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Rage and Ruin: The Rosewood Massacre · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Today, when most of us hear about the state of Florida,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: it almost always is quickly followed by some quirky story
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: about someone acting incredibly and hilariously stupid. We're talking about Florida, man.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: But amidst that light and lively sensation, it can sometimes
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: be difficult to remember that it hasn't always been the case.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: It wasn't that long ago, and for some people still
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  Speaker 1: within living memory, that Florida was a hotbed of radical
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and racist ideology that led to countless deaths. This was
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the case for Rosewood in the nineteen twenties, and it
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: was a community that would never be the same again.
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  Speaker 1: In eighteen forty seven, settlers arrived in Rosewood to harvest
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  Speaker 1: cedar wood. Up sprouted two pencil mills, several turpentine mills,
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  Speaker 1: and a sawmill, and out of that grew a pocket
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  Speaker 1: of a civilization in the swampy Florida wilderness. Then followed farms,
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  Speaker 1: a post office, and even a train depot in a dock.
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  Speaker 1: This was the burgeoning beginnings of Rosewood and what promise
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  Speaker 1: to be a profitable, industrious community without racial segregation. This
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: is the key thing to note, especially given the times
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: racial tensions had eased a bit since the Civil War,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: even though they weren't gone entirely, and in hindsight, would
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: never actually completely go away. But for the most part,
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  Speaker 1: Rosewood at this time was a happy place to live
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: for anyone of any racial background. That was until about
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: eighteen ninety, when the cedar trees began to run out.
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  Speaker 1: In response, many of their white residents of Rosewood moved
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: to the nearby town of Sumner, and Rosewood became a
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  Speaker 1: predominantly black township. Two families emerged from Rosewood's population, both
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: of them incredibly successful and both of them black. The
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Gohen family bought into the turpentine industry, but then they
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: had to leave in order to avoid lawsuits from white competitors.
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  Speaker 1: That left the carriers, who had made their name and
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  Speaker 1: fortune in the logging industry and were now part of
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: the Rosewood community. Nineteen fifteen was the peak for Rosewood,
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  Speaker 1: which saw its population rise to three hundred fift fifty
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  Speaker 1: five people, but in so many ways, it was also
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the end. The turn of the twentieth
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: century had seen an incredible rise in legislative racial segregation.
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  Speaker 1: It was now law that white and black people could
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  Speaker 1: not get on the same bus, let alone drink from
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  Speaker 1: the same water fountain, and tensions began to rise higher
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and higher. The state of Florida then created new criteria
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  Speaker 1: that citizens would have to meet in order to vote
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  Speaker 1: and cut off the growing strength of the black communities
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  Speaker 1: at their knees. By nineteen twenty, most of the three
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  Speaker 1: hundred forty four black population of Rosewood were unable to
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  Speaker 1: vote and were being controlled by the two hundred ninety
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: four white residents of Sumner. Black residents could no longer
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  Speaker 1: run for office, had no legislative power, and weren't even
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  Speaker 1: allowed to be jurors. Ever, resilient, the people of Rosewood
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  Speaker 1: did what they could to look after themselves. They built
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  Speaker 1: three churches, a school, a Masonic hall, a new turpentine mill,
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  Speaker 1: and a sugar mill. They even had their own baseball
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  Speaker 1: team called the Rosewood Stars. They had two grocery stores,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and about a dozen or so two story houses for
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the local residents. People had pianos and organs. They had
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  Speaker 1: time and money to paint their houses different colors, and
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: one former resident recalled that there were Roses everywhere you walked.
