On
this day in 1923, the Rosewood massacre ended in the Florida town after
raging for a week. The violence began on January 1st, the day after a
Ku Klux Klan rally was held in the area. It started when a white mob
descended on the predominantly black town in response to a rumour that a
black Rosewood man had sexually assaulted a white woman. The group of
over 400 whites attacked African-Americans who they believed were involved, torturing people for information and
targetting a family home. They then rampaged throughout the town burning
buildings to the ground, including houses and churches. The black
residents were forced to hide in the nearby swamps until they were
evacuated to other towns, leaving Rosewood completely deserted in the
wake of the violence. The carnage ended on January 7th when the mob
burned the last structures and there were no black residents in Rosewood
remaining. The final death toll was officially six blacks and two
whites killed, but according to witnesses closer to thirty
African-Americans died. A white jury decided there was insufficient
evidence and none of those involved were ever charged for their role in
what was erroneously portrayed as a ‘race riot’. In 1994, almost seventy
years after the event, the Florida legislature passed a bill that gave
each of the nine remaining survivors of the massacre $150,000 in
compensation. While it is not enough to provide justice for the Rosewood
victims and survivors, the 1994 law ended decades of refusal to come to
terms with the horrors committed at Rosewood.
“It
has been a struggle telling this story over the years, because a lot of
people don’t want to hear about this kind of history … It’s a sad story, but it’s one I think everyone needs to hear” - Lizzie Jenkins, descendant of a Rosewood survivor
