In the Spotlight

The Horror of it All: The 100th Anniversary of the Rosewood Massacre 

Lizzie Robinson Jenkins, a descendant of one of the survivors of the Rosewood massacre, has vivid recollections of what she was told—and how she was admonished not to breathe a word about it to anyone, for fear of White reprisal.  Marie Monroe-Ames, also a descendant, spent countless hours constructing a tapestry of what happened from the hushed and whispered bits and pieces of information she overheard as a kid, and from collecting family documents.  Jenkins has a garage filled with artifacts pertaining to that haunting and horrific historical event.  She has also spent more than 25 years of her life attempting to preserve the history, including establishing The Real Rosewood Foundation, Inc. She and Monroe-Ames, a member of the board for the foundation, have been two of the invaluable keepers of accounts about a devastating tragedy.  

January 1st marked the 100th anniversary of a week of burning, looting, assaulting, raping, and murdering that essentially wiped the prosperous majority Black town of Rosewood, Florida off the face of the map in 1923.  This was less than two years after the devastating Tulsa massacre when White mobs attacked a thriving section of town where Blacks had built a brilliant economy replete with their own theaters, hotels, eateries, artisan and trade shops, and professional offices.  Before that, Whites all across the country, fueled by jealousy, rage, and economic resentment, had attacked scores of Black towns and communities in cities and rural areas during the devastating Red Summer of 1919.  History professor, Carol Anderson’s, highly acclaimed book, White Rage, highlights and examines the jealousy, economic resentment, and hatred that fuels this kind of violent terrorism.  

In 1923, the small town of Rosewood had a turpentine distillery, a sugar cane mill, at least two stores, a school, three churches, a Masonic Lodge, and many Black homeowners.  The baseball team there competed against the White team that came over from nearby Sumner.  The trouble started, the way many racially charged atrocities do, when a young, married White woman from Sumner, Fannie Taylor, falsely accused “a Black man” of assaulting her.  (Many of the locals believed Taylor fabricated the story to conceal the harm her extramarital lover had inflicted upon her.)  Based on that vicious lie, mobs of frenzied white men came, and kept coming, from near and far, throughout the whole week.  

Estimated to have numbered in the hundreds—with some sources estimating more than a thousand—the mobs were fortified by Klansmen who had spent their New Year’s Eve parading in nearby Gainesville.  They swarmed into Rosewood, driving many frightened and unprotected Blacks into the stark, cold swamps, where some stayed for days, as the mobs burned down homes and businesses, and mutilated, battered, raped and killed other Black people.  Some women and children were able to escape by climbing onto a “slow moving train” that took them to neighboring towns, and is thought to have been sent by two wealthy White Northerners.  Ames-Monroe’s father, Oren Monroe, who died in 1976, was one of the children who escaped through the cold swamps and on the train.  On January 4, two white men were shot and killed when they tried to breach a nine bedroom home where Sylvester Carrier, who was ultimately murdered, courageously saved a number of Black children who were able to escape through the back, but his mother Sarah Carrier was murdered, shot in the head.  

Staggering stories of cruelty abounded.  Lexie Gordon, suffering from typhoid fever, sent her children running, but she was shot in the face as she lay under a burning building.  Sarah’s son, and Sylvester’s brother, James Carrier, made it to the swamps, but was eventually captured and ordered to dig his own grave.  He was tortured and, reportedly, splayed on top of his just buried mother and brother’s graves.  Lizzie Jenkins’ aunt, Mahulda Gussie Brown Carrier, was tortured and gang raped, and her husband, Aaron Carrier was also tortured.  A Black craftsman, Sam Carter, was lynched, but first the mob tortured and riddled his body with bullets, supposedly, for helping Jesse Hunter disappear.

Carter’s niece, Robie Mortin, who escaped with her grandmother and sister on the train, died in 2010 at the age of 94.  She blamed the deputy sheriff for the mayhem that ravaged her town.  Years after the massacre, Mortin declared to the *Seminole Tribune: “…that lady never dropped a name as to who did what to her.  Just said a Negro, Black man.”  She said the deputy sheriff “put a name to the person:  Jesse Hunter,” and that he was never found.  She also said the mob “noticed” that a lot of Black people were living “better than them” and “that disturbed these people.”  

