From Wikipedia,
Rosewood is a former populated place in Levy County, Florida, United States. The site is located just off State Road 24, approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) northeast of Sumner and 9 miles (14 km) northeast of Cedar Key. The town was destroyed by whites and subsequently abandoned in 1923
Rosewood was settled in 1845, nine miles (14 km) east of Cedar Key, near the Gulf of Mexico. Local industry centered on timber. The name Rosewood refers to the reddish color of cut cedar wood. Two pencil mills were nearby in Cedar Key; several turpentine mills and a sawmill three miles (4.8 km) away in Sumner helped support local residents, as did farming of citrus and cotton. The hamlet grew enough to warrant the construction of a post office and train depot on the Florida Railroad in 1870, but it was never incorporated as a town.
The initial settlers of Rosewood were both black and white. When most of the cedar trees in the area had been cut by 1890, the pencil mills closed, and many white residents moved to Sumner. By 1900, the population in Rosewood had become predominantly black. The village of Sumner was predominantly white, and relations between the two communities were relatively amicable.
The population of Rosewood peaked in 1915 at 355 people. Two black families in Rosewood named Goins and Carrier were the most influential. The Goins family brought the turpentine industry to the area, and in the years preceding the attacks, were the second largest landowners in Levy County. To avoid lawsuits from white competitors, the Goins brothers moved to Gainesville, and the population of Rosewood decreased slightly. The Carriers were also a large family, responsible for logging in the region. By the 1920s, almost everyone in the close-knit community was distantly related to each other. Although residents of Rosewood probably did not vote because voter registration requirements in Florida had effectively disfranchised blacks since the turn of the century, both Sumner and Rosewood were part of a single voting precinct counted by the U.S. Census. In 1920, the combined population of both towns was 344 blacks and 294 whites.
As was common in the late 19th century South, Florida had imposed legal racial segregation under Jim Crow laws, requiring separate black and white public facilities and transportation. Blacks and whites created their own community centers: in 1920, the residents of Rosewood were mostly self-sufficient. They had three churches, a school, a large Masonic Hall, a turpentine mill, a sugarcane mill, a baseball team named the Rosewood Stars, and two general stores, one of which was white-owned. The village had about a dozen two-story wooden plank homes, other small two-room houses, and several small unoccupied plank farm and storage structures. Some families owned pianos, organs, and other symbols of middle-class prosperity. Survivors of Rosewood remember it as a happy place. In 1995 survivor Robie Mortin recalled at age 79, "Rosewood was a town where everyone's house was painted. There were roses everywhere you walked. Lovely."
Rosewood Massacre (1923)
Rosewood massacre more details:
It’s said that most racial disputes are ultimately about money — who’s perceived as taking jobs, who’s perceived as causing crime. In Rosewood, black residents owned their own businesses and their own land, and one of the first things the whites did that week was to loot their property and steal their land. Survivors were too terrorized to ever return.
In January 1923, white men from nearby towns lynched a Rosewood resident allegedly in response to a lie that a white woman in nearby Sumner had been beaten and possibly raped by a black drifter. The woman was actually beaten up by her lover while her husband was at work. When black citizens defended themselves against further attack, several hundred whites organized to comb the countryside hunting for black people and burned almost every structure in Rosewood. Survivors hid for several days in nearby swamps and were evacuated by train and car to larger towns. Although state and local authorities were aware of the violence, they made no arrests for the activities in Rosewood. The town was abandoned by black residents during the attacks. None ever returned. In the spring of 1994, the Florida state legislature voted to give $2 million in compensation for the surviving families. In December 2010, a state scholarship was established for descendants of families that survived the massacre.
Prior this event a series of incidents had stirred racial tensions within Rosewood. During the previous winter of 1922 a white school teacher from Perry had been murdered and on New Years Eve of 1922 there was a Ku Klux Klan rally held in Gainesville, located not far away from Rosewood.
In response to the allegation by Taylor, white men began to search for Jesse Hunter, Aaron Carrier and Sam Carter who were believed to be accomplices. Carrier was captured and incarcerated while Carter was lynched. The white mob suspected Aaron's cousin, Sylvester Carrier, a Rosewood resident of harboring the fugitive, Jesse Hunter.
On January 4, 1923 a group of 20 to 30 white men approached the Carrier home and shot the family dog. When Sylvester's mother Sarah came to the porch to confront the mob they shot and killed her. Sylvester defended his home, killing two men and wounding four in the ensuing battle before he too was killed. The remaining survivors fled to the swamps for refuge where many of the African American residents of Rosewood had already retreated, hoping to avoid the rising conflict and increasing racial tension.
