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Rosewood massacre

The Rosewood massacre was a racially motivated massacre of Black people and the destruction of a Black town during the first week of January 1923 in rural Levy County, Florida. By the official death toll, at least six Black people were killed, but eyewitness accounts suggested 27 or more deaths. In addition, at least two White people were killed in self-defense by one of the victims. The town of Rosewood was destroyed in what contemporary news reports characterized as a race riot. Florida had especially frequent lynchings of Black men in the years before the massacre, including the lynching of Charles Strong and the Perry massacre in 1922. Before the massacre, the town of Rosewood had been a quiet, primarily Black, self-sufficient whistle stop on the Seaboard Air Line Railway. The rioting began when White men from several nearby towns lynched a Black Rosewood man after accusations that a white woman in nearby Sumner had been assaulted by a Black drifter. Subsequently, a mob of several hundred White men combed the countryside hunting for Black people and descended on Rosewood, burning almost every structure. For several days, survivors from the town hid in nearby swamps until they were evacuated to larger towns by train and car. No arrests were made for the murders, assaults, and arson. The town was abandoned by its former Black and White residents and ceased to exist. Although the rioting was widely reported around the United States at the time, few official records documented it. The survivors, their descendants, and the perpetrators all remained silent for decades. Sixty years later, the story of Rosewood was revived by major media when several journalists covered it in the early 1980s. Survivors and their descendants organized to sue the state for failing to protect Rosewood's Black community. In 1993, the Florida Legislature commissioned a report whose findings led to the state compensating survivors and descendants for the damages of racial violence. The incident was the subject of a 1997 feature film directed by John Singleton. In 2004, the state designated the site of Rosewood as a Florida Heritage Landmark. The officially recorded death toll during the first week of January 1923 was eight: six Black and two White. Survivors' stories claim up to 27 Black residents were killed, and they also assert that newspapers did not report all deaths of Whites. Minnie Lee Langley, who was in the besieged Carrier house, recalls stepping over many White bodies on the porch when she left. A 1984 newspaper article was skeptical of estimates of up to 150 victims. Several eyewitnesses claim to have seen a mass grave filled with the bodies of Black victims; one witness remembers seeing 26 bodies being covered with a plow brought from Cedar Key. However, by the time authorities investigated these claims, most of the witnesses had died or were too infirm to identify the mass burial site.

Rosewood, Florida

Rosewood is an unincorporated community in Levy County, Florida, United States, located just off State Road 24, approximately one mile (1.6 km) northeast of Sumner and nine miles (14 km) northeast of Cedar Key. The town is known for the 1923 Rosewood massacre, when a lynch mob of White residents from nearby towns destroyed its prosperous African-American community in response to the alleged rape of a White woman.

Rosewood (film)

Rosewood is a 1997 American historical drama film directed by John Singleton, inspired by the 1923 Rosewood massacre in Florida, when a white mob killed black people and destroyed their town. It stars Ving Rhames as an outsider who comes into Rosewood and inspires residents to self-defense, wielding his pistols in a fight. The supporting cast includes Don Cheadle as Sylvester Carrier, a resident who was a witness, defender of his family and victim of the riot; and Jon Voight as John Wright, a sympathetic white store owner who lives in Rosewood. The three characters become entangled in an attempt to save people from racist white people attacking the Black residents of Rosewood. Despite generally favorable reviews, the film was not a commercial success and was unable to recoup its $17 million budget at the box office. The film was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.

Elaine massacre

The Elaine massacre occurred on September 30 – October 2, 1919, at Hoop Spur in the vicinity of Elaine in rural Phillips County, Arkansas, where African Americans were organizing against peonage and abuses in tenant farming. As many as several hundred African Americans were murdered and five white men were killed. The white mobs were aided by federal troops (requested by Arkansas governor Charles Hillman Brough) and local terrorist organizations. Gov. Brough led a contingent of 583 US soldiers from Camp Pike, with a 12-gun machine-gun battalion. After the massacre, state officials concocted an elaborate cover-up, claiming that Black residents were planning an insurrection. National newspapers repeated the falsehood that Black community members in Arkansas were staging an insurrection. A New York Times headline read, "Planned Massacre of Whites Today", and the Arkansas Gazette (the leading newspaper in Arkansas) wrote that Elaine was "a zone of negro insurrection". Subsequent to this reporting, more than 100 African Americans were indicted, with 12 being sentenced to death by electrocution. After a years-long legal battle by the NAACP, the 12 men were acquitted. Estimates of deaths made in the immediate aftermath of the Elaine Massacre by eyewitnesses range from 50 to "more than a hundred". Walter Francis White, an NAACP attorney who visited Elaine shortly after the incident, stated "... twenty-five Negroes killed, although some place the Negro fatalities as high as one hundred". More recent estimates in the 21st century of the number of Black people murdered during this violence are higher than estimates provided by the eyewitnesses, and have ranged into the hundreds. According to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, "the Elaine Massacre was by far the deadliest racial confrontation in Arkansas history and possibly the bloodiest racial conflict in the history of the United States". Because of the widespread racial violence during the Red Summer of 1919, the Equal Justice Initiative of Montgomery, Alabama, classified the Black murders at Elaine as lynchings in its 2015 report on the lynching of African Americans in the South.

1921-1928: Incoming Miscellaneous Individuals: Middleton, E.P. 06/05/1922 THRU Myrick, Deering, and Scott 05/10/1923

Dress worn by Marie Monroe of Rosewood, Florida

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"Riot penny" charred during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

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"Riot penny" charred during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

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"Riot penny" charred during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

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Multi-Cultural Youth Summit

ABA [American Bar Association] Event

2-1-96 National Prayer Breakfast Washington, D.C. [1]