On New Year’s Day in 1923, a white woman in Sumner, Florida, accused an unidentified black man of assaulting her. This might have just been an attempt to cover up the fact that her white lover was beating her. As was usually the case, a white lynch mob formed without even trying to verify the account and destroyed the nearby, predominantly black town of Rosewood over the course of a week. The mob killed six black people and exiled the rest to the surrounding swamp. There was no compensation for those who lost their homes and livelihoods and no accountability for those who carried out that heinous act.
Local white people then pretended that nothing out of the ordinary happened. Nobody in the angry mob, which numbered in the hundreds, admitted witnessing the burning neighborhoods despite being at the scene.[1] For the next six decades, the massacre simply was not spoken of, and the town lay abandoned. This no-snitching policy was common for the Jim Crow South, and any white person who broke that code could expect ostracism at best.
Survivors and their descendants, with the help of the Holland & Knight law firm, finally began a concerted attempt to illuminate the massacre in the 1980s. Their efforts came to fruition in 1994 when the Florida Legislature formally investigated the event and awarded some compensation to the survivors. Now, key features of not just the Rosewood Massacre but Jim Crow era violence, in general, must be ignored in case it makes any student feel guilt or anguish.
In September 2022, Dr. Marvin Dunn, a retired psychology professor from Florida International University, and some colleagues – both white and black – were meeting outside his property in Rosewood. Dunn was only the second black person to own property in town since the massacre. He had spent years trying to find more ways to commemorate through writing books and turning the property into a memorial park. He collaborated with white landowners in the area who were also eager to preserve historical memory. As Dunn and his companions stood there talking, a white man named David Emanuel rolled up in his truck and angrily confronted them. An argument ensued wherein the driver hurled the N-word at them and then made several attempts to run them over. Emanuel was arrested several days later.[2] The exchange ostensibly started because of a parking dispute, but his predilection for shrieking racial slurs – and his vituperative exchange with Miami New Times on the phone afterward – suggested otherwise.[3]
At first glance, this seems like a more disturbing version of a *Florida Man story, featuring yet another uncontrollably violent bigot who cannot handle a black person talking back. Racially motivated violence, however, is still a serious problem in this country and not just in the rural South. There is a real risk of violent reprisal by far-right individuals and their desolate worldviews, and persecutory delusions have made them ticking time bombs in recent years.[4]
Teachers and school administrators have especially been targeted by coordinated harassment campaigns and have received death threats.[5] In just one example in Georgia, a black school administrator who was hired to oversee diversity and inclusion programs was practically run out of town by an incensed group of white parents. They manufactured a problem that did not even exist and determined she was a threat; Anything to avoid a moment’s introspection. By acting like a White Citizens’ Council, they inadvertently demonstrated the need for diversity and inclusion programs but did not realize it due to an utter lack of self-awareness.[6]
Currently, many political candidates have latched onto various culture war issues in order to galvanize activist voters to turn out for the primaries. Republican primary voters in red states trend much whiter, older, and more rural than the Republican general electorate. Convincing them that their children or grandchildren are being indoctrinated by liberal educators allows Republican candidates to reap a bumper crop of primary votes. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is keenly aware that he will need them if he runs in the 2024 Republican presidential primary so he is appealing to their worst instincts and to their primal fears of soon becoming a minority.
As a result, DeSantis has gleefully censored K-12 public schools and tried to muzzle state university professors (the latter attempt has been temporarily blocked in federal court) by signing legislation in a “war on woke.” There is no single definition of that word, and those who use it as an insult have all the tenor of a roadhouse bar patron. It is malleable enough, however, that it can mean any topic which might make some older white voters uncomfortable because it contradicts what they learned sitting on their papaw’s knee.
Florida’s Republican-dominated state government has retaliated against groups that have dissented, or that might possibly encourage dissent, ranging from punitive measures against the Walt Disney Corporation for disagreeing with the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, to rejecting math textbooks for including social-emotional learning, to attempts aimed at preventing University of Florida political scientists from giving expert testimony about voting rights.
