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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA white mob wiped this all-black Florida town off the map.
A white mob wiped this all-black Florida town off the map. 60 years later their story was finally toldEven by the standards of the 1920s South, the chain of events in Rosewood were unfathomable
Nine-year-old Minnie Lee Langley was outside with her mother on New Years Day 1923 when she saw them coming: a mob of white men marching toward her hometown of Rosewood, Florida. A daughter of the Jim Crow South, where violence against black people was part of everyday life, Minnie knew that all those white men together meant terrible trouble.
We was out there in the front yard and them crackers were just coming down the railroad just as far as you can see, some of them, she recalled in a radio documentary in the 1990s. Just as far as you could look, you could see them in those big white hats and on horseback.
Even by the standards of the 1920s South, the chain of events that followed was unfathomable. Over the course of a week, Minnie Lees small town would be wiped off the map, with the families who lived there so terrified to speak of what happened that the town was almost wiped from history, too.
Rosewood was a relatively well-off, nearly all-black town a few miles from Floridas Gulf Coast, with an African Methodist Episcopal church, a Masonic lodge that doubled as a schoolhouse, and two general stores. Most of the people who lived there were domestics for white families in nearby Sumner, or worked in that towns sawmill. The white mob had been summoned after the screams of Sumner resident Frannie Taylor brought neighbors running to her door on the morning of January 1. Taylor had been beaten, her face visibly bruised, and she claimed her attacker was black. Eyewitness accounts from her domestic workers told a different story; they said she was struck during an argument with the white lover she was seeing while her husband was at work. Nevertheless, the group of whites, numbering in the hundreds according to white witness and Sumner resident Edith Foster, were deputized by the county sheriff. Theyd followed a bloodhounds nose two miles to Rosewood and Minnie Lees familys front yard, where they grabbed Aaron Carrier, Minnies uncle, and started looking for rope to tie him up with. Mama just went to crying and all that, saying Dont kill him cause he dont know nothing about this, Langley recalled. The sheriff intervened and took Carrier to a nearby jail for his own safety; it was the only time that white authorities would help black residents of Rosewood.
https://timeline.com/all-black-town-rosewood-wiped-off-the-map-by-white-mob-73ca6630802b
SweetieD
(1,660 posts)Have been documented for decades. There are many more burnout stories which are not as well known, particularly if only a few black families lived in the area. My 2nd great grandfather and his family and a few other black family's in his region were run out. He lost his land and the others too. But officially the local government seized them through "tax" sales for failure to pay taxes, but of course you aren't going to pay taxes on land that you have been run out of.
marble falls
(57,461 posts)including in a small town just west of my town (where the KKK marched with assault rifles and someone burned a cross on a black community's property two years ago).
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,067 posts)OnlinePoker
(5,729 posts)It was done under the auspices of "urban renewal".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africville
mcar
(42,458 posts)oberliner
(58,724 posts)Which is 60 years after the massacre.
Roy Rolling
(6,943 posts)We were shooting a movie "Out of Sight" and he had just wrapped "Rosewood". He was so excited about Rosewood it was all he could talk about. Then, I had no idea of Rosewood. Thanks, Vin. An excellent portraying of an evil history.
Skittles
(153,275 posts)tell us more about Ving - he seems like a great guy
mcar
(42,458 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)How horrible.
mcar
(42,458 posts)Just a small sign saying "Rosewood" and... Nothing. Not a house, not a street,not a crumbling barn. It's eerie.
mountain grammy
(26,665 posts)published in the Atlantic, June, 2014, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
PatrickforO
(14,604 posts)Hard to believe that stuff like that could start happening again, but it sure could. We're going in the wrong direction really fast.
AwakeAtLast
(14,134 posts)I'm sure there are more.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)Of 'Black Wall Street' 1921. Attacked, aerially BOMBED and razed, victims dumped in mass graves. These were just the ones too large to hide. I AM SURE, given the vicious racist nature of this white racist nation I live in, that there were many, many more. Unnoticed or truly swept under the rug.
TheSmarterDog
(794 posts)3Hotdogs
(12,462 posts)Residents were majority black and/or interracial. They were declared mentally incompetent and were driven off the island.
Malaga Island
lunasun
(21,646 posts)heaven05
(18,124 posts)greatbaldeagle
(157 posts)It just boggles the mind that the great "christian" white folk of America were capable of carrying out the slaughter of over 300 people in Greenwood, Oklahoma over one allegation of a white girl being assaulted. An entire thriving wealthy community of Americans who "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" were wiped out because they were born with a different skin color than the murderers who perpetrated this disgusting massacre. That's why you notice when the media refers to the Stephen Paddock mass shooting in Vegas they often qualify it by saying it was the largest mass shooting in "recent" history.
CNN ran a special on it a few years ago. One of the sickest things I've ever heard about happening in this country. What a disgrace.