The next day the white mob burned the Carrier home before joining with a group of 200 men from surrounding towns who had heard erroneously that a black man had killed two white men. As night descended the mob attacked the town, slaughtering animals and burning buildings. An official report claims six blacks killed along with two whites. Other accounts suggest a larger total. At the end of the carnage only two buildings remained standing, a house and the town general store.
Many of the black residents of Rosewood who fled to the swamps were evacuated on January 6 by two local train conductors, John and William Bryce. Many others were hidden by John Wright, the owner of the general store. Other black residents of Rosewood fled to Gainesville and to northern cities. As a consequence of the massacre, Rosewood became deserted. The initial report of the Rosewood incident presented less than a month after the massacre claimed there was insufficient evidence for prosecution. Thus no one was charged with any of the Rosewood murders.
Theresa Brown Robinson of Rosewood
Long before The Real Rosewood Foundation was created, my mother strongly suggested researching the real truths of the Rosewood occurrence. The two of us shared the dark secrets of the Rosewood story over the years starting in 1943, when I was only five. For me, the most significant part of the Rosewood story is centered on its schoolteacher, Mom’s sister, my favorite aunt and mentor, Mahulda Gussie Brown Carrier.
The memory of Rosewood is constantly on my mind. I have not been able to lay the burden of its history down. To my mother, Theresa Brown Robinson, Rosewood was a “song” etched in her heart. She promised my Aunt Mahulda that she would keep her secrets safely hidden, but the thought of what happened to her dear sister in Rosewood made the vow too tremendous a task to keep silent during the making of the movie, ROSEWOOD. As the title of the old Negro Spiritual suggests, “I Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody but I Couldn't Keep It to Myself,” my mother was compelled to share her sister’s story, reliving the horrifying and hostile events she witnessed in 1923, at age 21. Mom contributed a great deal of information to the moviemakers; however, they used her information and did not properly give credit.
She was offended after watching the Rosewood movie and charged me with completing her Rosewood research, firmly stating, "Mommy didn't raise no fools. You finish my research and tell our own Rosewood story. I have given you enough oral family history to make a documentary and you must do just that!"
Because Mom was never satisfied with the violations her sister endured during the savage attacks on an innocent people, she assigned me the task of authenticating Rosewood's truths. “You must keep Sister’s name in Rosewood’s history,” aware her sister had suffered physically and mentally during the vicious raid of her hometown. Mom instructed me to start a scholarship in her sister Mahulda's name and build a museum honoring all Rosewood survivors and descendants. If I were to do a thorough job as requested by my mother, I understood it would become a lengthy journey and challenging project. And Mom's expectation of me radiated when she said,
If mama wasn’t so old, she'd do it herself.
From my mother's point of view, as told to her by her sister the Rosewood schoolteacher, I set out with pen and pad to bring respect and dignity to a history that was dormant for years because of the embarrassment it would add to Levy County. The incomplete work of Rosewood is the glue that holds Mom’s lessons and my writings together.
Being an educator, I wanted to educate professors, teachers, and students. I could not begin to do such without supporting evidence, therefore, I made it my mission to confront the danger and take charge of a family history that I am proud of because I have learned truth and now use that same truth to impart important lessons and build better race relations. Educate people on the real Rosewood history… In order to do this, I dedicated time to researching the records dating back to 1845, when my great, great, grandfather, Henry McIntyre, arrived in Cedar Keys as a one-year-old toddler. Side Note: I have not been able to place him with a family. According to the Levy County 1870 Census, my great, great, grandfather was a 24-year-old black male, laborer and full-time stud, father of six children, and husband of a 25-year-old black female named Emma McIntyre. They lived on the adjacent Lot 202 next to who is believed to be Sheriff Robert Walker’s cousin, Harriet Walker, a white single woman with four children who lived on Lot 201, known then as "Outside of Cedar Keys District”. One can deduce that Sheriff Walker’s actions, working tirelessly to save Rosewood citizens, were because he knew many of the residents personally. Read Rosewood History
I have done the research, authenticated and documented my findings; therefore, Rosewood’s real story is my story. I am neither angry nor bitter about a situation I did not cause. I do not blame and will never accuse anyone of this undesirable saga during that era. It is Florida's history and needs to be told and archived for future generations, never to be repeated.
"Unless we remember, neither we, nor future generations will understand..." – Lillian Brown, AARP
The True Story Of The Rosewood Massacre Where Whites Destroyed Blacks Over A White Womans Lie!
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