The Bush Bros. Racist Crackdown in Florida

For three decades beginning in the 1950's Black Miamians were empowered through Charles R. Hadley's Operation Big Vote. So revered is Hadley, a public park and public elementary school proudly bear his name. But the Charles R. Hadley of the Orlando area, the director of the Orange County Voters League, Ezzie Thomas, today stands accused of a crime in Bush's Florida. Thomas' activism and an unprecedented Black voter turnout was a major factor in the shocking political upset on Feb. 25, 2003 that made Buddy Dyer the first Democratic mayor of Orlando in history. Thomas helped Dyer be reelected on March 9, 2004. Shortly after Dyer's victories, agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) descended on the homes of elderly and infirmed Black absentee voters. Several of those interrogated reported later that agents hiked up pants legs or in some other manner displayed firearms. The FDLE message of intimidation hardly less subtle than a burning cross but Ezzie Thomas went back to work and again turned out large numbers of African-Americans on Nov. 2, 2004. Ezzie Thomas was taken into custody on March 11, 2005 and paraded through a phalanx of news camera to the jailhouse. To paraphrase the charge against Thomas, he believed Black people had the right to vote. [more]