BY HARRY COLVERSTON, GUEST WRITER TO THE TIMES
ORLANDO – Last Saturday I had the opportunity to speak about a largely unknown chapter of Orlando’s history to a class from Rollins College on their field trip to the Wells’Built Museum.
My part of the morning was to give a brief discussion of the lynching of Arthur Henry. I had been the lead researcher on that work with the Alliance for Truth and Justice, the local affiliate of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery which has sought to commemorate the more than 4000 lynchings in America since Reconstruction. Our work resulted in the dedication of a marker to Henry’s memory last December in front of the Museum, an event attended by 43 members of the Henry family.
Arthur’s story began with a shootout with local police in his rented home in the Parramore District after a group of white men had come through the neighborhood shooting it up on Thanksgiving night, 1924. When police entered his darkened home, Henry was wounded along with two white police officers and taken to the Orlando General Hospital. He would be abducted from his bed in the middle of the night, his mutilated body identified by his mother and wife two weeks later in the Conway district.
After Dr. William Wells issued his death certificate, his body would be shipped back to his native Lake City for burial. His story here would conclude with a coroner’s jury reporting that Arthur had died at the hands of “person’s unknown,” a common trope used by all white juries to provide those accused of racial terror murders with impunity for their deadly deeds.
When I asked the students how many of them had ever heard this story, no one raised their hand. That hardly surprises me. I am a sixth generation Floridian, a history major at the University of Florida, and have lived most of my life in Orlando. This story was news to me when the EJI asked our local ATJ group to investigate it.
But I was not alone in that ignorance. In my research on this case, I became connected to the Henry family, scattered across the country since their diaspora out of their Lake City roots. I spoke to 40 different family members via Zoom, relating this horrific story about their kinsman. Not one of them had ever heard that story.
So what happens when unpleasant memories begin to bubble to the surface of the collective consciousness? How do we deal with chapters of our history that disturb us, truths that challenge our sanguine visions of Florida spun from the looms of marketers intent on portraying Florida as a haven of fun in the sun? How do we combat the dissembling that reassured tourists that Florida was a more “moderate” state in terms of racial terrorism than their Southern neighbors when in fact Florida had more lynchings per capita than any state in the country for most of the early 20th century?
Part of the problem today is dealing with governmental restrictions on what can be taught in our classrooms and presented in our libraries. Our governor has made very clear his belief that students should never be made to feel uncomfortable in any presentation of our history. But that raises a question.
At the end of my lecture, I asked the students whether they thought they were always entitled to comfort in their learning of history. That question was largely met with silence which did not surprise me. Perhaps this is not something college freshmen and sophomores have thought much about. And we are all well-trained consumers who have been taught to believe we should always be comfortable.
Ultimately, a young woman of color would break the silence, revealing the elephant in the room. “It’s an assertion of privilege to believe one never has to be uncomfortable in learning our history.” A classmate added, “This history is about discomfort people have had to endure for centuries. Why can’t we be uncomfortable for 30 minutes to learn about it? We need to grow up.”
I am grateful to these young women for their candor and their courage. They give me hope for our state. It’s easy to love a façade presenting all the positive aspects we want the world to see. It’s much harder – but much more honest – to own all of who we are. Unlike our governor, I share these women’s beliefs that we Floridians can handle that history. And as a Floridian who loves our state, warts and all, I believe we have an obligation to do so.
