Rosewood Museum

The story to be honored by the Rosewood Museum is painful. But Lizzie Robinson Jenkins, founder of the Real Rosewood Foundation, sees recognition and remembrance of painful events as a way to heal trauma—and learn from the past.

In 1923, a white mob decimated most residents of Rosewood, Florida, a thriving African American town. Those who survived were forced to flee for their own safety and ultimately relocate.

Jenkins’s aunt, Mahulda Gussie Brown Carrier, was attacked during the raid. But she survived. Carrier’s story was untold for many years, until Jenkins’s mother shared it with her chil­dren and told them to never forget.

Following her mother’s instruction, Jenkins founded the Real Rosewood Foundation in 2003 and has been working for 20 years to elevate the story of the massacre and—perhaps more important—the resilience of the community and its now far-flung descendants.

Kate Brown, TPL senior project manager for the museum, says the project has been making more progress than ever since TPL received a $480,000 grant from the Florida legislature meant for capital improvements related to Black history. Trust for Public Land is using the funds to help the local community envision and design a museum building and grounds that will be sustain­able into the future. To be located near Gainesville in Alachua County—where Carrier and other survivors rebuilt their lives—the Rosewood Museum will be managed in partnership by the county and the Real Rosewood Foundation.

Though rooted in trauma and racial violence, the story is also one of agency and self-determination. “The joyful part of the story is not just surviving but thriving,” says Brown, who marvels at the Rosewood community’s fortitude.

Jenkins pictures the museum as a community gathering space and a safe place for reflection. She’d like to see younger generations visit the museum and learn from the past. “History is who we are,” she says. “Good, bad, or ugly, we cannot erase it or change it.” But we can use it to forge a path to a better future.