One-hundred years ago this week, the thriving Black town of Rosewood, Florida, was destroyed by a white supremacist mob. This Saturday (Jan. 7), the Real Rosewood Foundation will commemorate the centennial at Bo Diddley Plaza in Gainesville, Florida, about an hour outside of Rosewood. The plaza is where lynchings once occurred in what was then known as the town square in Gainesville.

Lizzie Polly Robinson Brown Jenkins, the founder of the Real Rosewood Foundation and a niece of a deceased survivor, told the Citrus County Chronicle, “My goal is to help close the racial divide… You cannot heal unless you know where you are, and you pray for that healing.

“My concern is the next generation,” she added. “We have to be better as example-setters. Children know better. Kids know if their parents are teaching them to hate that it’s wrong. We need to set standards for our children to be inclusive.”

Robinson is also planning to open a museum in honor of Rosewood.

On Jan. 1, 1923, 22-year-old white woman named Fannie Taylor began screaming outside her home. A neighbor rushed to the distressed white woman to find her beaten and bruised, yelling for her baby. Fannie claimed a Black man broke into her home and attacked her. The neighbor searched her house to find the baby safe and no signs of a break-in. Rumors quickly spread that Taylor was raped. Taylor’s husband, James, gathered a group of men to find the imaginary criminal, even calling on the Klu Klux Klan, who lynched a Black man months before due to a rape accusation, for assistance.

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A pack of terrorists headed to the neighboring area, an affluent Black town in Rosewood, Florida, accusing any Black man they could of the crime. Their first victim was Sam Carter, a local blacksmith, who was tortured and hung. They eventually began looking for a man named Jesse Hunter, who they claimed was an escaped convict. The Black residents of Rosewood fought back, but there were many casualties, including Sarah Carrier, a woman who did Fannie Taylor’s laundry. She was shot in the head, according to History.com. Her son Sylvester Carrier was also fatally shot. The race massacre lasted for a week, burning Rosewood to the ground and killing countless Black people. As for Fannie Taylor, she reportedly had an affair with a white man who beat her, which is why she was found assaulted, and blamed a Black man to hide the affair.

There are reports that up to 150 Black people were killed in Rosewood, Florida, over six days; however, the exact death toll is unknown.

After Rosewood was destroyed, a grand jury and special prosecutor ruled there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the white men who killed innocent American citizens. In 1994, a small group of survivors and descendants were compensated with $2.1 million. However, according to a 2020 feature in The Washington Post, only nine survivors received full payouts of $150,000

In 1997, the late filmmaker John Singleton famously made the film Rosewood, starring Ving Rhames, based on the massacre.