ORLANDO, Fla. — Allen Franks was just 18 when he led five siblings hand-in-hand and carried a sixth, his disabled brother, on his back through swampy woods out of Ocoee, away from a mob of white men firing rifles and burning Black homes 100 years ago on Election Night.
The kids followed the getaway plan their parents made in the wake of Ku Klux Klan marches just weeks earlier in Orlando, Winter Garden and Ocoee as a warning to Blacks thinking of voting in that year's presidential election, said Gladys Franks Bell, Allen's daughter.
"They knew trouble was coming," said Bell, now 81, and living in Plymouth.
