via Wikimedia
Rosewood, Florida’s all Black population was doing well for itself. Folks had jobs, peace, and prosperity to spare.
That is until a 22-year-old white woman named Fannie Taylor in neighboring Sumner screamed for help on January 1, 1923.
Taylor claimed a Black man had broken into her home and assaulted her.
Even though her story was a lie (she was covering for an affair gone wrong), in the 1920s one white woman’s tears was all it took to trigger days-long vengeance.
Extrajudicially pinning the crime on an escaped Black prisoner, a lynch mob of over 400 white men went on a violent rampage.
They kidnapped and tortured the town blacksmith before murdering him, raided the home of a laundress before murdering her and her husband and proceeded to burn down all the homes and buildings in the town, shooting any person who tried to escape.
Survivors of the massacre never returned to rebuild in fear their beloved community would be leveled once more.
For over 60 years, the traumatized Rosewood elders never spoke of the tragedy until a St. Petersburg Times journalist resurrected the story and helped spark a restitution battle from the state of Florida.
And to think, all this mayhem and the destruction of a self-sufficient Black community started because of the cowardice of one white woman and her lies.