Rosewood (Florida)
Rosewood is a deserted village in Levy County ( Florida ). The settlement was predominantly inhabited by African Americans until 1923 and was destroyed in the course of the Rosewood massacre in January 1923. Rosewood is located on Florida State Road 24 halfway between Otter Creek and Cedar Key (both around 15 km away).
history
The area of Rosewood was settled from 1847. In 1855 there were seven houses along a dirt road to Cedar Key and the Gulf of Mexico .
Rosewood had a train station since 1870. In 1915 Rosewood reached its largest population with about 700 inhabitants.
massacre
The Rosewood massacre was one event in a series of incidents. Between 1917 and 1923 there had been increasing incidents of racially motivated violence against African Americans. White mobs attacked individual blacks or black communities during this period. For example, in September 1920 in Ocoee, African American homes and two churches had been burned down, and black lynching cases such as those of Jesse Washington in 1916 had broken out. There was an average of 40 cases of lynching per year in the United States during the 1920s . On December 31, 1922, in nearby Gainesville, there was a parade of the Ku Klux Klan with about a hundred masked participants.
On January 1, 1923, a woman named Fannie Taylor claimed that she had been attacked by an African American man. In fact, Taylor had an affair with a white man she'd quarreled with that morning.
On the same day, a black man was killed in the incident and another was taken into custody after being mistreated by a mob by the Levy County Sheriff. Sheriff Elias “Bob” Walker wanted to use this to get the victim to safety.
On January 2nd, armed whites began to gather. On the afternoon of January 4th, the Whites attacked the Carrier family home in Rosewood. They suspected a perpetrator of the alleged attack on Ms. Taylor there. Black people had holed up in the house and there was a shooting when the inmates refused entry to the white people. Two whites were killed and others injured. Sarah Carrier was killed during that shootout. The house was eventually set on fire.
During the shooting, the black population of Rosewood fled to the nearby swamps and forests. The mob set fire to a church and several houses. On January 5th, two to three hundred more whites arrived from surrounding towns. Meanwhile, Governor Cary A. Hardee had been informed of the incident. Sheriff Walker reported, however, that he did not expect any further unrest. On January 6, survivors were evacuated by train. A day later, 100 to 150 whites appeared in Rosewood and burned the remaining buildings in the place.
Legal processing
On February 11, 1923, a grand jury was convened in Bronson to decide whether the massacre should be charged. On February 15, 1923, the grand jury decided that there was insufficient evidence to bring charges.
In 1994 the State of Florida enacted the Rosewood Bill , which awarded six survivors of the massacre compensation of $ 150,000.
aftermath
John Singleton took up the events in Rosewood with the film Rosewood Burning from 1997.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marvin Dunn, Rosewood: The last suvivor remembers an American tragedy , www.thegrio.com, January 4, 2012.
- ↑ www.rosewoodflorida.com
- ↑ Trevor Godloe, Rosewood Massacre (1923) , www.blackpast.org.
- ↑ Rosewood in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Coordinates: 29 ° 14 ′ 0 ″ N , 82 ° 56 ′ 0 ″ W.