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=== Evacuation ===
On January 6, white train conductors John and William Bryce managed the evacuation of some blackBlack residents to Gainesville. The brothers were independently wealthy Cedar Key residents who had an affinity for trains. They knew the people in Rosewood and had traded with them regularly.<ref group=note>William Bryce, known as "K", was unique; he often disregarded race barriers. As a child, he had a blackBlack friend who was killed by a white man who left him to die in a ditch. The man was never prosecuted, and K Bryce said it "clouded his whole life". (Moore, 1982)</ref> As they passed the area, the Bryces slowed their train and blew the horn, picking up women and children. Fearing reprisals from mobs, they refused to pick up any blackBlack men.<ref name="historian"/> Many survivors boarded the train after having been hidden by white general store owner John Wright and his wife, Mary Jo. Over the next several days, other Rosewood residents fled to Wright's house, facilitated by Sheriff Walker, who asked Wright to transport as many residents out of town as possible.
Lee Ruth Davis, her sister, and two brothers were hidden by the Wrights while their father hid in the woods. On the morning of Poly Wilkerson's funeral, the Wrights left the children alone to attend. Davis and her siblings crept out of the house to hide with relatives in the nearby town of Wylly, but they were turned back for being too dangerous. The children spent the day in the woods but decided to return to the Wrights' house. After spotting men with guns on their way back, they crept back to the Wrights, who were frantic with fear.<ref name="jones"/> Davis later described the experience: "I was laying that deep in water, that is where we sat all day long ... We got on our bellies and crawled. We tried to keep people from seeing us through the bushes ... We were trying to get back to Mr. Wright house. After we got all the way to his house, Mr. and Mrs. Wright were all the way out in the bushes hollering and calling us, and when we answered, they were so glad."<ref name="historian"/> Several other white residents of Sumner hid blackBlack residents of Rosewood and smuggled them out of town. Gainesville's blackBlack community took in many of Rosewood's evacuees, waiting for them at the train station and greeting survivors as they disembarked, covered in sheets. On Sunday, January 7, a mob of 100 to 150 whiteswhite people returned to burn the remaining dozen or so structures of Rosewood.<ref>"Last Negro Homes Razed Rosewood; Florida Mob Deliberately Fires One House After Another in Block Section", ''The New York Times'' (January 8, 1923), p. 4.</ref>
=== Response ===
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