page_title: Rosewood massacre
section_title: Response
hierarchical_section_title: Rosewood massacre / Events in Rosewood / Response
caption_attribution_description: English: Courthouse in Bronson, Levy County, Florida, circa 1907
context_page_description: The Rosewood massacre was a racially motivated massacre of black people and destruction of a black town that took place during the first week of January 1923 in rural Levy County, Florida. At least six black people and two white people were killed, though eyewitness accounts suggested a higher death toll of 27 to 150. The town of Rosewood was destroyed in what contemporary news reports characterized as a race riot. Florida had an especially high number of lynchings of black men in the years before the massacre, including a well-publicized incident in December 1922.
  Before the massacre, the town of Rosewood had been a quiet, primarily black, self-sufficient whistle stop on the Seaboard Air Line Railway. Trouble began when white men from several nearby towns lynched a black Rosewood resident because of accusations that a white woman in nearby Sumner had been assaulted by a black drifter. A mob of several hundred whites combed the countryside hunting for black people and burned almost every structure in Rosewood. Survivors from the town hid for several days in nearby swamps until they were evacuated by train and car to larger towns. No arrests were made for what happened in Rosewood.
context_section_description: Many people were alarmed by the violence, and state leaders feared negative effects on the state's tourist industry.  Governor Cary Hardee appointed a special grand jury and special prosecuting attorney to investigate the outbreak in Rosewood and other incidents in Levy County.  In February 1923, the all-white grand jury convened in Bronson. Over several days, they heard 25 witnesses, eight of whom were black, but found insufficient evidence to prosecute any perpetrators. The judge presiding over the case deplored the actions of the mob.
  By the end of the week, Rosewood no longer made the front pages of major white newspapers. The Chicago Defender, the most influential black newspaper in the U.S., reported that 19 people in Rosewood's "race war" had died, and a soldier named Ted Cole appeared to fight the lynch mobs, then disappeared; no confirmation of his existence after this report exists. A few editorials appeared in Florida newspapers summarizing the event. The Gainesville Daily Sun justified the actions of whites involved, writing "Let it be understood now and forever that he, whether white or black, who brutally assaults an innocent and helpless woman, shall die the death of a dog."  The Tampa Tribune, in a rare comment on the excesses of whites in the area, called it "a foul and lasting blot on the people of Levy County".
  Northern publications were more willing to note the breakdown of law, but many attributed it to the backward mindset in the South. The New York Call, a socialist newspaper, remarked "how astonishingly little cultural progress has been made in some parts of the world", while the Nashville Banner compared the events in Rosewood to recent race riots in Northern cities, but characterized the entire event as "deplorable". A three-day conference in Atlanta organized by the Southern Methodist Church released a statement that similarly condemned the chaotic week in Rosewood. It concluded, "No family and no race rises higher than womanhood. Hence, the intelligence of women must be cultivated and the purity and dignity of womanhood must be protected by the maintenance of a single standard of morals for both races."
  Officially, the recorded death toll of the first week of January 1923 was eight people (six black and two white). Historians disagree about this number. Some survivors' stories claim there may have been up to 27 black residents killed, and assert that newspapers did not report the total number of white deaths. Minnie Lee Langley, who was in the Carrier house siege, recalls that she stepped over many white bodies on the porch when she left the house.  Several eyewitnesses claim to have seen a mass grave filled with black people; one remembers a plow brought from Cedar Key that covered 26 bodies. However, by the time authorities investigated these claims, most of the witnesses were dead, or too elderly and infirm to lead them to a site to confirm the stories.
  Aaron Carrier was held in jail for several months in early 1923; he died in 1965. James Carrier's widow Emma was shot in the hand and the wrist and reached Gainesville by train. She never recovered, and died in 1924. Sarah Carrier's husband Haywood did not see the events in Rosewood. He was on a hunting trip, and discovered when he returned that his wife, brother James, and son Sylvester had all been killed and his house destroyed by a white mob. Following the shock of learning what had happened in Rosewood, Haywood rarely spoke to anyone but himself; he sometimes wandered away from his family unclothed. His grandson, Arnett Goins, thought that he had been unhinged by grief. Haywood Carrier died a year after the massacre. Jesse Hunter, the escaped convict, was never found. Many survivors fled in different directions to other cities, and a few changed their names from fear that whites would track them down.  None ever returned to live in Rosewood.
  Fannie Taylor and her husband moved to another mill town. She was "very nervous" in her later years, until she succumbed to cancer. John Wright's house was the only structure left standing in Rosewo
caption: Levy County Courthouse in Bronson, where the governor's grand jury met and found no one to prosecute
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