OCOEE, Fla. — Near the very ground where a century ago a white mob murdered his ancestors' neighbors and chased his family out of town, Kenneth Thompson reflected on his childhood.

He was born in the 1940s in Apopka, where his family settled after the Ocoee Massacre of 1920, he explained. He recalled sitting on the porch and watching the Klan march, hooded, hateful and hellbent on violence.

“You talk about a terrorist experience for a young person,” Thompson told Spectrum News 13. “They would march — the same people who we just got through patronizing their stores in Apopka, and now they’re on the streets, burning crosses, lynching and beating on our relatives and our friends.

“I said, ‘What kind of nation …”

He paused, and he apologized as his voice began to crack.

“‘ … What kind of nation is this I’m living in?’” he continued. “And then as I grew older, I understood. A lot of things happened so people could be liberated.”

Thompson, now 77, on Thursday joined students, community leaders and fellow descendants of the Ocoee Massacre at Ocoee City Hall, where state Sen. Randolph Bracy formally introduced the Randolph Bracy Ocoee Scholarship.

The program offers 50 scholarships annually to descendants of the Ocoee Massacre or to any current African American resident of Ocoee.

“This was a long time coming,” Bracy told Spectrum News 13 after the event. “This was for the victims of the Ocoee Massacre, the descendants, this community.”

The scholarship comes through the efforts of Bracy, D-Ocoee, who said he worked with leaders of the Florida Senate and House of Representatives to get funding for the scholarships. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the measure into law on Wednesday.

Bracy said the scholarships, each $6,100, prioritize descendants of victims of the Ocoee Massacre. If funding remains, he said, scholarships will go to African American residents of Ocoee who apply.

Rain Bellamy, a recent graduate of Ocoee High School who said she plans to attend Florida State University, stood Wednesday among several Ocoee residents who planned to apply.

Although not a direct descendant of Massacre victims, she said, “I have lived here for over 10 years now, and … it is amazing to see that there’s someone making an effort to say that my life and my future matter.”

Bellamy said she plans to continue efforts to change the name of Ocoee streets named after Confederate soldiers. Those include Bluford Avenue, named after Bluford Sims, an early Ocoee settler who purportedly redistributed land that belonged to victims of the massacre.

She had sought to rename Bluford Avenue to July Perry Boulevard, in honor of the businessman, civil rights activist and symbol of the Ocoee Massacre.

“I will continue my cause to fight and change these things in the city of Ocoee,” Bellamy said.

Gladys Bell, a descendant of victims of the massacre and author of the book “Visions Through My Father’s Eyes,” said a granddaughter is interested in the scholarship and that she has nieces and nephews who also might apply.

She told of her father, who at age 18 fled the white Ocoee mob with a sibling on his back.

“They had to go around Lake Apopka, through the woods, to escape being killed,” she said.

About the scholarships, Bell said, echoing other speakers: “All of this is good, wonderful. But, I think it’s got to go a little bit farther, because I always said … ‘Hey, we want reparations.’ The descendants may not have children to take advantage of this Ocoee scholarship. They may not live in Ocoee. So I think we all need to get behind our citizens here and push.”

In an interview Wednesday with Spectrum News’ Tammie Fields, Sen. Bracy said the Legislature wasn’t yet willing to go beyond the scholarships. Yet he called them historic and said “this is just the beginning.”

“You’re talking about a hundred years, people have been suffering and holding this pain in,” Bracy said Thursday. He also said it’s symbolic “that people are acknowledging, the state is acknowledging, our government is acknowledging what happened.”

On the day of the presidential election of 1920, a white mob lynched July Perry, who fought for Black voting rights, as a group of Blacks tried to vote.

The mob also burned Black homes and businesses and killed dozens of people in northern Ocoee.

Ocoee City Commissioner Larry Brinson Sr. pointed out to Spectrum News 13 that the current city hall, site of Thursday’s news conference, sits in the part of town where much of the killing took place.

He pointed to Starke Lake, behind City Hall, where a boat had just been pulling somebody on water skis.

“Some of the residents at that time tried to make their way through” that lake during the massacre, he said.

Kenneth Thompson, the man who had sat on his front porch and watched the Klan terrorize his Apopka community, said he’s a descendant of the Carmichael-Brown family of Ocoee.

“We had land right there off Silver Star and Ocoee-Apopka Road,” he told Spectrum News.

Asked what needed to be done beyond scholarships, he said, “this is just the tip of the iceberg.”

When he talks, Thompson looks deeply into you and seemingly puts all of his heart and might into every word.

“We want to transform that hatred … into love,” he said. “And love means that we can accomplish those things, for people.”