to climb to 100,000 members by 1924.  Members in the early years of the NACWC came from the Black elite, but by 1920 middle and working class Black women joined as well.

Mary McLeod Bethune was a member of the NACW and served as president of the organization from 1924 to 1928.  She was also president of the Florida Branch of NACW. Once women won suffrage in 1920 she bicycled from door to door in Daytona urging Blacks to “eat your bread without butter, but pay your poll tax!” On election day, Bethune marched at the head of Blacks going to the polls, having advised that they should go together to minimize the threat of violence.

In Orange County, there were chapters of NACW in Orlando (Parramore) and Eatonville.

Colored women’s clubs, their presidents, and locations in Central Florida in the early twentieth century

  • Woman Development Club – Mrs. A. Detwyller – Orlando
  • Harriet Tubman Mothers’ Club – Mrs. Anna E. Hudson – Tampa
  • Amanda Smith Club – Mrs. Lucy Moore – Daytona
  • Jennie Dean Club – Mrs. Flora Brooks – Daytona
  • Sojourner Truth – Mrs. S.B. Alexander – Ocala
  • Colored Women Federated Club – Mrs. F. Hughes – St. Petersburg
  • Child’s Conservative League – Mrs. Josie L. James – Daytona
  • Civic Improvement Club – Miss N.H. Gantling – Daytona
  • Emma Freeman Club – Mrs. Martha R. Williams – Port Orange
  • Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute Club – Miss Irene V. Roberts – Daytona
  • Ever Green – Mrs. P.E. Bacon – Daytona
  • Hungerford Normal and Industrial School – Mrs. E.B. Baker – Maitland
  • Eastern Star Community Club – Mrs. I.J. Alston – Tampa
  • Needle Craft Club – Mrs. E.V. Patterson – Tampa

Other Colored women’s clubs, their presidents, and locations in Florida in the early twentieth century

  • Old Folks Home – Miss Eartha M.M. White – Jacksonville
  • West End Fidelity – Mrs. S.F. King – Jacksonville
  • Excelsior Reading Circle – Mrs. Louise A. Sullivan – Gainesville
  • Florida F. and M.C. Women’s Club – Mrs. C.H. Martin – Tallahassee
  • Dorcas – Mrs. M.L. Trapp – Palatka
  • Excelsior – Mrs. M.M. Drakford – Palatka
  • Woman’s Literary Art and Social Club – Mrs. J.A. Manker – Live Oak

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

A flag flown from an upper story window of the NAACP headquarters on 69 Fifth Avenue, New York City, announcing that “a man was lynched yesterday.” (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.)

The NAACP was founded in 1909 and is the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United States.  By 1920, the NAACP had 100,000 members in 40 states and the District of Columbia and 353 branches.  The NAACP defended Blacks in court against inequities in the law.  NAACP lawyers tested the constitutionality of the law, most notably in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954.  As part of their work they investigated and documented lynchings in the United States.  This work would bring Walter White, assistant field agent, to Orange County in November 1920. W.E.B. DuBois edited the NAACP’s monthly journal, The Crisis.

In 1920 the NAACP called on Black fraternal organizations to sponsor campaigns that would encourage their members to register, pay the poll tax, and vote.

Religious Life

Black church and school in Tampa, 1927. (Photo courtesy of Florida Memory.)

The churches in Ocoee anchored the community, with the two neighborhoods identified as Methodist and Baptist.  Churches supported faith, encouraged hope, provided charity, gave song to dreams, and provided a forum for social justice.  Black ministers were often the bridge between congregations and the white community.  Church structures became the first schools in Black communities before either the Julius Rosenwald Foundation or county and municipal governments built schoolhouses for Black children.  Black Ocoee supported two churches, an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and Friendship Missionary Baptist Church.

WPA church records for African Methodist Episcopal Church and Friendship Baptist Church. (Image courtesy of Florida Memory.)

The AME denomination has its origins in Philadelphia.  In 1794, Richard Allan a former slave, became the first pastor of Bethel AME and in 1816 a court decision empowered Blacks to establish a separate institution, the AME Church.  During the Civil War, missionaries from northern states came South to establish churches among the freedmen.

Black Missionary Baptist Churches follow familiar Baptist beliefs in local congregational autonomy, salvation by faith, adult baptism and membership, and the authority of the scripture. The Black Missionary Church emerged in the 1880s, when former slaves who had been reared in the Baptist traditions established the Foreign Mission Baptist Convention, the American Baptist Convention in 1886, and the Baptist National Education Convention in 1893.  The three organizations united to form the National Baptist Convention in 1895.  Early in the 20th century the Convention split into the National Baptist Convention of America and the National Baptist Convention USA.

Black Citizenship and WWI

WWI Service Card for Jerome Betsey of Ocoee. (Image courtesy of Florida Memory.) For more examples of service cards from Black residents of Ocoee see Florida Memory by clicking here.

