On the first day of 1923, white vigilante mobs begin their descent upon the predominantly Black community of Rosewood, Florida. In an attack that would last several days, they shoot and beat Black residents, set buildings aflame and raze the small, but prosperous mill town that was home to approximately 200 people.
Earlier that day, Fannie Taylor, a white resident of Sumner, a nearby North Florida town, had been heard screaming in her home. When a neighbor arrived, Taylor, visibly beaten, claimed that a Black man had assaulted her. They reported the alleged attack to the sheriff, and James Taylor, Fannie’s husband, gathered a white mob to search for a Black man who might be his wife’s assailant. According to the official 1993 Florida state report on the incident, some from the local community recounted that a white man, possibly a lover, was seen visiting Fannie Taylor that morning; some speculate that he may have been the one who assaulted her and that she fabricated the story of a Black assailant to hide her affair.
