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A brief history of racism in the United States
A brief history of racism in the United States
Racism through the decades
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Settled in 1845 Rosewood Florida was mainly used for lumber where it got its town name from a red color cut of cedar wood. Rosewood had both African American and caucasian settlers. In 1890 the pencil mill closed down because of Rosewood losing its population of trees. Most of the caucasian settlers moved to Sumner where they farmed citrus and cotton. In 1900 almost all of Rosewoods population was African Americans. And almost all of Sumner’s population was caucasian. The two towns were ok they basically just kind of stayed out of each other's way. In Rosewood there were two African American Families that were the most powerful in Rosewood. The Goins family was one of them. They brought the Turpentine industry to Rosewood. They became the …show more content…
second largest land owners is Levy county. The Goins moved to Gainesville to avoid lawsuits from white competitors. The other family was the Carrier family and they were logging in the region. In 1920 Sumner and Rosewood’s population combined was 344 African Americans and 294 whites. Even under Jim Crow laws rosewood developed there own little community. African Americans and Caucasians created their own community centers. By 1920 Rosewood was almost self sufficient. There were 3 churches, a baseball team, a school, a sugarmill and much more. It is described as a small pretty town many families owned instruments and everywhere you walk in Rosewood there were roses. At the time racial violence wasn't uncommon throughout the nation. Lynchings became popular in the south in the 20th century. Lynching was used on African Americans to show them White supremacy. In 1866 Florida and almost every other southern state passed laws called Black Codes. One of the main pushing points to the Rosewood Massacre was the story of Fannie Taylor.
It started when a white woman from Sumner said that she was assaulted by an African American. Her name was Frances Taylor. Fannie was 22 years old and her husband James Taylor was 30 years old in 1923. James was a millwright and he was working for Cummer and sons in Sumner. Fanny wasn’t the most social girl in the town barely anyone knew anything about her. People say that all she did was clean her floors with bleach to keep them stone white and take care of her two young children. On January 1, 1923 Fannies neighbor said that she heard screaming and grabbed a revolver to go investigate. She found Fanny on the ground beaten with marks all over her body. Fanny told the neighbor to go check on the baby because an African American had bust open her door and beaten her and that the African American was inside the house. Fanny original report said that the African American just beat her and didn’t rape her. But rumors started going all over the town and people believed he did rape her. Philomena Goins said that she saw John Bradley with Fanny and she said that they were together and that day they got into a fight and he beat her. Then when John Bradley left Fanny house he went to …show more content…
Rosewood. Levy county sheriff Robert Elias started an investigation on the Fanny Taylor case.
He learned that Jesse Hunter an African American escaped his chain gang. People from Cedar helped him find Jesse to talk about the attack on Fanny. Over 400 men helped with this case Sheriff Walker even put some of them on duty as officers. They used dogs also to help them. The dogs led them to the home of Aaron Carrier. They dragged him outside where his mother begged them not to kill Aaron. They tied Aaron up and drove him to Sumner. Walker put Aaron in protective custody in Bronson to keep the other men away from him. Because a lot of them were drinking and thought they had all of the authority. Walker also urged Black employees to stay at the turpentine mills for their
safety. A mob of white men captured Sam Carter the local blacksmith, and his partner who worked at the mill. They tortured Carter into admitting that they helped hide the missing chain gang member. Carter led the mob to where he said he left the prisoner, but the dogs couldn’t pick up a scent. When the dog couldn’t pick up a scent someone shot Carter in the head. Then the white men hanged carter to show the other blacks what will happen. Carter helped John Bradley escape by putting him in the back of a wagon and dropped him off at a nearby river to let him go in to Rosewood. When Carter got home the mob was there waiting for him. The Mob met Sylvester Carrier on a street and told him to leave town. Carrier refused and gathered people up for protection. Even though Walker tried to simmer down the mob they just kept coming. On January 4 the mob got armed and went to Rosewood and went to Sarah Carrier’s house. Her house had refuges in it with about 20 people in it. Sylvester Carrier was armed and was going to protect the house from the mob. They opened fire on each other and Sarah was shot in the head. Sylvester was found dead. After almost all of the people evacuated Rosewood, a mob of 150 men went to burn down the town. At the end of January it was reported that 6 blacks were dead and 2 white. Many people disagreed and said that over 20 blacks were mass murdered or massacred. Some eyewitnesses said they saw a grave that was big enough for 30 bodies and it was full of dead black men. Rosewood was completely abandoned and the white men burned the town down. The newspapers said that it was a race riot and that the white men had to control the situation by any means necessary. The news said that the white men did it in self defense. The town before the invasion was mainly black. And when the invasion attacked some were killed and some escaped. A lot of them before the invasion fled the town but the ones that stayed most of them were brutally murdered. The ones who escaped hid for days until a train helped them escape the town that was burnt down. Even though the authorities new about what happened none of the white men who were in the mob were arrested. It said that none of the evacuated blacks went back to the town because they didn’t want to see at one point there beautiful peaceful town in shreds and pieces. It took 60 years for Rosewood to be reborn and rebuilt after the great tragedy. A lot of people now a days go to rosewood to see all the history and to learn more about the massacre. Some people claim that over 150 people were murdered. But by the time the authorities went to investigate and talk to these eye witness they were either dead or elderly and to weak to go with the officers and help them out.
