Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 26, 1994 TAG: 9402260109
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: TALLAHASSEE, FLA. LENGTH: Medium
The issue is whether the state of Florida has a moral obligation to compensate the survivors because public officials looked the other way.
The scorched-earth raid on the tiny black community of Rosewood, on Florida's Gulf coast about 40 miles southwest of Gainesville, began on New Year's Day in 1923. Researchers have documented that at least eight were slain during the weeklong attack by whites seeking revenge for an assault on a woman.
Historian Joel Williamson, a leading scholar on the wave of murders and lynchings that took the lives of thousands of blacks throughout the South, said the United States has never seen anything like the hearing that took place Friday.
Three survivors, all in their 70s or 80s, gingerly walked to a conference table and vividly recounted their memories of the attack. Another was blind and in a wheelchair. For the most part, their voices were strong, their memories clear.
Arnett Turner Goins said he was upstairs with other children in his grandparents' home when white vigilantes arrived outside the night of Jan. 4, 1923.
"They asked Grandma to come out," recalled Goins, 9 years old at the time and 79 now. "Grandma didn't go out, so they just started shooting in the house, the white people from the outside, the mob.
"Grandma got hit with a bullet, and she died across the bed. They were shooting all through the house. . . . Then they busted into the front door and came right into the hallway. That's as far as they got."
Minnie Lee Langley was downstairs with her uncle, Sylvester Carrier. She was 9 years old.
"This old cracker came in looking," Langley testified. "There were lot of them looking. They said, `Come on out here.' Syl put the gun over my shoulder. They kicked the door down. Syl let him have it. He killed them."
Two white men fell dead: Henry Andrews, superintendent of a sawmill; and C.P. "Poly" Wilkerson, a merchant and mill official. By the time that particular shootout ended, four other white men were wounded. Two blacks in the house, Sylvester Carrier and his mother, Sarah Carrier, were killed.
Goins and Langley said the children in the house fled through the back door in their nightclothes. They hid in the woods before eventually going to Gainesville by train.
State and local authorities did little to try to stop the rampage. Sheriffs reported that the situation was under control. The governor went hunting.
But now some of the 11 known survivors and several of the 45 descendants of victims of the rampage have traveled to Tallahassee. They are testifying for bills by Rep. Miguel De Grandy of Miami and Sen. Daryl Jones of South Dade that would give $7 million in tax money to victims of the massacre.
They may make history. Claims bills like theirs usually are for injuries suffered in traffic accidents where the government is at fault. Such an award to a group of victims would be unprecedented.
by CNB