Rosewood

Last night I watched, on one of the movie channels, the 1997 film, Rosewood, which tells the disturbing story of the 1923 Rosewood massacre in Florida. The movie—even though it portrayed the evil-minded, racist thinking and behaviour of white Americans in the south—was most upsetting. The movie shows how fear of the other—in this case Afro-Americans—combined with racist stereotyping and lies can lead to out of control vigilante violence.

   The white mob, including members of the Ku Klux Klan, engage in a mad and evil hunt of a black man whom they falsely believe raped a white woman. The woman in fact cheated on her husband and was beaten by the white man whom she had sexual intimacy with. However she falsely accused a black man of sexually violating her, and the mob mentality escalates in an all out war against Afro-Americans who are falsely accused of collusion in the incident, many of them innocently killed, and their homes and property destroyed.

   There are two heroes in particular in the movie, Mann (Ving Rhames) an Afro-American WW I veteran and John Wright (Jon Voight) a white merchant, both of whom protect and orchestrate an escape of the Afro-Americans out of Rosewood onto a train. There are other whites who also are not racist and protect the Afro-Americans—those who run the train and a group of armed white men from a the next community who stop the mad vigilante men of Rosewood from pursuing further the blacks. The sheriff of that community speaks well of the Afro-Americans, stating that they are law-abiding citizens.

   Another motif of the movie was how strong matriarchs like Aunt Sarah (Esther Rolle) were the respected pillars of the Afro-American family system, and even earned the respect, grudgingly, of the mob sheriff.

   The movie all-in-all is what I would refer to as in the genre or category of: “reveal the truth even if it enrages, offends, upsets, and disturbs the audience with explicit acts of violence fuelled by evil, false, dehumanizing, hate-filled language.” Not an easy movie to watch, yet highlighting such biblical truths as: love your neighbour; do not bear false witness against your neighbour; and in Christ there is neither Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, [white or black]; for all are one in Christ Jesus.