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  Speaker 1: Rosewood needed to rely on Sumner for very few things,
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  Speaker 1: and that was a good thing. Lynchings were at an
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  Speaker 1: all time high in the South. What legislation couldn't take
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: from the black communities. Supremacists were pilfering behind white masks
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  Speaker 1: and pointed hoods. And then things escalated even further with
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: the looming threats of the First World War. Just when
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: things looked like they were about to devolve into racial
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  Speaker 1: war with one wrong word, the US Army began arming
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  Speaker 1: civilians with weapons and sending them off the battle. All
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  Speaker 1: the radical white supremacists saw then was that the US
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: government was giving weapons to despondent second tier citizens. Even
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: the Germans sought to capitalize on the growing racial tensions
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  Speaker 1: and dropped propaganda pamphlets encouraging black American soldiers to turn
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  Speaker 1: on their white counterparts back home. Southern extremists were ever
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  Speaker 1: concerned about interracial relations, especially after witnessing these relations between
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: black soldiers and European women during the war. They pulled
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: rank and emphasize the importance of white women's purity. They
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: made it a part of their culture that the very
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  Speaker 1: worst crime a white woman could commit would be to
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  Speaker 1: take a black lover, and the very worst crime a
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  Speaker 1: black man could commit would be to sexually assault a
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  Speaker 1: white Southern woman. These fears and concepts of sexual taboos
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  Speaker 1: reached their peak in the winter of nineteen twenty two.
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  Speaker 1: One of the first bursts of explosive and violent behavior
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  Speaker 1: came from Perry, Florida, when a group of white men
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  Speaker 1: stormed a black man's house after a school teacher had
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: been found murdered. The man, Charles Wright, was dragged out
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  Speaker 1: into the streets and burned at the stake. The following day,
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  Speaker 1: two more black men were shot and hanged, and the
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  Speaker 1: school for black children, the Black Church, amusement hall, several homes,
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  Speaker 1: and even the Masonic lodge were all burned to the ground.
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  Speaker 1: And then, just a few weeks later, a woman in
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  Speaker 1: the predominantly white town of Sumner had a shocking story
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  Speaker 1: to tell. Fanny Taylor was a twenty two year old
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  Speaker 1: woman married with two young children. Her husband, James Taylor,
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  Speaker 1: was a millwright and would be up and out of
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  Speaker 1: the house before dawn every morning for work, leaving Fanny
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  Speaker 1: to look after the home and children. One morning in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty three, Fanny's neighbor woke up to screaming, thinking
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  Speaker 1: that something was wrong. Her neighbor grabbed her rifle and
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  Speaker 1: rushed over, only to find Fanny on the floor. Fanny
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  Speaker 1: had been beaten, her face was bruised, and there were
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  Speaker 1: scuff marks on her notoriously cleaned floor. Fanny claimed that
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  Speaker 1: a black man had broken into her house after James
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  Speaker 1: had left for the day. He then had allegedly tried
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  Speaker 1: to rape her before beating her and running out the
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  Speaker 1: back door. The neighbor searched the house and didn't find
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  Speaker 1: anybody else except Fanny's infant child. Fanny Taylor had a
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  Speaker 1: mixed reputation around town at best, but rumors of her
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  Speaker 1: assault sparked a flame that would not easily be put out.
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  Speaker 1: Levy County Sheriff Robert Elias Walker rounded up some men
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  Speaker 1: and began searching the town, desperate to put the minds
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  Speaker 1: and hearts at ease and rid the streets of this
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  Speaker 1: violent criminal. But links to prominent names in the Rosewood
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  Speaker 1: community quickly threw up a different version of events, one
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  Speaker 1: that shone Fanny in a different light. Entirely working as
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  Speaker 1: a laundress for the tailors was Sarah Carrier, who would
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  Speaker 1: often bring her grandchildren Filhmina and Arnett Goens with her.
