What was built
- Established or development period
- 1870s–1923
- Peak period
- 1915–1922
- Who built the community
- Black families including the Carriers, Goinses, Bradleys and Halls, many of them turpentine, sawmill and cedar-mill workers who bought land.
- Black population
- Roughly 120–350 residents, nearly all Black by 1920 (sources differ).
- Businesses
- A general store owned by John Wright (white), a Black-owned general store, turpentine still, sugar mill and citrus groves.
- Financial institutions
- Not yet documented
- Churches
- Two churches, including an A.M.E. congregation.
- Schools
- A one-room school for Black children.
- Hospitals
- Not yet documented
- Newspapers
- Not yet documented
- Entertainment & cultural institutions
- Not yet documented
- Other community institutions
- A Masonic lodge and a baseball team.
- Black land & property ownership
- Black families owned homes, farms and timbered acreage, a rare rural landowning community.
- Economic significance
- A self-sustaining Black landowning town in the Florida cedar and turpentine economy.
What happened
- What happened?
- During the first week of January 1923, white mobs from surrounding towns attacked Rosewood, killed residents, burned nearly every Black-owned structure and drove survivors into the swamps. The town was never reoccupied.
- Trigger or precipitating event
- An accusation by a white woman in nearby Sumner that she had been assaulted by a Black man.
- Underlying historical context
- Klan activity across Florida, lynching culture, and white resentment of Black landownership and relative prosperity.
- Method of destruction / displacement
- Massacre · Mob Violence · Arson · Expulsion
- Date or period of destruction
- January 1–7, 1923
- Confirmed / documented deaths
- 8 documented deaths (6 Black, 2 white) in the 1993 state-commissioned study.
- Estimated deaths
- Survivor accounts describe substantially higher Black death tolls, cited in ranges up to 27 or more. SOURCES DIFFER.
- People displaced
- The entire Black population fled; survivors scattered to Gainesville, Lacoochee and beyond.
- Homes destroyed
- Nearly every Black home and structure in the town.
- Businesses destroyed
- Not yet documented
- Acres or property lost
- Not yet documented
Afterward
- What happened to the land?
- Land was abandoned, sold at a loss or lost to tax default; much later became timberland.
- Was compensation paid?
- Yes, in 1994 the Florida Legislature approved $2.1 million, including direct payments to survivors and a scholarship fund for descendants.
- Was the community rebuilt?
- No
- What was rebuilt?
- Not yet documented
- Destroyed or displaced again?
- Not yet documented
- Second displacement date
- Not yet documented
- Second displacement cause
- Not yet documented
- What exists there today?
- A Florida heritage landmark marker along State Road 24 and largely wooded private land.
- Descendant, reparation & restoration efforts
- The 1993 Documented History of the Incident Which Occurred at Rosewood, Florida, in January 1923 and the 1994 Rosewood Claims Act, the first state reparations of its kind in the United States.
- Historical significance
- A rare instance in which a state government formally compensated survivors and descendants for racial destruction of a Black community.
Sources
- Source lookupFind
Maxine D. Jones et al., A Documented History of the Incident Which Occurred at Rosewood, Florida, in January 1923 (Florida Board of Regents, 1993)
- Source lookupFind
Rosewood Compensation Act, Florida Laws ch. 94-359 (1994)
- Source lookupFind
Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources
- Source lookupFind
R. Thomas Dye, 'Rosewood, Florida: The Destruction of an African American Community,' The Historian (1996)
"Find" opens a focused search for legacy references that do not have a stable link; "Open" goes directly to the source.
Last verified: 2026-09-20. This is a living historical collection. Additional communities and documentation will be added as research and verification continue.