The Rosewood Massacre

The Rosewood Massacre investigates the 1923 race riot that, in a weeklong series of events, devastated the predominantly African American community of Rosewood, Florida. The town was burned to the ground by neighboring Whites, and its citizens fled for their lives, never to return. None of the perpetrators were convicted. Very little documentation of the event and the ensuing court hearings survives today. The only signs that there was once a vibrant town are a scattering of structural remains and a historical marker erected in 2004 declaring the site a Florida Heritage Landmark.

Drawing on new methods and theories, Edward Gonz lez-Tennant uncovers important elements of the forgotten history of Rosewood. He uses a mix of techniques such as geospatial analysis, interpretation of remotely sensed data, analysis of census data and property records, oral history, and the excavation and interpretation of artifacts from the site to reconstruct the local landscape. Gonz lez-Tennant interprets these and other data through an intersectional framework, acknowledging the complex ways class, race, gender, and other identities compound discrimination. This allows him to explore the local circumstances and broader sociopolitical power structures that led to the massacre, showing how the event was a microcosm of the oppression and terror suffered by African Americans and other minorities in the United States.

Gonz lez-Tennant connects these historic forms of racial violence to present-day social and racial inequality and argues that such continuities demonstrate the need to make events like the Rosewood massacre public knowledge.

A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel