The bus pulled into the Jacksonville Florida Greyhound station. I did my research to find out exactly what the Jacksonville station looked like back in 1957. The only animation was of the bus pulling up to the station and stopping. I already had a painting of the bus from earlier when I animated the battle line. I duplicated that painting and erased the background and then imported that image with the transparent background into this scene. The animation consisted of setting a starting position just off screen for the bus and then a stopping position and creating key frames for those two positions in Adobe Premiere Pro. Another nice feature of the program is that it had an ease in setting which nicely decelerated the bus to a stop.
The wheels don’t spin but once the sound of the bus stopping was added the scene seemed realistic enough. Sound effects made a big difference in adding believably. Jacksonville has a reputation for its racism, notably an incident known as Axe Handle Saturday when white beat black with axe handles in 1960 which was three years after this story takes place.
This short film is now on display at the Orange County Regional History Center (65 East Central Blvd, Orlando FL) in the exhibition titled, Yesterday This Was Home, about the 1920 Ocoee Voting Day Massacre.
The exhibition is open until February 14, 2021. The 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.
Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.
This landmark exhibition will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.
The content will encourage reflection on a century of social transformation, the power of perspective, and the importance of exercising the right to vote, and will ask what lessons history can inspire moving forward.
To promote safe distancing, the museum has implemented new ticketing procedures for this special exhibition. For the run of the exhibition, the museum will have extended operating hours to create a safe viewing experience for a greater number of people. On Sundays the museum will open two hours earlier at 10 am. and stay open two hours earlier until 7 p.m. And on Thursdays, we will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.