It is true that some universities overreact in order to placate an especially small but vocal number of easily offended students. A University of Southern California business communications professor was suspended for saying a word in Chinese that merely sounded like the N-word. And an adjunct instructor of art history at Hamline University was fired for showing a Medieval illustration that depicted the Prophet Muhammad. Those are problems, to be sure. The difference is that Florida and other red states are wielding the considerable power of their entire state governments to codify this kind of censorship. Conditions in UF’s system have deteriorated to such a point that a majority of professors who answered last year’s faculty survey stated they would leave if given a comparable job offer out of state. Much of that dissatisfaction is due to political interference and threats to tenure.[7] Faculty at North Florida College (a public community college) were told that while they could teach about Jim Crow laws and their effect on black communities, they should not say that white people were responsible for those laws. That makes it extremely difficult for instructors to teach about the period without risking their careers.[8]
The Jim Crow South depended on apathy from the federal government and a brutal system of sanctioned, extralegal, and interpersonal violence that demanded black submission and white dominance. This atrocious system did not end through generations of natural progress but through a prolonged “two steps forward, one step back” period of resistance across many sectors of society that eventually gained traction. Resistance is what is needed now, and educators such as Dunn are vital to keep history alive. More than that, educators have the responsibility to highlight events that many of those in power are striving to whitewash.
As a retired professor, Dunn’s efforts to turn his Rosewood property into a private park skirt around the recent Florida laws. He is acting as a private citizen and not as university faculty. Given the political climate, however, Dunn’s efforts are nonetheless commendable because he is risking continued harassment by trying to make history accessible to people who would otherwise not receive that instruction at their schools. He does have help, however. In 2021, the American Historical Association joined with over 150 professional organizations to condemn Florida’s blatant attempts to censor history.[9] The rest of the country is not nearly as apathetic as it was in the 1950s, and there is a push among younger voters to avoid committing the same wrongs as their great-grandparents.
Just last month, a variety of groups and the University of Florida hosted a series of events to commemorate the centennial of the Rosewood Massacre. They are doing their part while they still can. I am doing my own small part by writing this piece and by encouraging my students to become critical citizens for the rest of their lives. It is high time that those political strongmen who would censor history for short-term political gain were opposed and frustrated. As this nation continues to diversify, they will be unable to remain in power and will eventually, thankfully, be tossed into the dustbin of history.
Ian Abbey, Ph.D.
*Post-Script: For those not in the know, Florida Man is an online meme that has proliferated over the past decade. They typically show authentic newspaper headlines featuring a “Florida Man” committing some bizarre crime, such as throwing an alligator into a Wendy’s drive-thru window or crashing a lawn mower into a police cruiser. They illustrate the singular weirdness of Florida and its combination of backwoods Deep South hamlets, retirement villages, and vibrantly progressive cities.
Ian Abbey, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of history in the Division of Social Sciences at Prairie View A&M University.
[1] “Last Negro Homes Razed in Rosewood,” New York Times, 1/8/1923.
[2] Andrea Blanco, “Florida Man Arrested for Screaming N-word at Prominent Black Historian and Attempting to Run Him Over,” The Independent, 9/15/2022, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/marvin-dunn-black-historian-racial-attack-b2168211.html.; Nick Anschutz, ”Rosewood Man Arrested for Aggravated Assault Following Racist Incident in Town,” Levy County Citizen, 9/15/2022, https://www.chronicleonline.com/weeklies/levy_county_citizen/local_news/rosewood-man-arrested-for-aggravated-assault-following-racist-incident-in-town/article_601edebb-1029-5f92-89f2-b32b6bc90ccd.html.
[3] Joshua Ceballos, “Rosewood Update: Suspect Charged in Alleged Assault on Miami Black Historian,” Miami New Times, 9/13/2022, https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/rosewood-update-arrest-made-in-alleged-racist-attack-on-miami-black-historian-15270510.
[4] Catrina Doxsee et al, “Pushed to Extremes: Domestic Terrorism amid Polarization and Protest,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, 5/17//2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/pushed-extremes-domestic-terrorism-amid-polarization-and-protest.
[5] Edward Graham, “Who is Behind the Attacks on Educators and Public Schools?”, National Education Association, 12/14/2021, https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/who-behind-attacks-educators-and-public-schools.
[6] Nicole Carr, “White Parents Rallied to Chase a Black Educator Out of Town. Then, They Followed Her to the Next One,” ProPublica, 6/16/2022, https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-dei-crt-schools-parents.
[7] UFF-UF Faculty Working Conditions Survey 2022, https://uff-uf.org/faculty-climate-surveys-2/.
[8] Nell Gluckmann, “’This is How Censorship Happens’,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 2/2/2023, https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-how-censorship-happens.
[9] “Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education About Racism in American History,” American Historical Association, June 2021, https://www.historians.org/divisive-concepts-statement.