Wilkes Honors College Professor to aid Remembrance of the Ocoee Election Day Massacre of 1920 
by William O’Brien | Wednesday, Feb 24, 2021
William O’Brien, Ph.D., has been invited to serve as a member of the Ocoee Election Day Riots Historical Review and Dedication Committee. Formed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the committee’s mandate is to name/rename state park facilities and other potential sites after victims of the Ocoee Massacre of November 2-3, 1920, near Orlando, Florida.Ìý
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The massacre was perpetrated by a white lynch mob in retribution for attempts to exercise Black voting rights. The violent event marks the deadliest election day in American history.Ìý Ìý
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Dr. O’Brien is a professor of Environmental Studies and chair of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College on ¼ø»Æʦapp's John D. MacArthur Campus at Jupiter.Ìý Ìý
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He is the author of  Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South  (University of Massachusetts Press and Library of American Landscape History, 2016).  Ìý