Rosewood today
I honestly don’t know what it is about Rosewood that has gripped me so, but I have been absorbed in this story for many years. At some point something made me want to tell this story to the young people of Florida, and this website is the result of many hours of study and hard work, trying to tell in prose what draws me to this tale of a family in 1920s Florida. I think that many Floridians have never heard of Rosewood, or have little idea of the people who lived there and the lives they led. This website is my way of telling about the Jim Crow era in Florida, a blight on our history that is often hidden in the shadows of our nation’s tale. I have tried to shine a bright light on a terrible time, with the hope that it will be known and never forgotten.
Although based on a true story, I have fictionalized the events preceding and following the week of January 1,1923, and some of the characters in this book are fictional. Even the characters based on real people speak words I have made up, and I mean no disrespect to the dead or to the living descendants of these people by bringing to life their ancestors to speak in my book.
As well, some of the incidents in the book are not necessarily factual. I have done my best to be faithful to the facts of the Rosewood race riot, but there are several points of controversy surrounding the events of that week, and I have used my own judgment and imagination to explain and describe some of these controversial events. Again, I mean no disrespect to the survivors or their kin, and I alone am responsible for any inaccuracies in this tale.
The news articles included in the book are all real articles, taken primarily from the Gainesville Sun. I have credited and cited these articles for original print date and source. Readers will find that often the news is contradictory from day to day; this is one of the mysteries of Rosewood that is difficult to reconcile. What I have written is my best guess as to the true story of what happened during that week when a race riot occurred.
In the end you must decide for yourself, the truth of Rosewood’s history and the accuracy of the many accounts of that week in January 1923. There are many things to read and many sources to check, and I hope you will feel compelled to follow this tale with your own search for truth. There is another tale that follows this one, the tale of the people who sought justice for the survivors of Rosewood, and I hope you will read about that as well. Another tale continues through this day, the story of the people who wish to preserve Rosewood, memorialize Rosewood, and inform the world about Rosewood. Many people are working in these areas, and their tales are out there to follow. I hope you will be inspired by their journeys, as I have been.
I have used many resources as I have explored the forgotten world of Rosewood. Thank you to all of the authors of these books for your wisdom and for lighting my path. Michael D’Orso’s Like Judgment Day, an account of the Rosewood riot and its aftermath, was a much read source as I began this story. This book in particular explains the long trail that the survivors and their descendants followed to earn recognition and reparations for the Rosewood tragedy. Walter White's Rope and Faggot gave me a clear view of a contemporary historian's view of this era of American history. Ralph Ginsburg's 100 Years of Lynchings contains newspaper reports of lynchings across America and was a valuable source of information. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow by Richard Wormser, a companion volume to the PBS television series of the same name, was an excellent overview of the Jim Crow era. Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth Of Other Suns helped me to create the journey and trials of Rose Winter and her family. I found a book of stories called Florida Folk Tales, by J. Russell Reaver, to be very helpful in building the stories told on Christmas. I hope you enjoyed Sylvester's story, I think it was my favorite part of the book.
Ms. Lizzie Jenkins’ The Real Rosewood Volume 1 was the source of much of my knowledge of the relationships between families in Rosewood and of the physical layout of the town. Ms. Jenkins is a descendant of Gussie Brown Carrier, the schoolteacher of Rosewood, and a Rosewood historian. Her website “The Real Rosewood” at: www.rosewoodflorida.com was one of my online sources of information as well. Thank you Ms. Jenkins for your inspiration over the years.
The website “Remembering Rosewood” at: www.displaysforschools.com/history.html was another source of important information and, especially, I found the pictures and testimony of survivors very moving.
Edward Gonzalez-Tennant, an anthropologist and professor at the University of Florida, has recreated Rosewood in a virtual 3D model I found very interesting. You can see his work and read about some modern day efforts to preserve and memorialize Rosewood at www.virtualrosewood.com.
The photos in this web site are from USA.Gov and commons.wikimedia.org, unless they have a title beneath (with one exception). None of them are true pictures of Rosewood, they are used as illustrations only. The photo at the beginning of the Epilogue is the exception, that is an actual photo of Rosewood, taken that last Sunday after the town was burned out.
Any pictures with a title underneath were taken by me of places in or near Rosewood, except for the end photo in chapter Twenty-Five. That is a photo of an actual lynching in Waco, Texas, and I felt a title was neccesary to honor the victim of that murder. The photo is also from USA.Gov.
The State Archives in Tallahassee, Florida have become an old friend after the many, many hours I’ve spent there, especially in the microfilm archives. Thank you to the kind people who work there, and a special thank you and apology for the hundreds of microfilm reels you have re-filed after my use.
The library at the University of Florida in Gainesville also supplied me with hours and hours of microfilms to view and took me down many paths through the history of Florida’s Jim Crow era. Thank you to the staff who have helped me many times to find my way into the past, and to find my way around your beautiful campus.
The public libraries of Alachua County in Gainesville and Archer have also served as both places to work and places to learn more about Rosewood. I thank your generous staff for all the help they have given me over the years. I have grown to love both libraries.
Very kind and helpful people at the Railroad Museum in Archer have several times helped an ignorant city woman with information about farm life in rural Florida and with artifacts and explanations about the history of the railroad in South Florida. Thank you to you all for your patience and assistance.
The Levy County courthouse has supplied me with many county records and maps over the years. Thank you for your patience with a very nosy woman and for all the copies you’ve made for me over the years. As well, thank you to the people of Levy County who over the years have fed me, sold me bottled water and gas, given me directions all over the place and told me many stories of the area. You have been gracious and kind even in the face of my ignorance.
The Rosewood display at Bethune- Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida was another inspiration over the years of working on this book. More than once I have been reenergized for writing by walking through the artifacts there. Thank you to the many people who built and maintain the display.
I would like to thank the Gainesville Sun and the St. Petersburg (now the Tampa Bay) Times for the archives they have preserved at several places in Florida. Much of my original source material came from these two newspapers.
I am greatly indebted to several people for their help and encouragement as I wrote this book. My first reader, Professor Dick Penner at the University of Tennessee, was a tremendous help to me in the early days of this book. Thank you Dick for your continuing encouragment. Karen Cubberley, my writing angel, kept me going on this manuscript even when it seemed fruitless to continue. I would never have finished without your positive energy and your unwavering support. Thank you to my friend Catherine DeFord for all your interest in this seemingly never-ending project over the last several years. Thank you to my fellow authors Kathleen Harsch and Wayne D'Annunzio for reading Rosewood. Sally Mallery helped me to sort everything out and make a plan of action; thank you for your wise guidance. Thank you to all my friends who have encouraged me to keep writing, even when it meant they had less of my time for other things, and thank you to my students who have had a great deal of faith in my writing over the years and who are my inspiration, over and over.
Most of all I thank my husband, Stoddard H. Mason, for believing in my mission to create this website and his generous bankrolling of my gallivanting back and forth across the state, in search of information and locations. This website would not have been finished without his support and his keeping of the hearth as he awaited my many returns from the world of Rosewood.
Finally, to the families of the survivors of the Rosewood race riot, and to the innumerable survivors and families of all the victims of racial hatred in our nation’s history, I extend to you a promise to remember, and to speak when no one else will speak. I hope you, my reader, will do the same.