Rosewood Massacre

Rosewood was a small, predominantly Black, self-sufficient community in Levy County, Florida, settled in 1847 and connected to the outside world via the Seaboard Air Line Railway. By 1920 it had churches, a school, a Masonic hall, general stores, and a population that peaked around 355 in 1915. Relations with the nearby white town of Sumner had generally been described as amicable, though Florida in this period had among the highest lynching rates in the country, including the 1922 lynching of Charles Strong and the Perry massacre of December 1922.

The violence began on January 1, 1923, after Fannie Taylor, a 22-year-old white woman in Sumner, reported that she had been beaten by a Black man who had entered her home. Rumors that she had also been raped and robbed spread quickly among white residents, though her original account described only an assault. Sheriff Robert Elias Walker organized a posse to search for Jesse Hunter, a Black escapee from a chain gang, and the search drew hundreds of armed white men from surrounding towns. During the search, a mob tortured and then fatally shot Sam Carter, a local Black blacksmith, after he led them to a site where he said he had taken the fugitive; his body was hung from a tree.

On the evening of January 4, an armed white mob surrounded the home of Sarah Carrier in Rosewood, where 15 to 25 people, including many children, had gathered for protection. Sylvester Carrier, Sarah's son, defended the house; gunfire broke out, and Sarah and Sylvester Carrier were killed, along with two white men, C. P. "Poly" Wilkerson and Henry Andrews. Several others were wounded on both sides. Over the following days, a mob numbering in the hundreds burned Rosewood's churches, homes, and other structures, and additional Black residents were killed, including Lexie Gordon and Mingo Williams. James Carrier, who was partially paralyzed from a prior stroke, was tortured and shot after being found by the mob on January 5. Survivors fled into nearby swamps, and beginning January 6, some were evacuated by train to Gainesville with the help of sympathetic white residents including train conductors John and William Bryce and store owner John Wright. A final mob burned the remaining structures in Rosewood on January 7.

Officially, eight people were recorded as killed (six Black, two white), though survivor accounts have suggested a higher toll among Black victims, including claims of a mass grave. Governor Cary Hardee convened a grand jury in February 1923, which heard 25 witnesses but returned no indictments. No arrests were ever made. Rosewood's Black and white residents alike abandoned the town, which was never repopulated. The events received national newspaper coverage at the time but were largely absent from historical memory for six decades until journalist Gary Moore's reporting in the early 1980s and a subsequent CBS 60 Minutes segment brought renewed attention. In 1993, survivors and descendants filed a claims case against the state of Florida, and the Florida Legislature later commissioned a report on the massacre, leading to compensation for survivors and their descendants. The Rosewood site was designated a Florida Heritage Landmark in 2004.