You must pass through what was once the town of Rosewood to reach the sleepy coastal fishing village of Cedar Key. Few today realize that they are driving through the site of a racist massacre that happened, disturbingly, not that long ago.
The year is 1923. A familiar accusation begins making its way through the all-white town of Sumner. Frances “Fannie” Taylor was 22 years old at the time, and married to a man named James, a 30-year-old millwright. She claimed she had been brutally beaten, raped, and robbed by a Black drifter who came through her back door.
The rape of a white woman by a Black man was inflammatory in the South. Just the day before, the Klu Klux Klan had held a parade and rally of over 100 hooded Klansmen 50 miles away in Gainesville under a burning cross and a banner reading, “First and Always Protect Womanhood.”
But the Black community of Rosewood knew a secret about Fannie. Her laundress, Sarah Carrier, had seen her beaten by a man that day—but he wasn’t Black, he didn’t rape her, and he wasn’t her husband.
Fannie was having an affair with a white man named John Bradley. They had gotten into a violent fight that day, and Fannie lied about the rape to protect herself.
None of this information would come to light before Levy County Sheriff Robert Elias Walker raised a posse and started an investigation. They learned that Jesse Hunter, a Black prisoner, had escaped from a chain gang and believed him to be the culprit. An estimated 400 white men arrived from Cedar Key, Otter Creek, Chiefland, and Bronson to help with the search, many of them drinking or already drunk.
A group of white vigilantes, who had become a mob by this time, seized Sam Carter, a local blacksmith and teamster who worked in a turpentine still. They tortured Carter into admitting that he had hidden the escaped chain gang prisoner. To the surprise of many witnesses, someone fatally shot Carter in the face. The group hung Carter’s mutilated body from a tree as a symbol to other Black men in the area.
The mob then surrounded the home of Sarah Carrier, where 25 people were taking refuge, including children hidden under mattresses. They descended upon Rosewood, believing the Carriers were hiding escaped convict and alleged rapist, Jesse Hunter.
Reports conflict about who shot first, but after two members of the mob approached the house, someone opened fire.
Several shots were exchanged. The house was riddled with bullets, but the whites did not overtake it. The standoff lasted long into the next morning, when Sarah and Sylvester Carrier were found dead inside the house; several others were wounded, including a child who had been shot in the eye. Two white men, C. P. Wilkerson and Henry Andrews, were killed. At least four whites were wounded, one possibly fatally.
The remaining children in the Carrier house were spirited out the back door into the woods. They crossed dirt roads one at a time, then hid under brush until they had all gathered away from Rosewood.
The idea that Blacks in Rosewood had taken up arms against the white race was unthinkable in the Deep South. News of the armed standoff at the Carrier house attracted white men from all over the state, as far as Miami, to take part.
The white mob burned Black churches in Rosewood. Many black residents fled for safety into the nearby swamps, some clothed only in their pajamas in the January cold.
White men began surrounding houses, pouring kerosene on and lighting them, then shooting at those who emerged. Lexie Gordon was killed by a shotgun blast to the face when she fled from hiding underneath her home, which had been set on fire by the mob. Fannie Taylor’s brother-in-law proudly claimed to be her killer. Two Black women were raped by the mob in revenge, and with their sexual lust satisfied, the women were strangled.
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.
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 Rosewood.
Not every white person agreed with or participated in the violence in Rosewood. The town barber and several other white men refused to lend their guns to anyone, saying they did not want blood on their hands. Some of the wives helped secretly smuggle victims of the massacre into safety as their husbands burned down the town.
John and Mary Jo Wright were a white couple who owned the general store in Rosewood. They hid many of the victims throughout their home, seen here. It was the only building left standing after the massacre and still stands today.
Mary Jo died not long after the massacre and John, still living in Rosewood, became an alcoholic. He was ostracized and taunted for assisting the survivors, slandered as a ‘n*gger lover,’ and rumored to keep a gun in every room of his house. He died after drinking too much one night in Cedar Key, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Sumner.
Many people were alarmed by the violence, and state leaders feared negative effects on the state’s tourist industry. Governor Hardee ordered an investigation of 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.”
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.
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, sometimes wandering away from his family unclothed. His grandson, Arnett Goins, thought that he had been unhinged by grief.
Fannie Taylor, whose lie sparked the outrage, and her husband moved to another mill town. She was “very nervous” in her later years, until she succumbed to cancer.
Unfortunately, the Rosewood saga does not end in 1923.
Let us examine the “culture of silence” surrounding this event and the racism that still plagues the area almost 100 years later.
Many survivors refused to speak about the massacre, partly because of the painful trauma and also out of fear. Most changed their names and moved away, concerned that if anyone knew they had witnessed the events in Rosewood, their lives might be at risk.
The families of those who participated in the white mob also made every effort to conceal their involvement. Those who looked into the history of Rosewood were met with threats, one researcher receiving a note that read, “We know how to get you and your kids. All it takes is a match.” Local librarians must keep articles from the time period under lock and key, safely guarded, as descendants of the mob have attempted to destroy evidence of their ancestor’s gloating over their involvement in the massacre.
Even today, the only commemoration of the massacre at Rosewood is a mere roadside marker outside of the Wright house, easily missed by anyone traveling down State Road 24 to Cedar Key. Perhaps the reason it is not memorialized further is because the sign has been vandalized, pulled down, and shot at. Local deputies must scope out the area whenever the sign must be replaced as residents have been known to intimidate those replacing it with threats snd slurs.
The legislature eventually paid $1.5 million in reparations to the victims of the Rosewood Massacre in 1994. This enabled a payment of $150,000 to each person who could prove they lived in Rosewood during 1923 and a $500,000 pool for people who could apply for the funds after demonstrating that they had an ancestor who owned property in Rosewood at the time.
A total of nine survivors were compensated. Some refused the money, some went into hiding, and some were left with less than $100 after dividing it among friends and family. Cedar Key Police Chief Virgil Sandlin says he remembers white residents being “offended” by the reparations.
The Wright House was, at the time of writing this article, for sale for $500,000. Its owners hope that it will be turned into a museum but are worried that a person with “wrong” intentions will buy the house to tear it down. They have received threats from neighbors not to sell it to a Black person, one woman indicating there was “plenty of guns” in the community.
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