Hidden away in the marshes of St. Augustine, Florida is one of the most important sites in American history: the first free community of ex-slaves, founded in 1738 and called Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose or Fort Mose (pronounced Moh-Say).
More than a century before the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves from the British colonies were able to follow the original "Underground Railroad" which headed not to the north, but rather south, to the Spanish colony of Florida.
Amid the fight for control of the New World, Great Britain, Spain and other European nations relied on African slave labor. The king of Spain issued an edict: Any male slave of the British colonies who escaped to the Spanish colony of Florida would be set free -- as long as he declared his allegiance to Spain and the Catholic Church. The settlement was abandoned when the British took possession of Florida in 1763.
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Rosewood was established around 1870 in Levy County, Florida on a road leading to Cedar Key and the Gulf of Mexico. It took its name from the abundant red cedar that grew in the area. It prospered as the Florida Railroad established a small depot to handle the transport of cedar wood to the pencil factory in Cedar Key and the transportation of timber, turpentine rosin, citrus, vegetables, and cotton. In 1890 the cedar depleted and many of the white families moved to Sumner, three (3) miles west of Rosewood and worked at the newfound saw mill established by Cummer and Sons. By 1900 Rosewood had a black majority of citizens.
On the morning of January 1, 1923 Fannie Coleman Taylor of Sumner Florida, claimed she was assaulted by a black man. Although she was not seriously injured and was able to describe what happened she allegedly remained unconscious for several hours due to the shock of the incident. No one disputed her account and no questions were asked. It was assumed she was reporting the incident accurately.
Sarah Carrier a black woman from Rosewood, who did the laundry for Fannie Taylor and was present on the morning of the incident, claimed the man that assaulted Fannie Taylor was her white lover. It was believed the two lovers quarreled and he abused Fannie and left. However, in 1923 no one questioned Fannie Taylor's account and no one asked Sarah Carrier about the incident. The black community claimed Fannie Taylor was only protecting herself from scandal.
A posse was summoned and tracking dogs were ordered by James Taylor, Fannie Taylor’s husband and the foreman at Cummer and Sons saw mill. The local white community became aroused at the alleged abuse of a white woman by a black man, which was an unpardonable sin against black men back then to look at a white woman. James Taylor summoned help from Levy County and neighboring Alachua County, who was ending a staged Klu Klux Klan rally leading up to January 1, 1923, on the court house square in downtown Gainesville, where a large number of KKK members had been rallying and marching in opposition of justice for black people.
A telegraph sent to Gainesville in regards to Fannie Taylor’s allegations provoked four to five hundred Klansmen that headed to Sumner at the appeal of James Taylor. With reaping tension displayed they willingly accepted the invitation and came to Sumner with a vengeance to participate at any cost necessary. They arrived enraged and combed the woods behind the Taylor’s home looking for a suspect. Suspicion soon fell on Jesse Hunter an allegedly black man who had allegedly had recently escaped from a convict road gang. No proof of the escape was ever provided.
The posse confronted Sam Carter at his home and Carter allegedly admitted to helping Hunter escape. Allegedly the posse forced Carter to take them to the place where he last saw Hunter. Carter allegedly took the posse to where he parted ways with Hunter. When no trace of Hunter could be found the posse turned into an out of control lynch mob and tortured Carter, riddled him with bullets and hung him from a tree.
The posse continued their hunt in Rosewood. They found Aaron Carrier, cousin and friend, to Sam Carter, in bed at his Sarah Carrier’s house, yanked him out of bed, tied a rope around his neck and dragged him behind a Model “T” from Rosewood to Sumner. They tortured him, beat him with gun butts and kicked him until he lost consciousness before shooting him.
Levy County Sherriff Bob Walker aborted the shooting when he yelled, “Don’t, I’ll finish the “N” off. The magic “N” word saved Carrier’s life. The posse returned to Rosewood to hunt for Sylvester Carrier. Sheriff Walker threw Aaron Carrier in his Model “T” taking him to Gainesville, Alachua County jail and begged Sheriff James Ramsey to hide Carrier from the public and his family until tempers settled down and suggested he get medical help for him. Sheriff Ramsey brought in two local black doctors, Dr. Parker and Dr. Ayers to treat Carrier for six months unknowingly to the public and his family.
