C. Isaiah Smalls II
Thu, March 9, 2023
The John Wright house remains the final relic of Rosewood.
Hidden behind the trees that dot the 35-acre property sits the sprawling three-story Victorian home, its white facade and green accents dulled over the past century. The trail of clam shells leading to the front porch emits a stench that causes noses to crinkle and hands to cover faces. Over the past century, the home has witnessed the complete annihilation of a community that left at least six Black Floridians dead, one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the United States and whatever else time has thrown its way.
Still, it stands. As does the history: Wright hid Black women and children inside the attic of this North Florida home when the bloodshed of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre began after a white woman falsely accused a Black man of beating her. Climb the winding, wooden staircase to the attic today and the emotions present more than a century ago are still very much palpable. Horror. Confusion. Anguish. Sorrow. Grief.
“When I got to the top of the stairs, I started crying,” Marvin Dunn, professor emeritus at Florida International University, said of his first visit to the home in January, explaining the rush of emotions. He couldn’t bear going inside again when he led a group of students there on a recent sunny Sunday afternoon in March. “In that small space, all these people suffering. They didn’t know if their relatives were alive or dead, where their families were. It had to be a frightening experience. And they could’ve been killed: They were killing everything Black.”
Historian Marvin Dunn recounts a portion of the Rosewood story to students and their families at Shiloh Cemetery in Cedar Key, Florida, on Sunday, March 5, 2023. Dunn led a group of students and their families on a tour that stopped at some of Florida’s most horrific sites of racial violence.
These experiences are at the heart of Dunn’s Teach the Truth tour, a two-day excursion where students and families travel to the locations of Florida’s most horrific sites of racial violence. In addition to Rosewood, the Miami Center for Racial Justice-sponsored tour made stops at the grave sites of Willie James Howard, a 15-year-old who was lynched in Live Oak, Florida, for sending a love note to a white girl in 1944; and Julius “July” Perry, who, after trying to vote, was among the at least 50 Black Floridians brutally murdered in what’s now known as the Ocoee Massacre. A previous tour in January stopped in Newberry, Florida, where a white mob hung six Black Floridians, one of whom was a pregnant woman, and Mims, Florida, where white supremacists bombed the home of Harry T. Moore and Harriette V.S. Moore on Christmas Day 1951, killing them both.
Dunn has dedicated most of his professional career to unearthing these stories. Florida, after all, had more lynchings per capita between 1877 and 1950 than any other state, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
But as Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crusade continues against anything he deems “woke,” something his lawyer defined as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them,” the university professor worries this part of Florida history will be lost. Even worse, any chance at reconciliation for such atrocities might disappear as well.
Visitors congregate around the home of John and Mary Jane Wright in Rosewood, Florida, on Sunday, March 5, 2023. The Wrights hid Black women and children inside the attic of their North Florida home when the bloodshed of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre began.
“If we don’t acknowledge these people, then they died for nothing,” Wendell Owens said. A native of northeastern Arkansas, the 66-year-old lives in Newberry with his wife, Janis, who penned the book, “Hidden in Plain Sight: A History of the Newberry Mass Lynching of 1916.”
Dunn invited Owens on the final leg of the trip to emphasize that “in every instance, there were white people who came forward and tried to do the right thing.”
“The only way we can get rid of racism is to confess it, to embrace it as it was and as it is now,” Owens added.
In what many consider a clear push for the presidency, DeSantis has weaponized the term “woke” to restrict the teaching of Black history. That has meant banning critical race theory and The New York Times’ 1619 project from schools. That has meant supporting laws like the Stop W.O.K.E. Act, an amorphous piece of legislation that mandates “an objective” approach to race-based lessons and bans instruction “used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view” or make students “feel guilt” about history. It has also meant influencing the Florida Department of Education, which, among many other things, recently rejected the College Board’s Advanced Placement African-American studies course because it “significantly lacks educational value.” Across the state, books are being pulled from shelves as teachers try to gain clarity.
Visitors interact with the historical marker explaining the Rosewood Massacre in Rosewood, Florida, on Sunday, March 5, 2023. The 1923 massacre left eight people dead — six Black, two white — and an entire community razed after a white woman falsely accused a Black man of beating her.
DeSantis’ attacks even extend to higher education. A December 2022 memo required state colleges and universities to “provide a comprehensive list of all staff, programs, and campus activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and critical race theory” as well as the associated costs. A federal judge issued a temporary injunction against portions of the Stop WOKE Act related to higher education in November.
