The Rosewood Massacre - (Cultural Heritage Studies) by Edward González-Tennant (Paperback)

About the Book

The Rosewood Massacre investigates the 1923 massacre that devastated the predominantly African American community of Rosewood, Florida. The town was burned to the ground by neighboring whites, and its citizens fled for their lives. None of the perpetrators were convicted. Very little documentation of the event and the ensuing court hearings survives today.

Book Synopsis

Southern Anthropological Society James Mooney Award - Honorable Mention

Drawing on new methods and theories, Edward González-Tennant uncovers important elements of the forgotten history of Rosewood. He uses a mix of techniques such as geospatial analysis, interpretation of remotely sensed data, analysis of census data and property records, oral history, and the excavation and interpretation of artifacts from the site to reconstruct the local landscape. González-Tennant interprets these and other data through an intersectional framework, acknowledging the complex ways class, race, gender, and other identities compound discrimination. This allows him to explore the local circumstances and broader sociopolitical power structures that led to the massacre, showing how the event was a microcosm of the oppression and terror suffered by African Americans and other minorities in the United States.

González-Tennant connects these historic forms of racial violence to present-day social and racial inequality and argues that such continuities demonstrate the need to make events like the Rosewood massacre public knowledge.

A volume in the series Cultural Heritage Studies, edited by Paul A. Shackel

Review Quotes

"An ambitious project with few precedents. . . . González-Tennant argues that the underlying causes of the Rosewood Massacre can be traced to historical antagonisms of a national scale, and reflects the underlying patterns of many such events throughout American history."--Historical Archaeology

"Contributes significantly to our understanding of the Rosewood massacre and deserves a wide readership. It meanwhile demonstrates the value of multidisciplinary approaches for studying race riots in America."--Journal of Southern History

"González-Tennant balances a finely detailed microhistory of this tragic event with a broadly ranging exploration of social science theories about violence, race, and intersectionality."--Public Historian