Black History Month: Remembering the Rosewood massacre

Nearly 100 years ago, a racist lie lead to a massacre. A white woman said a Black man beat her, leading to days of mobs and racial violence in the small town of Rosewood, Florida.

You won’t find it in many history books and there are few pictures. But one woman is determined to share the history and wants everyone to remember Rosewood.

No matter how many times Lizzie Jenkins reads the Florida Heritage Landmark marker, she says it never gets any easier to talk about what happened here 99 years ago.

Jenkins is the president and founder of The Real Rosewood Foundation, Inc.

“I go home, get in bed, in a fetal position, and I decompress,” Jenkins said. “Rosewood is my life.”

Her family and all of Rosewood were destroyed back then because of one big lie that began in the next town over.

In summer on January 1, 1923, a white woman named Fannie Taylor claimed a Black man assaulted her while her husband was at work at the local mill.

“It wasn’t true,” Jenkins explained. “But because she was having an extramarital affair, with a white man that worked with the husband. She needed an excuse for her husband. So she said, a Black man did it.”

Jenkins says that lie inflamed hundreds of KKK members who went looking for one of the Black men they assumed did it, Aaron Carrier, Jenkins’ uncle.

The mob tied him to a car and dragged him to Sumner. Carrier survived but his mother did not. She’s one of five Black people who were murdered.

They are now memorialized by five angels near the blue marker.

“We were afraid to talk about it for a long time,” Jenkins added.

After all the families were forced from their homes in Rosewood, the mob burned the town and looted livestock and property.

The only home they didn’t touch belonged to John Wright.

He helped shelter Carrier’s wife, Jenkins’ aunt, Mahulda Gussie Brown Carrier, until she could escape to her parent’s house in Archer, more than 30 miles away.

Jenkins said, “It’s a relief. Okay, but it’s painful. It’s painful because my aunt lived with it. She never forgot it. She lived 25 years after and for all 25 years, she carried the pain of rosewood.”

Now it’s Jenkins’s great responsibility to carry the burden of pain and truth.

Almost 20 years ago she started The Real Rosewood Foundation so the history and truth of Rosewood is never forgotten.

She said, “History is who we are. And without history. We’re nothing. So, we got to keep it alive.”

Jenkins says John Wright’s home was donated to her organization in July. She hopes to turn it into a museum in time to commemorate 100 years next year.

SERIES: BLACK HISTORY MONTH