‘This trip has brought the history to life.’
The message, according to many of the parents and students present on Dunn’s tour, is clear: DeSantis doesn’t care about Black history. For this reason, Robyn Haugabook brought her two daughters — Morgan, 16, and Megan, 20, Everett — as well as three nieces. The group was among the more than 40 participants that piled onto a bus at 7 a.m. Saturday at the campus of Barry University.
From there, the bus took the roughly three-hour trip to Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando where Perry is buried. The tour then headed northwest for nearly three more hours to East Memorial Cemetery in Live Oak, the site of Howard’s grave before quickly shuffling to the Suwanee River, where the 15-year-old took his final breaths. After an overnight stay at a nearby hotel in Lake City, the bus headed south toward Cedar Key, the final resting place of Wright and his wife, Mary Jane. The caravan then departed for Rosewood, where Dunn recently purchased a five-acre plot of land. There, they planted azaleas on Dunn’s land, an ode to the Rosewood of the past. The Wright home was the final stop before the roughly six-hour ride back to Miami.
Megan Everett, 20, left, and Morgan Everett, 16, plant azaleas on historian Marvin Dunn’s property in Rosewood, Florida, on Sunday, March 5, 2023. The sisters were among the more than 40 participants who traveled on Dunn’s tour that stopped at some of Florida’s most horrific sites of racial violence.
“This trip has brought the history to life,” Haugabook said. “I want my children to take it back to their school, to their community, to their history teachers and let them know that what DeSantis has tried to do is erase our history. But we’re fighting back.”
Part of that fight involves establishing a physical connection with the history, says Dunn, in hopes that one of the students will one day pick up where he left off. The tour followed a similar blueprint: The group would file out of the bus, listen to Dunn’s recount of the history, sing either “We Shall Overcome,” “Amazing Grace” or “Lift Every Voice,” pray and, finally, touch the tombstone.
“We don’t want anyone to think that we’re angry or the Teach the Truth tour wants you to be angry,” Dunn said at the Greenwood Cemetery, Perry’s memorial resting by his feet. As the scorching Central Florida sun beamed down on the group, Dunn told the story of Perry’s murder, why no one was ever brought to justice and implored students to vote when they’re of age. He then asked a rather poignant question.
“You all are too young to hear this according to our governor,” Dunn said. “Is it too much for you to hear?”
“No!” Morgan quickly shouted. “We need to hear it.”
Asked later about her response, Morgan confidently explained why she “can handle this history.”
“It’s our history and it’s things that happened to kids our age so I think we should be aware of the things that have happened so that they don’t repeat themselves,” the Barbara Goleman Senior High junior said, referring to Howard’s lynching.
The 15-year-old’s murder, which occurred more than a decade before Emmett Till’s brutal killing ignited the Civil Rights Movement, weighed heavy on many throughout the group. Students couldn’t fathom how someone could do that to a child. One parent recounted having nightmares Saturday night.
A tombstone for 15-year-old Willie James Howard sits in East Memorial Cemetery in Live Oak, Florida, on Saturday, March 4, 2023. The murder of Howard, who was killed by three white men in 1944 after the teenager sent a love letter to a white girl, was deemed a suicide for decades until a funeral director discovered the 15-year-old’s burial records.
In grave detail, Dunn explained how three white men kidnapped Howard from his mother’s house, picked up his father from work and took them to the Suwanee River where the teenager was forced to jump in. The three white men later admitted to taking the younger Howard to the river yet said he jumped in unprovoked. Howard’s family fled Live Oak shortly after and no one ever faced charges. For more than 60 years, Howard’s killing was called a suicide until Suwannee County Commissioner Douglas Udell purchased a funeral home and discovered the word “lynching” etched next to the 15-year-old’s name in its records. Udell then commissioned a tombstone that read “Murdered by 3 Racist” [sic] and invited the community to the only funeral held in Howard’s honor.
“It was like he was erased” from the history books, Douglas Udell Jr. told the group as the sun set over the trees that circle East Memorial Cemetery.
Vanessa Blaise, 17, had never heard of Howard until the tour. Though his story was “extremely hard on her conscience,” the Plantation High senior said it was a welcome change of pace from the monotony of her normal history lessons that she believed had become “repetitive” since DeSantis’ laws complicated lessons on race. Dunn’s tour, however, provides a necessary antidote.
“By banning Black history, they’re banning us in a way because we went through this,” Blaise said, adding that similar tours “should be mandated nationwide.”
“We went through this. It’s our history.”
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