Rosewood, Florida was a small but thriving Black community in Levy County's pine forests. By the 1920s, its approximately 200 residents — nearly all Black — had built a stable life: homes, a church, a school, a baseball diamond, and a general store. The town had once been a center of the cedar pencil industry; after the cedars were depleted, white families had largely relocated to the nearby town of Sumner, leaving Rosewood a self-sufficient Black community. The Carriers, the Halls, and the Goins families were among those who had put down roots deep enough to own land, build generational wealth, and raise children who had never known anything else.

On January 1, 1923, a white woman named Fannie Taylor in Sumner reported being beaten, claiming a Black man had attacked her in her home. Some residents of Sumner — and later historical investigators — believed Taylor had been assaulted by a white man, possibly a secret lover, and fabricated the racial element to avoid her husband's wrath. Regardless, the sheriff's office quickly fixed blame on Jesse Hunter, a Black prisoner who had recently escaped a chain gang, and white mobs formed to find him. They were joined almost immediately by Ku Klux Klan members from neighboring counties. The mob was not looking for Jesse Hunter. They were looking for Rosewood.

The violence began the evening of January 1st and intensified over seven days. On January 4th, a mob attacked the home of Sarah Carrier, a laundress who took in white clients' clothing, and a gunfight broke out. Sarah Carrier and two of her sons were killed defending their home; so were two white attackers. Rather than stopping, this provocation brought more men from across the region. Over the following days, every building in Rosewood was set on fire and burned to the ground — except the home of John Wright, a white general store owner who hid Black families in his home and helped arrange their escape by train. The bodies of at least six Black residents and two white attackers were recovered, though historical estimates place the Black death toll higher. Thousands fled into the swamps.

What followed the massacre was arguably as significant as the massacre itself: near-total erasure. The Associated Press covered the events from the perspective of the white attackers, characterizing the violence as a 'race riot' started by Rosewood's residents. The Gainesville newspaper ran wire stories that described the burning as an inevitable reaction to 'Negro violence.' No one was charged. No one was convicted. Insurance claims were denied because the town no longer technically existed. The county records that might have documented property ownership disappeared. For 60 years, the people who had survived returned to their lives elsewhere and mostly said nothing, because the people who had done this were still living in the same county.

The story finally broke in 1982, when a Tampa Bay Times reporter named Gary Moore started asking questions in Cedar Key and found elderly survivors willing to talk. Their testimony — and the eventual 1993 Florida state investigation — confirmed that the massacre had been a coordinated, multi-day attack on a community that had done nothing wrong. In 1994, the Florida legislature passed a reparations bill: $150,000 per living survivor (nine people, all in their 80s and 90s), smaller amounts for descendants, and a scholarship fund for Rosewood's heirs. It was the first time any U.S. state legislature had paid reparations to Black people for a racial injustice. The last survivor, Minnie Lee Langley, died in 2004. The town was never rebuilt.