ReImagining the Ocoee Showcase: A Plan for Visual Representation of

the Imagined but Undocumented

Elizabeth Hallman School of Visual Art and Design, The University of Central Florida

Abstract: The Ocoee Showcase, a mobile historic tour which highlights a racial incident in Ocoee, Florida, is examined. The author discusses various methods of producing visual images without photographs. The author believes that the project had conflicting goals and that putting the historical information in a website designed for sedentary viewing might allow the user to gain a more accurate view of the incident.

1 INTRODUCTION In Fall 2011, the Interactive Story class at The University of Central Florida created an interactive project that would combine two goals: “getting people to walk more” and bringing diverse groups together in a community. The inchoate project coalesced into a walking tour of Ocoee, with the focus on an incident in 1920 that resulted in numerous deaths and the overnight eviction of African Americans from the town. The events of the 1920 Ocoee Riot (also known as the Ocoee Massacre) can be summarized briefly as follows: On November 2, 1920, a landowning African American named Mose Norman tried to vote and was turned away. After speaking with Judge John Cheney, in Orlando, Norman returned to the polls, and following an altercation, he was never seen again. Burly Jones, the African American servant of Captain Sims, told whites that July Perry, another prominent land owning African American, had several Negroes at his house. A group of white men led by Sam Salisbury visited Perry, and a shoot out ensued on Perry’s property. Perry shot and killed two of them. A mob returned, captured Perry, and took him to the jail in Orlando. While he was in jail, a white

mob entered, seized Perry, and took him to a location near the Orlando Country Club (some accounts mention Country Club Drive and others list Westmoreland) and lynched him. The same night, a white mob burned down one of the two Black neighborhoods, the “Methodist Quarters”, which was on the north side of town. (The Baptist Quarters, the other Black neighborhood was on the southern end of town.) In addition to all homes in the Methodist Quarters, two churches and a masonic lodge were torched. Black residents who had their homes burned fled during the night. Within days, the entire African American population – about 500 people – left Ocoee for Apopka, Tampa, or other towns or cities. Ocoee was known as a “sundown town,” and no Black person would stay there after dark. Not until the 1970s did Ocoee have any Black residents. 2 THE OCOEE SHOWCASE Because the Ocoee Showcase was to be a walking tour, a decision was made to limit the tour to a few blocks close to the central historic district. Unfortunately, many of the key events in the story took place outside of the walking space. As a result, many of the nodes in the Ocoee Showcase contain filler

material, such as information about when the Bank of Ocoee closed. Each node in the Ocoee Showcase can be accessed by tapping (or clicking if on a desktop) a numerical marker on a Google map. The user can also access nodes from a Marker List. Information is organized as follows: 1) Introduction; 2) Jazz in the 1920s; 3) Political Climate of 1920; 4) The Ocoee Riot; 5) Withers Maguire House; 6) Methodist Quarters Church Burning; 7) Methodist Quarters; 8) Strange Fruit (song); 9) Florida Midland Rail Report; 10) The Polls; 11) White Section of Town; 12) Ocoee Youth of 1920; 13) Bank of Ocoee; 14) Local Dining; 15) Sims House; 16) Ocoee Women’s Club; 17) Racism; 18) A White View of Segregation; and 19) Richard Franks Revisits. Nodes 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 16, 18, and 19 are brief fictional narratives written and read by Ocoee High School students. The Florida Midland Rail Report and Bank of Ocoee provide snippets of information about landmarks, and by clicking 2 (Jazz in the 1920s) and 8 (Strange Fruit), the user hears songs with lyrics about racism and lynching. A survey conducted during a conference of digital content creators revealed that 75% of attendees believed that emotional resonance was more important to content than quantity of information or clarity. By this standard, the fictional audio accounts created for the Ocoee Showcase could be considered effective, and the limited depth of the historical information would not be a problem. Unfortunately, if the user had wished to find a factual and complete narrative of the Ocoee Riot/Massacre, he or she might learn more by conducting a quick Google search.

While researching the Ocoee Riot/Massacre, the researchers discovered newspaper

articles, theses, and oral histories but very few pictures of the African American neighborhoods. Additionally, exact locations of the polls, the two churches, and the Masonic temple could not be pinpointed. In the author’s opinion, establishing actual locations of events is fundamental to a geo-located walking tour.

3 VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS

Lack of visual resources was considered to be unimportant to the project since users would access the showcase on cell phones, which have small screens. In the author’s opinion, however, visual reconstructions – 3D or 2D – would have enhanced the project. The website Planning Kit for a Quality Site for Small and Medium Sized Museums states, "a virtual reconstruction may sometimes offer a more powerful aid than either written text or traditional graphic and audio-visual media." Three levels of reconstruction include 1) reconstructions based on actual documentation 2) reconstructions based on clues, and 3) uncertain reconstructions which elaborate on documents (Museo & Web Planning Kit). If virtual reconstructions of nonextant buildings had been created for the Ocoee Showcase, they would have been reconstructions based on documents such as original property deeds.

