Rosewood

There are few traces of Rosewood.  Graves hidden in the weeds of time.  A fist full of photographs.  Fading, like the memory of what happened in the north Florida woods.  The tragedy began after a White woman, Fanny Taylor, said she was beaten by a Black man, a story she may have made up to cover a fight with her White lover.  The attacker was never found.  But a mob raged through Rosewood for 8 days.  The sheriff did not stop them.  The governor did not send help.  The burnings.  The beatings.  The looting continued for a week.  A least 8 people lost their lives.  Rosewood had been a prosperous place. The families owned a turpentine plant and cut much of the Cyprus for school pencils in this country.   No one was prosecuted.  Ever.  Fear kept Black families from returning, even to sell their land.  Rosewood’s survivors became an address list of long forgotten names.  Their story nearly died with them.  But now, justice — a long last.