Rosewood Massacre
The Rosewood Massacre of 1923 was a tragic event marked by racial violence against the African American community in Rosewood, Florida. Sparked by an allegation against a black man, the incident escalated as a white mob, fueled by racial tensions of the time, attacked the town, resulting in the destruction of homes, businesses, and the forced displacement of its residents. The chaos began on January 1, when a white woman claimed she had been assaulted, leading to the hunting of suspects and a violent response that culminated in the murder of several African Americans. Over the span of a few days, the mob grew, perpetuating further destruction and violence, ultimately leading to the abandonment of the town.
Decades later, the massacre was largely forgotten until investigative journalism in the 1980s revived awareness of the events, prompting discussions about reparations. In 1994, the Florida legislature passed a bill providing compensation to survivors and their descendants, marking a significant moment in acknowledging the historical wrongs faced by African Americans. The Rosewood incident reflects broader themes of race relations and the legacy of racial violence in America, underscoring the importance of remembering and addressing historical injustices.
Rosewood Massacre
The Rosewood massacre of 1923 was a racially motivated attack on the African American community of Rosewood, Florida, committed by a mob of white individuals. The attackers acted on the belief that African Americans in the town had conspired to protect a fugitive accused of attacking a white woman. The African American community of Rosewood was destroyed by fire and violence; all surviving residents were forced to flee to other areas. A newspaper investigation of the incident in 1982 brought the issue to public attention, and in 1994 the Florida state legislature passed a bill to provide compensation to the survivors of the Rosewood incident.
History of the Rosewood Massacre
Race relations in America in the early twentieth century were characterized by increased racial tension driven by violent riots and a spike in white supremacist activity. There were several events that galvanized the white supremacist movement in the South, including the race riots in East Saint Louis in 1917 that resulted in the deaths of nine white and dozens of black citizens. The Ku Klux Klan, a major white supremacist organization, had an estimated five million members by the mid-1920s. Lynchings—murders carried out by a mob targeting an individual (typically African American or of another racial minority) in retaliation for an alleged crime—became increasingly common in Ku Klux Klan territories and throughout the South.
Rosewood was surveyed in 1847, but was not established as a village until about 1870 when a railroad station was built. By 1900 the town had become a predominantly African American community with a number of black-owned businesses, churches, and schools.
The Rosewood incident began on January 1, 1923, when Fannie Taylor, a white woman who lived in nearby Sumner, claimed to have been attacked and, by some accounts, raped by a black man. A group of angry white men, including Fannie Taylor’s husband James, accused an African American fugitive named Jesse Hunter, though some contested later that the attack was carried out by a white man with whom Fannie Taylor had been having an affair. Sheriff Elias Walker assembled a group of men to search for Hunter and bloodhounds led the vigilantes to the home of Aaron Carrier, an African American living on the edge of Rosewood. The group accused him of being Hunter’s accomplice and forcibly removed Carrier from his home; Walker intervened before Carrier was lynched and put him into protective custody for his own safety.
The crowd continued to pursue Hunter without Sheriff Walker. They next located and attacked Sam Carter, a blacksmith who had been riding in his wagon; the mob believed that Carter used the wagon to transport and harbor Hunter. Carter was tortured for information, then shot and lynched.
Tensions escalated and rumors spread among the white community that Aaron Carrier’s cousin, Sylvester, was involved in hiding the fugitive and was openly voicing his support for the alleged rape of Fannie Taylor. On the evening of January 4, a crowd came to Rosewood to confront Sylvester Carrier. Shots broke out between members of the mob and armed African Americans in the house, though it is unclear who fired the first shots. The conflict went on for hours, and both Sylvester and his mother, Sarah Carrier, were killed. The surviving African Americans in the house fled and the mob later burned the house down.
