Rosewood

The film Rosewood regales the horrific tragedy of severe racial discrimination in the small rural community of Rosewood, Florida in the first week on 1923. While the film focuses largely on the situation from a third person point of view, it does sometimes center on Mann, a fictitious character portrayed by Ving Rhames, who is a traveler home from World War One. As he enters the town, a woman in the town, Fanny Taylor (played by Catherine Kellner), is beaten by a white man, whom we see, but instead she decides to announce to the town that she was beaten, but not raped, by a black man in an effort to conceal the fact that she is being unfaithful to her husband. Immediately, the white male community bands together in search of the “black” perpetrator,…

Men came from all over, some even as far as Georgia. The murders extended past Rosewood when a man, Mingo “Lord God” Williams, shot through the head did not even reside in Rosewood. He was just an innocent man caught in the crossfire of all the violence. This murder brought the official count to eight, although, most eyewitness accounts from both towns claim more. On the morning of January 8, 1923, The Tampa Morning Tribune reported that all “that remained of the Rosewood Negro section…

Rosewood Massacre There have been many wrong doings over time and while many justify the inhumane acts with “It was just the time we lived in back then”, nothing can justify what transpired in a small town in Florida in 1923. Rosewood, Florida was established around 1845. This town was a very small town located in what is now Levy County. This was a quiet town that began to take notice when a railway was built nearby. This railroad would transport the red cedar tree by the masses to a pencil…

White ignorance has led to the continuing cycle of brutality against blacks in America. The movie Rosewood exemplifies how established cultural prejudices caused by fear lead to violent acts. Fear made by racial preconceptions, makes room for the imagination of the individual that allows such bigotry to exist. Similarly, as Dr. J.W. Wiley puts it, “racism is largely predicated on unfamiliarity with the “Other”” (Wiley 121). America's racist past has created a wall that separates people of…

Many of the men, both black and white became, members of the free Mason’s after the war. However, some white men still didn’t feel that blacks should even think about being considered equal to them and unfortunately some blacks thought so as well. As depicted in the movie “Rosewood”, by the character “Sam”, who is heard mentioning that although the man asking for help was a mason, he was a “White Mason” and that made all the difference in Sam’s initial opinion of him. Yes, they all fought in the…

Rosewood: Film Analysis “Help me!’, screams Fannie Taylor as she comes running out from her house into the street. The neighbors in the all-white town of Sumner, Florida, rush to Ms. Taylor’s side to find out how to help this frantic woman. Ms. Taylor claims that a black man came to her home and attacked her, leaving her face bruised and beaten. Rather than suffer the consequences of her adulterous ways, Ms. Taylor fabricates a story with a black man as the assailant, provoking the already…

Assignment In the film Rosewood, Fanny Taylor, a married white women falsely accused an African American man of abuse and rape which stirred a fury against African Americans. Fanny’s husband and a group of white men go to nearby towns to investigate and search for the African American male. The African Americans lived in a small town called rosewood, where everything was going well for them. They owned their own businesses and their homes. It was a land of opportunity for the african…

The Rosewood Massacre began as many hate crimes of the 1920’s era. The name Rosewood refers to the color of freshly cut cedar and has its own baseball team, a masonic temple and a few hundred residents. The black and the white residents commuted to Sumner for work where jobs could be found in several turpentine mills. Despite their segregated nature, the town of Rosewood and Sumner got along for most of their history without any violent incidents.One morning on January 1, 1923 in a…

Rosewood was predominantly a “black” town, with a couple of white civilians living in the area. The Rosewood massacre was a violent, racially motivated massacre of blacks and destruction of a black town. It was known that approximately nine people had died; 7 black and 2 white people were killed during the first week of January 1st, 1923. This massacre all started but a false rumor by a white woman of the name Fanny Taylor, who was trying to cover up an affair she was having with her husband,…

White ignorance has led to the ongoing cycle of brutality against blacks in America. The movie Rosewood exemplifies how established cultural prejudices can lead violent acts caused by fear. This fear made by racial preconceptions, make room for the imagination of the individual that allows such bigotry to exist. Similarly, as Dr. J.W. Wiley puts it, “racism is largely predicated on unfamiliarity with the “Other”” (Wiley 121). The movie Rosewood recreates the massacre that took place in 1922…