Rosewood Remembered: Centennial of racist massacre that destroyed a Black Florida town spotlights ra

Nine miles before Florida State Road 24 dead-ends in the Gulf of Mexico, a cast aluminum historical marker stands next to a white two-story home – all that is left of Rosewood, a once-thriving, predominantly Black town terrorized and razed to the ground by a racist mob 100 years ago this month.

But thanks to decades of persistence by descendants of victims of the massacre, the memory of Rosewood burns more brightly today than the fires that ravaged it in January 1923, when white rioters, drawn by the unverified account of a white woman who claimed she had been beaten and assaulted by a Black drifter, set the town aflame in a murderous rampage.

For almost 60 years the massacre, which left at least six murdered while the rest, including dozens of children, escaped in the middle of the night, running through swamps, hiding in the woods and leaping onto train cars, was all but erased from historical memory. No law enforcement agency investigated, and no one was ever charged with crimes. The erasure mirrored that of racial violence across the U.S., where lynchings and mob attacks in Chicago, Tulsa, Omaha, and in small towns and large cities across the country were, and in many cases continue to be, left unremarked and unremembered save by communities of survivors.

https://www.splcenter.org/news/2023/01/06/rosewood-centennial-racist-massacre-destroyed-black-florida-town