A week-long pogrom triggered by a white woman’s false accusation that a Black man had assaulted her. White mobs from neighboring Sumner, joined by men arriving by train, lynched residents and burned every Black-owned structure in the small Florida town. At least six Black residents and two whites were killed; the surviving Black population fled and never returned. Florida formally apologized and compensated survivors and descendants in 1994 — the first such reparations payment of its kind in the US.

Why it’s been targeted

Florida’s HB 7 (“Stop WOKE Act,” 2022) and HB 1557 / HB 1467 have produced removals across Florida districts of materials framing US racial violence as systemic. The Florida Department of Education’s 2022–23 instructional-materials specifications prohibited “social justice” and “culturally responsive teaching” framings; scholars at the University of Miami and AAIHS warned that Rosewood coverage in particular was at risk. The state’s January 2023 rejection of AP African American Studies cited the course’s treatment of post-Reconstruction racial massacres.