Revisiting the Rosewood Massacre, 100 Years Later
A Double-Edged Example Of Florida Justice
While flipping through cable channels searching for something to watch, I settled on Rosewood (1997), featuring Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, and Elise Neal. I was generally aware of what happened there and that I was watching a fictionalized account of the events. I compartmentalized my anger while watching, angry about things I know happened elsewhere, if not Rosewood (like cutting off body parts of lynched men like ears and penises). I set other matters aside until I could research what happened so I could be mad for the right reason.
It shouldn't be a spoiler that the end result was that all Black residents of the town were murdered or burned out. Rosewood was an almost all-Black community after white residents moved away after the cedar trees were wiped out and the pencil mills closed. Whites lived in nearby Sumner, Blacks stayed in Rosewood, and the communities generally got along, except for the normal segregation, voter suppression, and white supremacy.
Rosewood was mainly self-sufficient. It had three Black churches, a school, a Prince Hall Masonic Lodge (different than the white Masons), a turpentine mill, a sugarcane mill, and their own baseball team, the Rosewood Stars. Some Black men worked at the nearby sawmill in Sumner. Some…