Over the course of the next day, the mob swelled as more two hundred white men gathered and returned to Rosewood. Between Friday, January 5, and Sunday, January 7, the white mob destroyed property and engaged in random attacks against the residents of Rosewood. Within a few days, most of the African American residents had fled into the surrounding swamps while the mob burned the remaining homes, churches, and businesses. In the end, the homes of all black residents were destroyed.
A lack of records and a general lack of reliable reporting in the press made the extent of the Rosewood violence difficult to determine. At least six, but possibly as many as forty, African Americans were killed in the attack. No arrests for murder or arson were made, and Jesse Hunter’s capture was never confirmed. The ruined town was abandoned. Out of fear, the Rosewood survivors decided not to speak about their past and the events of the massacre all but disappeared from Florida history.
Resurgence and Legacy
In July 1982 investigative reporter Gary Moore, working for the St. Petersburg Times, published his findings on the Rosewood incident. He had noticed that communities near Rosewood were described as having black residents in history texts, but were almost completely white decades later. Moore began investigating the issue and was able to locate a number of survivors and witnesses who told him about the Rosewood massacre. The following year, in December 1983, the television program 60 Minutes aired a program on the incident, based in part on Moore’s research.
During this same period, doctoral candidate R. Thomas Dye of Florida State University was one of several researchers who conducted historical examinations of the Rosewood massacre. The report from Dye and his colleagues, A Documented History of the Incident Which Occurred at Rosewood, Florida in 1923, was submitted to the Florida Board of Regents in Tallahassee in December 1993 and provided a detailed and lengthy account of the massacre based on contemporary news reports and interviews with survivors.
Inspired by a 1990 court decision that resulted in President George H. W. Bush issuing formal apologies and financial reparation to Japanese Americans illegally detained during World War II, several of the Rosewood survivors, led by Arnett Doctor, began investigating the possibility of suing the State of Florida for reparations. Steve Hanlon of the Florida law firm Holland and Knight became the official council for the case, Rosewood Victims v. State of Florida, which was filed in 1994. Some of the survivors and descendants began appearing on television talk shows and news programs to speak about the incident and promote their campaign for reparations.
The historic Rosewood case became highly contentious and media coverage of the events spurred a broader debate about the potential for providing reparations to African Americans. The Florida state legislature ruled on the case in 1994, agreeing to pay $2.1 million in reparations, including $500,000 allocated to descendants of former Rosewood residents whose property was destroyed, with the rest organized into a pool that was used to provide scholarships for African American youth. In 1997 filmmaker John Singleton produced the dramatic film Rosewood based on the event.
The Rosewood case was the first time in US history that the courts agreed to provide reparations for African Americans who had been the victims of racial violence. In 2004 historic Rosewood was named a Heritage Landmark by the Florida state legislature. The state erected a monument describing the events that led to the destruction of the community.
Bibliography
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Dye, R. Thomas. "The Rosewood Massacre: History and the Making of Public Policy." Public Historian 19.3 (1997): 25–39. Print.
Finan, Eileen. "Delayed Justice: The Rosewood Story." Human Rights 22.2 (1995): 8–30. Print.
"History of Rosewood, Florida." The Real Rosewood Foundation. The Real Rosewood Foundation, 2015. Web. 3 June 2015.
Jerome, Richard. "A Measure of Justice." People. Time, 6 Jan. 1995. Web. 24 June 2015.
Jones, Maxine D., et al. A Documented History of the Incident Which Occurred at Rosewood, Florida in 1923: A Report Submitted to the Florida Board of Regents 22 December 1993. Tallahassee: Florida Board of Regents, 1993. Digital file.
Taylor, John. "The Rosewood Massacre." Esquire. Hearst Magazines, July 1994. Web. 3 June 2015.
Yeomans, Adam. "Florida Pays Survivors of a 1923 Racist Attack: Rosewood: Blacks Were Run Out of Town by a White Mob. At Last, the State Allocates $2 Million in Reparations." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 12 Feb. 1995. Web. 3 June 2015.