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  Speaker 1: The three of them had allegedly and collectively seen a
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  Speaker 1: white man entering and leaving the Tailor household on several occasions,
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  Speaker 1: and believed him to be Fanny's lover. If any one
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: had beaten Fanny and left the house that day, it
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  Speaker 1: had been this man and no one else. Despite this
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: new information, a mob continued to form in Sumner. News
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  Speaker 1: had broken about a black convict named Jesse Hunter who
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: had escaped from a nearby chain gang, and with that,
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  Speaker 1: the white population began to arm themselves. Around four hundred
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  Speaker 1: men piled into Sumner from neighboring towns, many of them
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  Speaker 1: who were believed to have taken part of the k
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  Speaker 1: K K rally that had happened a few days before
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  Speaker 1: in Gainesville, Florida. It's believed that about a hundred men
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  Speaker 1: attended that rally, where they'd burned across and gathered under
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: the banner reading first and always protect womanhood Sheriff Walker
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  Speaker 1: deputized some of these men, but with the sheer number
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  Speaker 1: of angry, armed and intoxication aid individuals in front of him,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: he must have known that things were going to turn
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: ugly very fast. If he had any doubt about that,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: they would have been quickly set straight with what happened
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: to Aaron. Carrier sniffer dogs lent to Sheriff Walker from
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: a nearby convict camp, led over a one hundred men
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  Speaker 1: to Aaron's home in Rosewood. Believing that they had their man.
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  Speaker 1: The mob stormed the house, beat and roughed up Aaron outside,
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  Speaker 1: and then tied him to the back of a car.
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  Speaker 1: Aaron was then dragged all the way back to Sumner.
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  Speaker 1: Seeing this situation devolving, Sheriff Walker then changed strategy. Instead
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: of trying to find Fanny's would be assailant, he began
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: urging the black population to take cover and hide. The
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: mob then grabbed a hold of the local blacksmith named
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Sam Carter. They believed that Sam helped Jesse Hunter escape
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  Speaker 1: and tortured him into confessing no Doubt, a false confession.
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  Speaker 1: Sam then took the mob out to the forest where
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: he had allegedly left Jess. When no one could find him,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: one of the men turned around and shot Sam in
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  Speaker 1: the face. The mob then hung Sam's body from a
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  Speaker 1: tree to act as a warning to others. Sheriff Walker
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  Speaker 1: and the mill supervisor W. H. Pillsbury tried to subdue
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the crowd. Days later, the situation was only getting worse.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Three days after the riot had begun, a mob stormed
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  Speaker 1: Sarah Carrier's house, where somewhere between fifteen to twenty five
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  Speaker 1: people were hiding. Many of those children. Sarah's son, Sylvester,
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  Speaker 1: was inside with his mother, and he was known to
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: be a bit of a character, proud, determined, and an
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: expert hunter. When Sylvester caught wind of what was happening
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  Speaker 1: in Rosewood, he set about trying to protect as many
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: people as he possibly could. It's unclear who shot first,
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  Speaker 1: but some accounts say that Sylvester killed more than a
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  Speaker 1: couple wide assailants in a shootout that left the house
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  Speaker 1: riddled with bullet holes. Stand off lasted well into the
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  Speaker 1: following morning, when friends managed to approach the house and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: found both Sarah Carrier and Sylvester dead. The children were
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: then hustled away to hide in a nearby marshland. They
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: were quickly joined by other Rosewood residents who were fleeing
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  Speaker 1: the mob. Men had begun pouring kerosene on houses and
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: setting fire to them, while others shot and killed those
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: who tried to escape the flames. Allies escorted and smuggled
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  Speaker 1: women and children away, many of which had been helped
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  Speaker 1: by the white owners of Rosewood's second grocery store. John
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  Speaker 1: Wright and his wife married Joe a week later, and
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  Speaker 1: the official victim count was eight, but historians and eye
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: witnesses claimed that that number was much higher and was
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: probably something more like twenty seven. When Heywood Carrier returned
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  Speaker 1: to Rosewood from a hunting trip, he found that his wife, Sarah,
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  Speaker 1: his son Sylvester, and his brother James were among the dead.
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  Speaker 1: It said that the shock and the grief destroyed Haywood,
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  Speaker 1: who rarely spoke after that and died only about a
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  Speaker 1: year later. Residents of Rosewood fled and never returned. Those
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: who did try to stay, like John and Mary Joe Wright,
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  Speaker 1: found themselves on very shaky ground. They were ostracized from
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  Speaker 1: the white community for helping the black residents escape, and
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: things grew so sad that John was rumored to have
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: kept a gun every room of his house. Mary died
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: of cancer a few years later. John then took to
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  Speaker 1: drinking heavily and quickly followed his wife. That's ten minute
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