The Elaine Race Riot can be even said as the Elaine massacre that had taken place on September 30, 1919, in Elaine in Phillips County, Arkansas, in the Arkansas Delta. The fight started when around 100 African Americans, commonly black farmers on the farms of white landlords joined a consultation of the Progressive Farmers and the Household Union of America at a church in Hoop Spur, the Phillips County that was three miles north of Elaine. The assembly was managed by Robert Hill; he was the organizer of the Progressive Farmers and the Household Union of America. The main goal of the meeting was that one of the numerous black sharecroppers in the Elaine area during the former months was achieving better payments for their cotton crops from
‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July, 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how the FBI was actually involved in the case, but how nothing came of their extensive investigations.
Four black sharecroppers (Roger Malcom, Dorothy Malcom, George Dorsey and Mae Murray Dorsey) are brutally murdered by a group of white people. The murders attracted national attention, but the community was not willing to get involved. The community was not fazed by these brutal murders but, by the fact that this incident got national attention. They were even more astounded that the rest of the nation even cared. In this book Laura Wexler shows just how deep racism goes. After reading the book I discovered that Fire in a Canebrake has three major themes involving racism. The first is that racism obstructs progression. The second is history repeats itself. The last theme is that racism can obscure the truth. This lynching, in particular, marks a turning point in the history of race relations and the governments’ involvement in civil rights. In the end this case still remains unsolved. No concept of the
The stories that the author told were very insightful to what life was like for an African American living in the south during this time period. First the author pointed out how differently blacks and whites lived. She stated “They owned the whole damn town. The majority of whites had it made in the shade. Living on easy street, they inhabited grand houses ranging from turn-of-the-century clapboards to historics”(pg 35). The blacks in the town didn’t live in these grand homes, they worked in them. Even in today’s time I can drive around, and look at the differences between the living conditions in the areas that are dominated by whites, and the areas that are dominated by blacks. Racial inequalities are still very prevalent In today’s society.
The Homestead Strike, also known as the Homestead Steel Strike, Pinkerton Rebellion, or Homestead Massacre, was an industrial lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892. The battle was one of the most serious disputes in U.S. labor history, third behind the Ludlow Massacre and the Battle of Blair Mountain. The dispute occurred at the Homestead Steel Works in the Pittsburgh area town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers and the Carnegie Steel Company. The result was a major defeat for the union and a setback for their efforts to unionize steelworkers.
On July 25, 1946, two young black couples- Roger and Dorothy Malcom, George and Mae Murray Dorsey-were killed by a lynch mob at the Moore's Ford Bridge over the Appalachee River connecting Walton and Oconee Counties (Brooks, 1). The four victims were tied up and shot hundreds of times in broad daylight by a mob of unmasked men; murder weapons included rifles, shotguns, pistols, and a machine gun. "Shooting a black person was like shooting a deer," George Dorsey's nephew, George Washington Dorsey said (Suggs C1). It has been over fifty years and this case is still unsolved by police investigators. It is known that there were atleast a dozen men involved in these killings. Included in the four that were known by name was Loy Harrison. Loy Harrison may not have been an obvious suspect to the investigators, but Harrison was the sole perpetrator in the unsolved Moore's Ford Lynching case. The motive appeared to be hatred and the crime hurt the image of the state leaving the town in an outrage due to the injustice that left the victims in unmarked graves (Jordon,31).
