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Disgrace before the rest of the state, before the nation, and before the world, continues to be the lot for Lake county—a piece of territory endowed with great advantages for the good and peaceful life by the Creator. For the fourth widely publicized time since 1949, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been asked to investigate conditions in Lake county's realm of law enforcement to determine violation of civil rights. In all these instances, there has been violence based upon hot racial prejudice. In all of these lawlessness or gun play played a leading role. First, there was the firing upon the Negro settlement at Groveland as mobs roamed the streets until the National Guard moved in. Then there was the death and the near-death of two state prisoners, wards of the U. S. Supreme Court, as they were being returned, handcuffed together, from the state prison for further trial. Next, there was the eviction of five suspicioned school children from a white school and the subsequent action of lining them up in front of armed deputies for a forced photograph. In this, there was the lawless threat of violence if these children were not driven out of town. And in this there was the side action of the midnight call upon the parents of more suspicioned children—the Taylor family of Eustis— by hoodlums who broke open their door to tell them to get out of town. Now—there is this latest incident of the firing upon a peaceful, lawful assembly over at Umatilla by hooded men. While these things were going on, the State Bever age department had to move into Lake county to conduct a raid on a suspected bolita operator—a proper enforcement of law that belonged to Lake county. That case is still pending because some person, or persons, in the jury was not convinced that the state investigator was telling the truth and so a new trial had to be ordered. In the firing upon the union organizational meeting in Umatilla, an immediate investigation should have been launched, especially since a descrip tion of the automobile in which the hooded men rode was given. But deputies who took over in the absence of Sheriff Willis McCall who was on, and remained on, a boat outing down-state, complained that no one would “cooperate” with them. They were speaking of the frightened Negroes who were the targets of the shotgun pellets, and who know what kind of law enforcement, what kind of justice, there is in Lake county. ‘This is the situation of law enforcement in Lake county. It is of such character as to encourage violence as deplorable as that of the Old West. It is of such character as to trample upon the rights of little children. It is of such character as to turn the eyes of right-thinking people of the nation upon Lake county with such disguist that those eyes will not care to come and see this beautiful, deceptively peace ful-looking piece of God's country. This is not what the leading citizens of Lake county want, we are certain. The grove owner, the banker, the hotel owner, the merchant cannot want Lake county to be a county with a bad reputation for lawlessness, for in the long run they know this means the welfare of all is injured. In this violence to halt union activity, they know the danger of reaction upon the markets of the world, as well as upon the prospective new citizen seeking a place in Florida to retire. Surely, the bloody pages of recent Lake county history will be closed emphatically by the citizens ‘n next year’s election.
Newspaper Details
Mount Dora Topic
Mount Dora, Florida, US
Thu, Oct 27, 1955
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Katie W.
USA 20 Aug 2026
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