In Rome Reborn, an ambitious project created by the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory at The University of Virginia, ancient Rome is recreated in 3D and embedded in Google Earth. This project divided buildings into two categories. Class I included buildings and landmarks with well documented location and appearance. Although the existence of Class II buildings was documented, the exact location and

appearance was unknown (Wells, Frischer, Ross & Deller). Most of the sites mentioned in the Ocoee Showcase would fit this classification. Pictures from the Rome Reborn site are not shown, due to copyright, but they may be seen online at http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu.

Google Sketch-Up is a free, open source program that offers models of buildings created by users.. A one-minute searches for “shack”, “cracker house”, and “vernacular” produced 3D models, that with minimal effort, could be used to create an image of farmworkers’ homes in the Methodist Quarters.

Figure 1. “Shack” is an example of user created and shared 3D model available on Google SketchUp 8.0.

Figure 2. “Florida Scene” by Darryl Smith (Google SketchUp 8.0)

Although a true 3D representation (animated

or still) would be illuminating, it would be impractical, especially for a tour designed for smart phones, because of loading time.

The House of Olbrich utilizes an iPhone Augmented Reality app to show how an Art Nouveau building in Darmstadt, Germany looked before renovations (Keil, Zollner, Becker, Weintrapper, Engelke, & Wuest, 2011). Although the technical aspects of this app are beyond the scope of this paper, The House of Olbrich project does show that a reconstructed visual image can be used in a mobile historical tour. The creators of The House of Olbrich app decided to style the AR images with the look of architectural drawings rather than to try to create a semi-realistic image (Keil, et al).

Figure 3. The House of Olbrich app

Creators of some projects forego reconstruction of non-extant subject matter. In his article, "Territory as Interface: Design for Mobile Experiences," Michael Longford describes an alternative to VR and AR. Urban Archeology: Sampling the Park, created by Mobile Digital Commons Network relies only on embedded information. Longford says, "Rather than constructing virtual worlds and experiences, we can now embed information into ambient social interactions that are played out in the physical world. Each of these projects treats “territory as interface” creating networked

environments that seek to connect the physical to the virtual in ways the augment everyday experiences rather than replacing them with artificial virtual worlds..." (Longford, 2007). In the "Sampling the Park" installation, media files were attached to GPS coordinates. The user clicks on or touches a "hot spot" and an audio clip, accompanied by still images, plays.

Figure 4. Sampling the Park installation

The Ocoee Showcase resembles the "embedded information" model. Whereas it did not succeed in providing visual images of 1920 Ocoee, it did encourage collaboration from various contributors.

4 PROPOSED SOLUTION

The author proposes using the historical research gathered for the Ocoee Showcase, along with the software created by UCF student Pedro Silva to create a separate website about The Ocoee Riot (aka The Ocoee Massacre). By not confining the story to an area that could be walked, one could provide a more thorough presentation of the events of November 2-3, 1920.

The map would include Orlando and would include the following markers: 1) Polls (downtown historic Ocoee; 2) Orange County Courthouse 3) July Perry’s home; 4) the jail (possibly in the Orange County Courthouse); 5) the lynching site (near Orlando Country Club); 6) the Methodist Quarter (south of Fullers Cross Road); 7)

arrow to Apopka; and 8) arrow to Tampa, to which July Perry’s wife Estella fled. Other possible markers would include The Ocoee Reconciliation Team (in Ocoee) and the Democracy Forum (in Apopka). Information markers on these two organizations would provide information on their differing views regarding the Riot / Massacre.

Figure 5. Partial schematic of proposed map with markers. 5 CONCLUSION

When in the planning stages of any project, a group should see if its goals are in conflict with each other. The Ocoee Showcase attempted to motivate people to walk and at the same time educate them about a controversial and painful chapter in local history. Limiting geolocated markers to the walkable, picturesque portion of town excluded key locations in the story. Perhaps a better goal would have been to create a walking tour that focused on the actual

history of the sites within the walkable area. A separate website about the Riot / Massacre could hold more information and images, and the user – from wherever he or she viewed the site – could gain more accurate information about the Ocoee Riot / Massacre.

REFERENCES Keil, J., Zollner, M., Becker, M.,

Weintapper, F., Engelke, T., Wuest, H. (2011). The House of Olbrich: An Augmented Reality Tour through Architectural History. Mixed and Augmented Reality – Arts, Media and Humanities (ISMAR-AMH), 2011 IEEE International Symposium On, pp. 15-18. doi: 10.1109/ISMAR-AMH.2011.6093651

Longford, M. (2007). Territory as

Interface Design for Mobile Experiences. WI: Journal of Mobile Media. (1) Retrieved from http://wi.hexagon.ca/?p=16

Mason, M. (2011). User Experience and

Mobile System for Museums: the contribution of Information Architecture. Retrieved from http://www.iasummit.it/2011/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/mason_def.pdf

Museo&Web Planning Kit for a Quality

Site for Small and Medium Sized Museums. Retrieved from http://www.minervaeurope.org/structure/workinggroups/userneeds/prototipo/protomuseo/patrimonio/virtuale_e.html

Wells, A., Frisher, B. Ross, D., & Deller,

C. Rome Reborn in Google Earth. Retrieved from http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/rome_reborn_2_documents/papers/Wells2_Frischer_Rome_Reborn.pdf