Rosewood massacre
1923 CE.
Shown on the map at 29.233°, -82.933°.
The Rosewood massacre was a racially motivated massacre of Black people and the destruction of a Black town during the first week of January 1923 in rural Levy County, Florida. By the official death toll, at least six Black people were killed, but eyewitness accounts suggested 27 or more deaths. In addition, at least two White people were killed in self-defense by one of the victims. The town of Rosewood was destroyed in what contemporary news reports characterized as a race riot. Florida had especially frequent lynchings of Black men in the years before the massacre, including the lynching of Charles Strong and the Perry massacre in 1922. Before the massacre, the town of Rosewood had been a quiet, primarily Black, self-sufficient whistle stop on the Seaboard Air Line Railway. The rioting began when White men from several nearby towns lynched a Black Rosewood man after accusations that a white woman in nearby Sumner had been assaulted by a Black drifter. Subsequently, a mob of several hundred White men combed the countryside hunting for Black people and descended on Rosewood, burning almost every structure.
Text from the Wikipedia article Rosewood massacre, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.