Fuming with anger because they had not found the attacker James Taylor sent Sylvester Carrier a message “We are coming to get you” the night of January 2nd, all hell broke loose in Rosewood when the mob returned with guns for a showdown, “to kill or be killed” because they were dissatisfied with the lack of success they anticipated. The mob formed a "party of citizens" to discuss how to investigate and accomplish their mission to find and silence Sylvester Carrier, who had become a lightning rod for their anger. Unbeknownst to the posse Sylvester Carrier took heed to the threats and made contact with his Levy County friends who bravely traveled to Rosewood to help avert the planned ambush of its citizens.
After dark the posse traveled to Rosewood prepared to kill or be killed. It had come down to Sylvester Carrier’s recruited men or the mob. The posse, intoxicated with moonshine and ignorance was met head-on with resistance and several were killed or injured, however, not accurately reported in the “all white” 1923 newspapers. When the gun battle ended the posse that was able to return to Sumner, did return, leaving behind their guns. Others lay dead and wounded in Sarah Carrier’s yard.
When the massacre ended that morning before dawn Sylvester Carrier’s friends returned to their homes as they came, quietly “the back way” and went to work at Sumner saw mill and other places of employment the next day as if nothing happened. They never spoke openly about the Rosewood Massacre.
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Located between 82nd and 89th streets and Seventh and Eighth avenues is Manhattan's first community of prominent black property owners. The New York State census estimated that about 264 residents lived in Seneca Village between 1825 and 1857. The area consisted of three churches, a school and several cemeteries. All was razed -- and the history erased -- with the development of Central Park.
Originally the site of New York City’s first free black settlement, by 1850 the Five Points district in lower Manhattan had instead become infamous for its dance halls, bars, gambling houses, prostitution, and for its mixed race clientele. To the larger white community, the Five Points was both a warning about the dangers of racial mixing, and a threat to New York’s racial and social order. To white missionaries and reformers, the area was a mission field. To most middle class black residents of the city, the Five Points was an embarrassment. In retrospect, the Five Points simply reflected the changing geography of poverty and race within New York City as working-class Irish immigrants moved into and “whitened” previously all-black residential areas.
Located one block off Broadway in New York’s Sixth Ward and named for its location at the intersection of five different streets, the reputation of the Five Points as a hotbed of crime and vice was engendered, in large part, by a sensationalistic discourse advanced by journalists and travel writers. The Penny Press of the 1830s, for example, scoured police reports and court cases for evidence of interracial socializing and sex within the Five Points. Incidents involving prostitution or domestic violence between mixed raced couples received prominent play in the newspapers. Over time, journalists began to link the increasing poverty and crime of New York City to these incidents of “amalgamation” between the races.
Charles Dickens added to existing concerns about the link between poverty and racial mixing when he visited the Five Points during his American tour. His observations, published in American Notes for General Circulation (1842), placed a black face on poverty within the Five Points and spawned a new genre of “travel” writing aimed at voyeuristic middle-class readers. Other writers following in Dickens’s footsteps were even more vociferous in establishing the connection between interracial mixing and crime and in laying blame for this racial mixing on blacks despite the fact that black businesses often rented space from white landlords and that black-owned brothels and dance halls catered to middle-class, native-born whites in addition to working class whites and blacks.
White reformers, in turn, took their cues from journalists and travel writers and justified their outreach programs in the Five Points on the basis of the city’s perceived moral decline. In 1848 the Ladies’ Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church opened its Five Points mission. Louis Pease, the first missionary hired by the Ladies’ Home Society, later split from this group, opening a job training mission that continued in operation through the Civil War. Black abolitionists such as Henry Highland Garnet also worked in the Five Points community as part of the American Missionary Association.
In 1991 the area was once again the focus of journalistic inquiry with the discovery of thousands of artifacts dating from the mid-nineteenth century during the construction of the Foley Square Courthouse. Renamed Foley Square after a Tammany Hall politician, the area now houses buildings such as the U.S. Courthouse and the Foley Square Courthouse.
