On January 1, 1923, a massacre was carried out in the small, predominantly black town of Rosewood in central Florida. The massacre was instigated by the rumor that a white woman, Fanny Taylor, had been sexually assaulted by a black man in her home in a nearby community.  A group of white men, believing this rapist to be a recently escaped convict named Jesse Hunter who was hiding in Rosewood, assembled to capture this man. Prior to this event, a series of incidents had stirred racial tensions within Rosewood.  In the winter of 1922, a white school teacher from Perry had been murdered, and on New Years Eve in 1922 ,there was a Ku Klux Klan rally held in Gainesville, located not far away from Rosewood. In response to the allegation by Taylor, white men began to search for Jesse Hunter along with Aaron Carrier and Sam Carter, who were believed to be accomplices.  Carrier was captured and incarcerated while Carter was lynched. The white mob suspected Aaron Carrier’s cousin Sylvester, a Rosewood resident, of harboring Jesse Hunter. On January 4, 1923, a group of twenty-to-thirty white men approached the Carrier home and shot the family dog.  When Sylvester’s mother … Continue reading Rosewood Massacre (1923)