Here is the video
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)James Bradley, who wrote Flags of Our Fathers, wrote The Imperial Cruise, about how Teddy Roosevelt set up the invasions of East Asia, the Philippines, etc.and the history of racism that was behind American expansion.
Short version: Britain developed as a "Teutonic" country, and subjected foreign lands to colonial rule, arguing that non-white races were not "civilized" thus conquering them was god's design, blah blah blah. Same belief system was carried and re-seeded in the New World as early as 1600's, became deeply entrenched here, was taught in speeches, writings, lectures, as a matter of plain fact, and became part of the culture, which most people just accepted.
This was the era my great grandparents and grandparents grew up in. "It is known...."
Also Teddy was a fraud, a very ambitious conniving sort, born of wealth and the thinking that creates.Made his bones on the Spanish American war in 1898.
In the loud propaganda leading up the war, one of the prominent thinkers of the day declared that Spain had never produced anything of value, conveniently choosing to ignore the Christopher Columbus bit.
Stuff we were never taught in school. Amazing to read.
BobTheSubgenius
(11,578 posts)They were clearly as bigoted as one could be, and murder was nowhere near outside their "boundaries." Did they really see an internal moral line in the sand? "I'm not a terrible person. I didn't kill them all?"
F me. What a world.
greatbaldeagle
(157 posts)At some point, after decades of relentless work from people seeking justice through protests, lawsuits, and voting, it became possible for them to be prosecuted for their murders. And it didn't necessarily "stop" the Klan. They are clearly in law enforcement and the same ugly pattern of unarmed minorities being killed without prosecutions occurring happens today. But hopefully the relentless work from people seeking justice through protests, lawsuits, and voting will result in prosecutions becoming a reality and my hope is that this will lead to a significant shift in this pattern. Hopefully that will be the end of it.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)From Wiki: ( and a book I read about Dees)
I want to emphasize....The murder of Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama in 1981 was the last recorded lynching in the United States.
1981...!!!!!!
misanthrope
(7,435 posts)He was dragged to death behind a pick-up truck on a Texas road. The details of his death are similar to Michael Donald's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Byrd_Jr.
Granted, he wasn't hanged to death but neither was Donald, who was killed in a remote location in a neighboring county. Donald's corpse was then hung from a tree in a Mobile neighborhood.
Byrd's corpse, beaten and somewhat dismembered by the three-mile dragging was dumped in front of an African-American cemetery in a symbolic display.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)I lived in Mobile in late 1980's, and was shocked to realize how recently Mr. Donald had been lynched there.
I was down here for all of 1964, and can still remember the tension in the air. Trump's election has given a lot of racists courage again.
misanthrope
(7,435 posts)Last edited Sun Apr 15, 2018, 11:13 PM - Edit history (1)
I agree about Trump's election emboldening racists.
I still recall vividly the mood at Mobile's well-attended initial Tea Party protests in April 2009, the people there, the electronic media coverage. For someone who had lived in Mobile for decades and was used to its ways, who knew why a town of such modest size then had three talk radio stations featuring politically conservative programming and why its alternative newspaper hewed right of the mainstream daily, it was too clear.
I'll give you one guess.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)In 1964 I was living near Anniston Al.
ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)Playing golf while the world burns
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)ProudLib72
(17,984 posts)It's just expected of him.
oasis
(49,472 posts)Judi Lynn
(160,661 posts)GulfCoast66
(11,949 posts)A few brave blacks tried to vote. Massacre and home burning ensued.
The Blue Flower
(5,451 posts)The local Tallahassee PBS affiliate produced a dramatization of the story. Kenneth Jones was the director. It was timely because the State legislature was debating a bill that would pay financial restoration to the survivors and their descendents. I felt honored to be Assistant Director on that project. And was then thrilled when the bill was passed. The story then made it to the big screen.
mcar
(42,458 posts)IIRC, one of the white children whose father was involved in the massacre came before the leg (an old man by then) and bore witness to the atrocities.
BumRushDaShow
(129,938 posts)We are tired of this.
raccoon
(31,131 posts)And we think Lidice was so horrible.
Some of the incidents referenced here sound pretty comparable.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)Called trumps base of voters along with excusers of their racism and men and women with the states permission who wear badges and are supposed to 'protect and serve' all of us are continuing to try to wipe out the black race till this day. Then they get pissed off because the black race in ameriKKKa will not die or leave. This is my country also and shamefully admitted I loaned my marksmanship to a racist war in southeast Asia.
I and 50 million SURVIVORS of ameriKKKan genocidal efforts against the AA race are not going anywhere. And all the racist white assholes that don't like that FACT can stuff that where the sun don't shine. I am disgusted with hate based on stupidity about who is superior. White folks ain't, that's all I know and I will be shouting that from the rooftops