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In 1838, just eleven years after the abolition of slavery in New York, James Weeks, a free African American, purchased land on the edge of the settled areas of Brooklyn. This purchase marked the establishment of Weeksville, a village of free African Americans – laborers, laundresses, craftsmen, doctors, entrepreneurs and professionals – who worked and thrived in New York throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. A vibrant and self-sufficient community, Weeksville’s residents established schools, an orphanage, an elderly home, churches, benevolent associations, newspapers, and participated in anti-slavery activities.
Over time, the village was subsumed by the growing city of Brooklyn. For decades, Weeksville was seemingly forgotten. Then, in 1968, nineteenth century wooden structures were rediscovered, arranged along what had been Hunterfly Road –an extinct Native American trade path, and later, a Dutch colonial thoroughfare.
Shortly following their discovery, the historic houses were threatened due to urban renewal plans. Joan Maynard, the first Executive Director of the early “Weeksville Society,” led community members and youth groups in a sustained fight to save the houses. Using the archaeological evidence they uncovered, students from PS 243, activists, historians, and archaeologists testified before the New York City Landmarks Commission to save the historic Hunterfly Road houses from demolition. They were granted landmark status in 1971, thereby preserving the legacy of Weeksville. In 2005, all three houses were fully restored and opened to the public for the first time in the history of the organization.
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After the civil war many African-Americans settled in Oklahoma because of employment opportunities from the oil fields. Around 1908 the community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma was established. The Daily Tulsa Star was an African-American owned newspaper. Businesses owned by African-Americans flourished. Their communities were the best. Their schools were excellent. Greenwood was coined the Black Wall Street. However, because of jealousy, deceit, and discrimination, Greenwood was burned to the ground by white racists on June 1,1921.
Based on the growth of African-Americans in Greenwood, Jim Crow laws legalizing segregation were passed in 1908. However, following World War I, the United States Supreme Court declared the Jim Crow segregation laws unconstitutional in 1915. African-Americans progressed thereafter without restriction. Growth ensued. Consequently, the African-American community became subjected to harassment and other discriminatory actions from white mobs.
The gradual escalation of violence toward the African-American community of Greenwood did not cease. It only escalated. Two black prisoners were lynched by white mobs in 1919. On May 21, 1921, an African-American named Dick Rowland was arrested for allegedly assaulting Sarah Page, a white female elevator operator. However, Dick Rowland was never charged with a crime. Subsequently, inflammatory reporting generated by the white newspaper caused concern that Rowland may receive vigilante justice. This led to a series of confrontations between white mobs and the African-American community of Greenwood. As a result, on May 31, 1921 the outnumbered African-Americans were shot at by the angry white mobs. Several African-Americans died instantly including members of the white mob.
Following the shooting of several African-Americans on June 1, 1921, the white mob systematically burned a thirty-five square block area of Greenwood. Schools, churches, businesses, and homes were burned. The estimated property loss reached above $2.3 million. The estimated death tolls of African-Americans were in the hundreds. White vigilantes arrested thousands of African-Americans and held them for no apparent reasons. Approximately 4,300 African-Americans were left homeless, and Greenwood was left in smoke and ashes.
Several events followed the riots. Governor Robertson declared martial law, and the National Guardsmen established law and order. Mayor Evans converted the primary schools and a church into emergency hospitals. The Red Cross used the high school as its headquarters to support the residents of Greenwood. Sarah Page, the alleged white female who was allegedly assaulted by Dick Rowland left Tulsa, Oklahoma. The police chief was indicted and charged.
After the riots which destroyed Greenwood, businesses were rebuilt, churches and schools reestablished and homes reconstructed; however, Greenwood never regained its prominence as a Black Wall Street after it was destroyed by vigilante racist white mobs. Even today entire blocks of Greenwood are still vacant and awaiting revitalization of the area.
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In 1863 the federal government built Freedman's Village on the grounds of the Custis and Lee estates. There were about 50 one-and-a-half-story houses, each of which was divided to accommodate two families. The settlement was home to some notable residents, including Sojourner Truth -- who in 1864 worked as a teacher and helped villagers find jobs. The government closed down the village in 1900. It is now the site of the southern end of Arlington National Cemetery, the Pentagon and the Navy Annex building.
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