The next year, Sweet’s relatives in Ocoee, Florida, lived in the part of town that whites incinerated “in the single bloodiest day in American political history.” Whites went hunting for a black man who had dared approach the ballot box in the 1920 presidential election, and, in the process, killed scores of African Americans and ethnically cleansed the town until it became all-white for nearly sixty years.94 As a result of his experience, Ossian Sweet had packed, among all the moving boxes and satchels, a small arsenal of guns and four hundred pounds of ammunition.95
