REMEMBERING A MOMENT IN HISTORY

In 1923, Rosewood was a primarily Black town in Florida. One day a White woman living in a nearby town had been beaten and robbed. Afraid they would find the real attacker who was her husband, she told police and her town residents that it was a Black man. Immediately a mob of White men and women took to the streets to find the so called attacker. The first Black Man they ran into was Sam Carter. He was tortured relentlessly until he admitted to participating in the White woman’s attack. After being forced to admit something he did not do, they shot him in the head in front of his wife. This was not enough and they continued their reign of terror. The mob traveled across town killing and burning down any and everything they saw in their sight. They burned houses, stores, and almost all the BLACK CHURCHES. Eventually the Black town residents had enough and they began to fight back but this did not amount to much because the Mob had grown too big. The most disturbing event of the entire standoff was the murder of a 4 year old Black girl. As the little girl lay over her mother’s dead body crying, two members of the white mob grabbed her by her ankles and threw her into a nearby burning building. Days later after the town was deserted and things calmed down, the mob returned to check for survivors and burn anything else they had missed. The Rosewood Massacre is something that is rarely spoken of these days. Over 150 Black Residents were killed; many of their bodies found hanging from trees. Very few of the Black Residents managed to escape and others would never return to the land they had spent their whole lives developing. White people have committed the most atrocious acts the world could ever imagine against Black people. Don’t ever let them convince you to forget.