In 1993, as journalists began to research the Rosewood whispers, and as the suppressed stories seeped out and became more well-known, the Washington Post wrote that “a mob of white men went on a rampage and burned, mutilated, and killed every Black they could find—until there was nothing and nobody left.”  Indeed, the historical racism of the State of Florida is often overlooked because of the brutality that has taken place in “the Deep South” states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia.  However, Florida was and continues to be a haven for racial violence.  Per capita, Florida had a high number of lynchings.   

Although accounts differ, the Equal Justice Initiative reports an estimated 30 to 40 Blacks died, and many others were injured in Rosewood.  But that probably does not take into account people like Oren Monroe’s sister, who survived the massacre, but contracted pneumonia and died as a result of hiding in the swamps.  And the numbers certainly don’t tell the stories of the lifelong fear, hurt, and trauma suffered by the survivors, like Mahulda Carrier.  

Jenkins has said that her Aunt Mahulda “never truly recovered” from the horror she experienced.  “I was very close to my aunt.  I could see the pain and fear in her eyes. It permeated her soul and I could sense it.”  “Aunt Mahulda” was a smart and dedicated educator, reportedly only the second Black person to serve as a principal of a Florida school.  Disguised as a maid, so no one could catch on to what she was doing, she furtively taught reading in the basement of a predominantly White college campus building. But she was haunted, moving from place to place more than 15 times, and likely suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because of Rosewood.  (And, one can only imagine what indignities she might have endured working as a Black female professional in the South back then.) In 1948, she died by suicide.

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In 1994, with the help of family activists and a law firm, and after survivors testified before the legislature, Florida paid out a paltry $150,000 each to nine living survivors late in their lives.  A few thousand dollars were paid to some of the descendants who filed claims, and a scholarship fund was set up so descendants can attend Florida colleges tuition-free for four years.  (Monroe Ames’ daughter entered into a six year pharmacy program, meaning that she herself has to pay for the last two years.)  The survivors received “reparations” from the Florida legislature by arguing that the Rosewood massacre represented a loss of property and the government’s massive failure to protect its citizens, and by staying away from arguments about “race.”  

A grand jury claimed to have found insufficient evidence to indict anyone for these outrageous acts of barbarism and gross violations of all things decent and civilized.  This week in Florida, a number of activities will commemorate this previously suppressed history.  The nation needs to pay attention.  

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Here are two links to a podcast that briefly details information about just a few of the White mobs that have gathered to attack Black people.  It was recorded in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection.  The Mobs! Lies America Tells Itself and Why Schools Must Teach

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*Another way to listen to Dr. Carol Anderson discuss the Jan. 6 insurrection and other pertinent historical matters is here.

**As reported in the Guardian newspaper; the Seminole Tribune weblink consistently returns an error message, so the article referenced could not be found online

Editor’s Note:  In addition to the links provided, all podcasts referenced should be found wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Books and Literature

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Senegalese novelist, playwright, and journalist, Boubacar Boris Diop, was the winner of the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.  His novel, Doomi Golo, was the first novel to be translated to English from Wolof.  In a tribute delivered when Diop received his award at a ceremony on the campus of the University of Oklahoma, Jennifer Croft quoted Diop’s book translator, Vera Wulfing-Leckie, who said Diop’s work “is certainly salient for readers in many countries right now—potentially brutal political forces are rising to the surface in many places, and many of the rights and freedoms people have fought and died for over many decades are seriously at risk.”

Entertainment

Kerry Washington will executive produce and star in Six Triple Eight, a Tyler Perry Netflix film which will dramatize the true story of a WW II  battalion of Black women who sorted through and delivered  three years’ worth (and over 17 million pieces) of backlogged and undelivered mail to and from U.S. soldiers.

