ROSEWOOD, Fla — The story of Rosewood is rarely talked about, but needs to be told.

The town was a small, predominately Black community in Levy County, not far from Gainesville. It was destroyed at the hands of an angry mob.

All that is left is the descendants of those who lived and worked there.

"We were entrepreneurs. We had businesses," Ebony Pickett said "We had three churches in Rosewood. This is in the early 1900's."
Rosewood is a part of Ebony Pickett's family history. She never lived there. However, she can tell you all about it through stories handed down through five generations.

"Everybody's lawns was manicured, and there was roses all around," Pickett explained. "It was almost like this picture perfect place."

That picture shattered on New Year’s Day 1923, when a mob of white men invaded the town, burning homes, churches and shooting people as they fled.

"They came on the first day of January, and they did not stop burning and shooting and hanging and lynching until January 7th," Pickett said.

Pickett remembers being a young girl at family reunions and listening to the stories by survivors.

"When I would see the horror on their face, and then they would begin to wail and cry, and, you know, consoling each other and it was like, so emotional," Pickett remembered. "It was such a vivid picture because this wasn't just something I was reading in the book."

In 1997, Warner Brothers produced a movie about the town's history, bringing what happened on that tragic day to the big screen.

The film was based on accounts of what started the attack, allegations from a white woman in the neighboring community of Sumner that a Black man had assaulted her.

Pickett disputes that narrative.

She said family members told her it was actually a white man who assaulted the white woman. Pickett's relative, Sarah Carrier, known as "Aunt Sarah" was there.

"Aunt Sarah had a firsthand testimony of what happened that day because Aunt Sarah worked for her," Pickett explained. "Aunt Sarah had been at her home that day, as well as with her granddaughter, Philomena. So, both of them witnessed the white man that actually came into their home that she was with."

Aunt Sarah told the mob it was not true. However, they did not take her word. She would eventually be killed in the massacre."
"These were my actual family members that was there and have remembered everything they had gone through," Pickett said. "They shared it with us, but they told us we could not tell anyone for fear that, you know, the white mob would come back and kill them."

Eight people died during the Rosewood massacre, including six Blacks and two whites. In 1994, Florida provided financial compensation to some of the Rosewood survivors.

At least 150 people were killed in hundreds of shootings over the Fourth of July weekend, according to CNN, as Chicago saw its deadliest weekend of violence so far this year.

Citing data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, CNN said the US had seen a surge of 400 shootings over the weekend.

A total of 92 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend, according to The Chicago Sun Times, with 18 people killed.

Six children were reportedly injured in shootings in the city during what Police Superintendent David Brown had warned would be the “most challenging weekend of the year”.

In one incident on the South Side, two people were killed and four wounded, including a 12-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy.

Around the same time, a six-year-old girl and a woman were shot in West Pullman, while another shooting hours later saw an 11-year-old-boy and a man shot on the South Side.

Two Chicago police officers were also among those who suffered gunshot wounds, according to the Chicago Police Department.

In a Twitter statement, the department said both officers were transported to Stroger hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

It comes as statistics released by police on Thursday showed that there were fewer killings in Chicago over the first few months of 2021 compared with the same period last year, despite a rise in the number of shootings and people shot.

According to the data, there were 332 killings in Chicago between 1 January and last Wednesday, representing six fewer than in the first half of the year in 2020.

Meanwhile, in New York, at least 26 people were shot in 21 shootings between Friday and Sunday, according to CNN.

While New York has seen levels of gun violence unparalleled in recent years, the figure represents a drop from the same time last year, when 30 people were shot in 25 shootings, the broadcaster said.

In addition to the violence in Chicago and New York, there were several mass shootings, or shootings involving four or more victims killed or wounded by gunfire, elsewhere over the holiday weekend.

In Norfolk, Virginia, four children were shot on Friday afternoon, including a six-year-old girl who was reported to have suffered life-threatening injuries, but is now in stable condition, CNN reported.

A 15-year-old boy has been charged in connection with the shooting, which also saw a 14-year-old boy, a 16-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl shot at, although they are expected to recover from their injuries.

In another shooting early on Sunday morning, eight people were injured in a shooting near a car wash in Fort Worth, Texas, following an argument between a group of men, according to the Fort Worth police department.

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