The book Murder in the Bayou: Who Killed the Women Known as the Jeff Davis 8?, written by independent journalist and private investigator Ethan Brown, tells the horrific true story of the bayou town of Jennings, Louisiana located in the heart of the Jefferson Davis parish. During the four year duration between 2005 and 2009, the town of Jennings was on edge after the discovery of the bodies of eight murdered women were found in the filthy canals and swamps. The victims became known as the “Jeff Davis 8.” For years, local law enforcement suspected a serial killer, and solely investigated the murders based on that theory alone. The victims were murdered in varying manors, but when alive they all shared many commonalities and were connected to
The article “Interracial Rape Cases in North Carolina” reminds me one of Harper Lee’s famous novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” as Tom Robinson was accused from raping Mayella. The entire trial, to the guilty verdict, were all racially biased. Yet, there is a long way to go for the world to get rids of its injustices, and injustices will comply with the society for many years to come. Race and inequality are often related together because of the racial segregation in the 1800s. During that time, racial inequalities had increased dramatically. To study this scenario, the article “Interracial Rape Cases in North Carolina” portrayed several evidences of how blacks slaves were falsely accused rape; they seem hopeless and eventually sentenced to death. Yet they did have evidences to prove them innocent, however, everything does not go as was hoped. What it was like
killing of seventeen whites. These blacks were sought out as wrong to many whites, and
Have you ever heard the term, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid?” or “You have drank the Kool-Aid.”? Well, ”Drinking the Kool-Aid” means you have done something that others have told you to do or did yourself. This saying comes from the cult society led by Reverend Jim Jones, named Jonestown. Jonestown was a small community in the jungle of Guyana, South America. After getting word of people coming to investigate the society, Jones had committed a mass suicide by poisoning Kool-Aid and giving it to the people of Jonestown.
Race soon became a tool for placing individuals on one side or the other of those boundaries. Boundaries instead of accommodation-binding communities became the norm. Instead of community-based strategies for negotiating alliances and coexistence, Native Americans and Euro-American settlers turned to once distrusted confederations or empires for support and protection. The Paxton Boys’ massacre at Conestoga in December 1763 is often used by scholars of Pennsylvania history to legitimize the creation of racial identities. The massacres committed by these frontier vigilantes are still used as the most prolific example of the collapse of Indian-white relations in Pennsylvania as well as the rise of racial attitudes in the backcountry population.
A dress-up party in Texas turned deadly when the host of the party, dressed as Santa Claus, began shooting at his guests. By the end of his shooting spree, he had killed one person and injured three others.
The occurrence of the Duluth Lynchings in 1920 had a big impact, not only on the Duluthians, but people in the surrounding cities. Blacks and Whites were both impacted in different ways based on their position in society. Strong racial hatred and prejudice were already very apparent in society in the early 1900’s making the rape of a White woman by Black men a catalyst to the lynchings. By the reaction of the white Duluthians of the alleged rape of a White woman, the outcome for the Black men was highly anticipated.
The movie, Rosewood is a movie that tells the story of two groups of people (blacks and whites) living in neighboring neighborhoods in Florida. African Americans lived in Rosewood and whites lived in Sumner. The movie started showing the two neighborhoods, Sumner to the left and Rosewood on the right. In Rosewood, one of the landscape that was first showed was the First A.M.E. Church, this I believe to show the African American’s faith and a common ground that they share as a people. The movie also showed the train station in Rosewood where Aunt Sarah Carrier and her grandson were selling fruits, vegetables, and eggs to the whites getting on the train. Once the train rolls by viewers are taken to the town of Sumner, the white neighborhood. In Sumner we see a young white boy and his boar, the boy
Once again, there are conflicting reports on the exact events that led up to the first death, but one fact is true across all sources, Sheriff Walker deputized some of the men. However, the mob had escalated out of control. James McElveen, a Sumner resident, recalled the sheriff’s concern when 400 to 500 more men from other areas inundated them, "I don't know what to do," the Sherriff told McElveen, "This crowd wants blood, and they [are] going to have blood” (Jones et. al.). This quote is significant because that blood was of the Rosewood blacksmith, Sam