Angela Bassett won a Golden Globe for best supporting actress.  This win for her stunning performance as Queen Ramonda, in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, makes her  the first actor to win a major award for a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie.

The Amsterdam News delivered their list for the 25 best Black films of last year.  Did you see them all?  Do you agree?

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

IN MEMORIAM: Thom Bell co-wrote and/or produced and arranged classic hits like La La Means I Love You, Betcha By Golly Wow, Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time, and so many more exquisitely beautiful songs. This innovative genius, who, along with Leon Huff and Kenny Gamble, was one of the “architects” of the Sound of Philadelphia, transitioned at the end of last year.  A brilliant, classically trained, musician who “heard” beautiful music in his head, even as a young child, he will be missed by music lovers and all the artists he powerfully influenced all over the world.  He was finally inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006. Rest in Paradise, Thom Bell.

Sports

Damar is now back at home!  Update on Damar Hamlin

Congratulations to tennis superstar, Naomi Osaka!  She’s expecting a baby.

Meet Allison Feaster, the Vice President of Player Development and Organizational Growth for the Boston Celtics.  Here she speaks about the Boston Celtics, racism, the city of Boston, and playing basketball as a young Black woman at Harvard.

Children’s Corner

The 1619 Project six part docuseries premieres on January 26 on Hulu, so if you don’t already have it yet, Born on the Water might be a good read for your little scholar.  Watch the “teaser” for the docuseries.

School has resumed after Christmas Break; and here is an interesting website with scholastic resources for children.

Education

Here’s an interesting article, in the wake of the chilling Uvalde school massacre, about the connection between gun violence, White male insecurity, and White supremacist ideology.  Also, here’s a mind-blowing podcast featuring the illustrious Dr. Carol Anderson again, this time discussing guns, White supremacist ideology, and the real (anti-Black) reason for the Second Amendment. Dr. Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University.  

Interesting interview with the irrepressible Black Arts poet and University Distinguished Virginia Tech Professor, Nikki Giovanni.  The interview is an installment of Freedom Education, a seven part series of conversations between scholars and graduate students. 

Mental Wellness

Good News! Fifty percent of Gen Z’ers are prioritizing mental health in 2023.  Enhancing mental health is important to them.  This represents a welcome and monumental shift in attitudes among young people.

Do you expect Black women to be saviors?  The work is exhausting and often unreciprocated.

Is the phrase “White women” inherently triggering?

We were all frightened by the catastrophic event involving young Buffalo Bills safety, Damar Hamlin.  Thankfully, he is recovering at home now and we are beginning to exhale, but he still has a long way to go.  This medical emergency event has been traumatic, not only for his family, teammates, and friends, but for people of goodwill everywhere—even those who are not big football fans.  One publication called Damar “America’s son.”  Here are some thoughts on mental health in the wake of this national collective trauma.

 Find Peace

Innovative trumpet master, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, plays for his lovely wife, Lucille, in front of the Great Sphinx in Kemet (Egypt) in 1961.  One of his trumpets, a custom-made and inscribed 1946 horn, is on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Healing Corner

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, exhorts us to “go for it,” to accept the fact that life throws punches, to find a way to manage life’s miseries, and to seriously quest for our own fulfillment and authentic identity, just as the novel’s protagonist, Janie Crawford, did.  We are admonished to “come home to ourselves,” no matter our age or station.  With Hurston’s dire revelation that time is quite capable of  “mock[ing]” our dreams, what better time is there to take stock of what this journey is all about than right now. 

This is not a screed about making New Year’s resolutions.  No, it’s much deeper than that.  I am talking about the act of taking a good look into your heart, and excavating what has likely been lying there dormant all along—beneath the trauma, anguish, and harshness of life.  When you contemplate and process what your purpose is, what you really want out of this existence, ask yourself:  “Whose voice I am listening to—mine, my parents’, my significant other’s, society’s, or someone else’s?  Turn the volume up loud on your own voice!  The essence of freedom is knowing oneself.  African philosophers told us that (“Man must know thyself”).  Of course, the journey will not be easy, but it will be worth it, so try to enjoy the process of climbing.  What makes you happy? What pleases you?  Are you doing “your thing?” Are you engaging your talents and gifts, or are you trying to impress someone else? A meaningful life is the one you came here to lead, but only you know what that means, because only you can find the sacred combination that decodes you.         

