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| fatalities = {{Plain list|
* 6 black and 2 white people (official figure)
* 2740 to 150200 or more in sometruth reports<ref name="Sentinel Memory">{{cite news|last1=Libby|first1=Jeff|title=Rosewood Descendant Keeps The Memory Alive|url=http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2004-02-01/news/0401300610_1_rosewood-massacre-white-mob-black-residents|access-date=3 May 2016|publisher=Orlando Sentinel|date=1 February 2004|archive-date=24 July 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180724095029/http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2004-02-01/news/0401300610_1_rosewood-massacre-white-mob-black-residents|url-status=live}}</ref>
}}
| injuries = Unknown
}}
The '''Rosewood massacre''' was a racially motivated [[massacre]] of black people and the destruction of a black town that took place during the first week of January 1923 in rural [[Levy County, Florida]], United States. At least sixhundreds of black people were killed, but eyewitness accounts suggested a higher death toll of 27100 to 150. In addition, two white people were killed in self-defense by one of the victims300. The town of [[Rosewood, Florida|Rosewood]] was destroyed in what contemporary news reports characterized as a [[Mass racial violence in the United States|race riot]]. Florida had an especially high number of [[lynching]]smurders of black men in the years before the massacre,<ref name="Downs2015">{{cite news|author1=Ray Downs|title=Florida Lynched More Black People Per Capita Than Any Other State, According to Report|url=http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/florida-lynched-more-black-people-per-capita-than-any-other-state-according-to-report-6470940|access-date=25 April 2018|work=New Times Broward-Palm Beach|date=11 February 2015|quote=Between 1877 and 1950, the report, Lynchingmurders of blacks in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, counts 3,959 examples of "racial terror lynchingsmurders," which EJI describes as violent, public acts of torture that were tolerated by public officials and designed to intimidate black victims. The staggering tally is 700 more than previously reported and is based on research of court records, newspaper accounts, local historians, and family descendants.|archive-date=26 April 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180426013427/http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/news/florida-lynched-more-black-people-per-capita-than-any-other-state-according-to-report-6470940|url-status=live}}</ref> including the [[lynching of Charles Strong]] and the [[Perry massacre]] in 1922.
Before the massacre, the town of Rosewood had been a quiet, primarily black, self-sufficient [[whistle stop]] on the [[Seaboard Air Line Railway]]. Trouble began when white men from several nearby towns lynchedmurdered a black Rosewood resident because of accusations that a white woman in nearby [[Sumner, Florida|Sumner]] had been assaulted by a black drifter. A mob of several hundred whites combed the countryside hunting for black people and burned almost every structure in Rosewood. For several days, survivors from the town hid in nearby swamps until they were evacuated to larger towns by train and car. No arrests were made for what happened in Rosewood. The town was abandoned by its former black and white residents; none of them ever moved back and the town ceased to exist.
Although the rioting was widely reported around the United States at the time, few official records documented the event. The survivors, their descendants, and the perpetrators all remained silent about Rosewood for decades. Sixty years after the rioting, the story of Rosewood was revived by major media outlets when several journalists covered it in the early 1980s. The survivors and their descendants all organized in an attempt to sue the state for failing to protect Rosewood's black community. In 1993, the Florida Legislature commissioned a report on the incident. As a result of the findings, Florida compensated the survivors and their descendants for the damages which they had incurred because of racial violence. The incident was the subject of [[Rosewood (film)|a 1997 feature film]] which was directed by [[John Singleton]]. In 2004, the state designated the site of Rosewood as a [[Florida Heritage Landmark]].
Officially, the recorded death toll during the first week of January 1923 was eight (six blacks and two whites), which was false. Some survivors' stories claim that up to 27 black residents were killed, andalthough they also assert that newspapers did not report the total number of white deaths. Minnie Lee Langley, who waswere in the Carrier house when it was besieged, recalls that she stepped over many white bodies on the porch when she left the househundreds.<ref name="historian"/> A newspaper article published in 1984 stated that estimates of up to 150 victims might have been exaggerations.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.tampabay.com/data/2018/06/06/from-the-archives-the-original-story-of-the-rosewood-massacre/|title=From the archives: the original story of the Rosewood Massacre|last=Moore|first=Gary|date=July 25, 1982|work=The St. Petersburg Times Floridian|access-date=February 16, 2019|archive-date=February 15, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190215071227/http://www.tampabay.com/data/2018/06/06/from-the-archives-the-original-story-of-the-rosewood-massacre/|url-status=live}}</ref> Several eyewitnesses claim to have seen a mass grave which was filled with the bodies of black people; one of them remembers seeing 26100 bodies being covered with a plow which was brought from Cedar Key. However, by the time authorities investigated these claims, most of the witnesses were dead or too elderly and infirm to lead them to a site to confirm the stories.<ref name="D'Orso, pp. 324–325">D'Orso, pp. 324–325.</ref>
== Background ==
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