Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, April 9th, 1994, the Florida Senate votes to grant, quote, equity, justice, fairness, and healing to survivors of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.

This was a moment in which the state of Florida started to, just started to reckon with the devastation

that had taken place in Rosewood, racial violence that destroyed black lives and a black community.

The story of what happened in Rosewood is really worth telling, as is the story of kind of

the story of Rosewood, right? Because it took some 50 years for people to really come to understand

what had happened in Rosewood. It was forgotten to time. And then there was more attention and

more attention. And then this moment in 1994 of reckoning and some form of reparation.

Of course we sit here now in 1923, the 100th anniversary of the Rosewood massacres that was back in January but this is a story we've

wanted to get to for a long time so let's do that right now with as always Nicole

Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of

Wellesley hello there hello Jody hey there so what do you want to start

1994 this moment of reparations or back in

1923 in the moment of the Rosewood massacre I guess we haven't really

done an episode on that so yeah a chance to tell that story too well first I

should say that like and we've talked about mini massacres on this show before, but like from the end of reconstruction, pretty much all the way up through the 1920s, you had black towns, all black towns that were being destroyed burned down to the ground

massive mob attacks massive race riots that were taking place in big cities like Chicago or Washington DC and then in smaller cities in places like Rosewood or Tulsa or Colfax.

And so this is one of these incidences in which there are a lot of different reasons as to why these massacres start.

Oftentimes it's a rumor or some sort of fear that a white woman was sexually assaulted and then that rumor or

story takes hold and it fuels violence and mobs and the mobs that just

spread into massacres. and the man of sexually assaulting her. And the black town, Rosewood, was destroyed.

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