Their Eyes Were Watching God was first “dismissed,” as an insignificant woman’s novel in 1937 when it was first published.  As an aside, is it not gloriously fitting that such an expression of Black female empowerment and liberation was written while Zora was in Haiti, the first free, independent Black nation in the Western Hemisphere. (This year, on January 1, Haiti celebrated it’s 219th year of independence.) 

But back to the novel.  One look at some of the early criticism of the work tells us that Zora’s thoughts were not taken seriously—not because they weren’t astute thoughts, but because they were the thoughts of a Black woman.  Her keen perspectives were dismissed because in a racist, misogynoir culture Black women are always questioned.  In fact, many White men question whether any woman can possibly tell them anything that they don’t already know—which is laughable.  Anyway, almost 100 years later, smart people in this very culture are uttering some iteration of, “If you want to know something, ask a Black woman.”  But many Black people have always known this.  

The truth is that Black women have been master psychologists throughout this American experiment.  Over the centuries, they have had to demonstrate the insight and brilliant awareness necessary to manage and placate everyone’s emotions in order to stay alive, to advance, and to help keep their families safe and fed.  As for Zora Neale Hurston, ever since Alice Walker unearthed her profound writings, located her grave, and put a marker there in 1973 (Huston died penniless), Hurston has been acknowledged for her preservation of folklore and her literary genius.  She has been rediscovered.  Jabari Asim writes that, “Today she is revered as a peerless raconteur and an intrepid investigator of culture and ritual, and author of the great American novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

An anthropologist and a graduate of both Howard and Barnard, to be sure, Zora Neale Hurston was a complex human being with certain views that many find objectionable. However, it must be said that she grew up in Eatonville, Florida, a thriving Black town, and there she was able to observe Black self-sufficiency, accomplishment, governance, and success.  Her mother famously instructed her to “jump at the sun.”  All of this gave her a strong and powerful sense of self-respect, self-esteem, and self-confidence.  Hurston once said, “Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry.  It merely astonishes me.  How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?  It’s beyond me.”  

As regressive and cruel political figures take power all over the country and continue to strenuously push back on the progress Black people have made, sometimes it seems overwhelming.  But, it is an old maxim that, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”  Judging from the national, political, and cultural landscape, it is going to get worse, before it gets better, but we are survivors with brilliant thinkers, scholars, creatives, and common sense agents permeating the Black community.  As with Tulsa and Rosewood, and so many other atrocities, we have been here before.  The task is to nurture each other and our communities and make each other stronger.  As the Rev. Jesse Jackson has said, “We must turn to each other, not on each other.”  We have to change the paradigm in terms of how we talk to and relate to each other.

That said, now would be a good time for me to say this:  I so appreciate all the wonderful, erudite, passionate, and extraordinary people who read this Newsletter.  You have responded with beautiful words of encouragement, urging us to keep the knowledge and information flowing.  Thank you for the way you have received The SHE Newsletter and please pass it on!  (If you received this email, you are already subscribed.) You can also email this newsletter to family members, friends, and associates.  Your email will display a link to your recipient, who will then be able to sign up as a free subscriber.  Also, if there is something you are writing about or doing, and you would like for us to link to it, please let us know at:  [email protected].  We want to highlight writings by Black academics, journalists, and community writers.

Someday, it will all work out. 

For now, though, for 2023, let each and every one of us quest for the things that matter, and reach for our highest calling—the thing about which we are passionate.  Meanwhile, I wish everyone a fulfilling, meaningful, and joyful new year, accompanied by the kind of peace that centers wholeness and abundance, safe communities, thriving schools, and strong neighborhood educational, spiritual, and recreational spaces.   With your eyes watching God, the Universe, the Spirit, or whatever fuels you, let your brilliant light shine.  Much love, Dr. Rhonda Sherrod