“We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting. Make way for Democracy! We saved it in France and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America, or know the reason why.” -W.E.B. DuBois, “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis, XVIII (May, 1919), p. 13.

When the United States joined World War I in 1917, the federal government instituted a draft for all eligible men between the ages of 21 and 31, including Black men. Lafayette Hamiter registered on the day of the first draft on June 5, 1917, and later enlisted on November 28, 1917. He was assigned to Company C of the 312th Labor/Service Battalion of the Quartermaster Corps (QMC). Like many other Black men who enlisted or were selected for military service, Lafayette Hamiter was placed with a battalion that experienced little combat training to appease Southern White supremacy fears of weapons in Black hands.

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USS President Lincoln. (Public domain.)

Lafayette Hamiter was born in Alabama in August 1886 (though some of his records indicate 1884 or 1888) as the second of three children to Jack and Annie Hamiter. The family moved sometime between 1888 and 1900 to Ocoee, where the 1900 census lists Jack Hamiter as a homeowner. As residents of Black Ocoee, the Hamiters enjoyed similar economic prosperity to other Black citizens there like July Perry and Moses Norman; the Hamiters were land clearers and received one acre for every two that they cleared. Along with land in Ocoee, the Hamiters also owned property in Sanford and Lockhart, demonstrating how Central Florida’s economic opportunities for Black citizens evoked racial tensions. Though it is unclear where they met, Lafayette Hamiter married Viola Polk/Peck on September 1, 1912 in Orlando. As part of the 312th, Lafayette Hamiter was promoted from Corporal to Sergeant on March 6, 1918. On March 30, 1918, he and the rest of his regiment departed the U.S. from Hoboken, New Jersey, on board the USS President Lincoln and landed in France in early April. By July 1918, Lafayette Hamiter was promoted to First Sergeant. It is unlikely that Hamiter experienced much direct combat. As the name of his battalion implies, and as part of the QMC, Hamiter and his company would have been tasked with service duties that may have ranged from food service to port operations, unloading and loading ships.

USS South Bend with troops on board, 1919. Naval History and Heritage Command. “NH 104596 USS South Bend.” Accessed January 27, 2021. https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-104000/NH-104596.html.

The assignment of menial labor was necessary to keep the US Army running, but by specifically relegating Black units to these tasks, Army officials continued to maintain the traditions of White supremacy. Despite this, Black draftees in France were subject to a different kind of colonialism, but one that recognized their value as soldiers. In fact, Hamiter wrote home to his wife, Viola, in the summer of 1918 to say “that the people are treating him fine.” When he and his peers returned home on June 19, 1919 on board the USS South Bend, they brought back with them not only the horrors of war, but the experience of different racial treatment, which they hoped to enjoy in the U.S. It is likely that even in Central Florida, where Black families experienced such economic prosperity— or perhaps because of this prosperity— the re-introduction of Black war veterans who hoped for more equitable treatment inflamed an already tense situation.

Hamiter’s parents still resided in Ocoee in 1920, but he and his wife, Viola, moved to Orlando, as recorded by that year’s census. He worked as a meat packer. The couple also roomed a single man, William Proctor, 31, who worked as a private chauffeur. Proctor, interestingly, had also served in France around the same time as Hamiter, though Proctor had been part of the 317th Sanitary Train, 92nd Division, assigned to a field hospital.

After the traumatic events of November 2, 1920 and the following days, Hamiter’s parents fled Ocoee, as did many other Black families who escaped death. They moved to Sanford where they held property.

Lafayette Hamiter died in June 1921 in his mid-thirties and according to his death certificate, his demise was attributed to a heart valve issue. Viola Hamiter gave birth to their son, Jack Henry, just three months later on September 12, 1921. In 1923, she remarried to William Proctor. The new Proctor family moved at some point to Philadelphia, PA, and in 1943 Jack Henry Hamiter enlisted in the U.S. Army like his father before him.

The Florida Metropolis (Jacksonville, FL). “Grand Chancellor Andrews’ Official Visits.” April 1, 1920, 15. Provided by the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida.

Green, S.W., Joseph L. Jones, and E.A. Williams. History and Manual of the Colored Knights of Pythias. Nashville: National Baptist Publishing Board, 1917.

The Ocala Evening Star. “Colored K. of P. Convention.” May 18, 1920, 4. Accessed October 29, 2020. Newspapers.com.

Orlando Evening Star. “Negro Pythians Bring Convention to Close.” May 24, 1918, 1. Accessed October 29, 2020. Newspapers.com.

Ortiz, Paul. Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

Tallahassee Democrat. “K.P. Convention Here Next Week.” May 14, 1915, 1. Accessed October 29, 2020. Newspapers.com.

The Tampa Times. “Negro K. of P. Meeting Here.” May 20, 1919, 8. Accessed October 29, 2020. Newspapers.com.