"Rosewood"
                             A Film Review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                          WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL
                             February 22, 1997

     If, like me, you lived in Florida in 1993 when, after 70 years, the State
of Florida belatedly acknowledged and tried in a small and necessarily
inadequate way to atone for the genocidal massacare that took place in the
small Levy County community of Rosewood in January, 1923, the general outline
of the events of this film will be known to you but perhaps in a vague and
abstract way. Last night, on my way to the theater to see "Rosewood" WUSF's
"The Florida Report" was broadcasting a segment of the testimony to the
Legislature of a survivor of Rosewood. Her matter-of-fact recounting of the
night of horror in which her elderly Aunt was shot dead and her Uncle Syl was
shooting "Crackers" as they came through the door while trying to protect the
children in the house wiped away in an instant my ability to consider these
events in only abstract terms. And it certainly added to the sense of
verisimilitude when, a few minutes later, there was "Uncle Syl," or Sylvester
Carrier (played by Don Cheadle) on the screen in the opening sequences of the
film, playing his piano and getting ready for a joyous New Year's Eve
celebration in the tiny but prosperous all Black community on the road between
Gainesville and Cedar Key.

      I have nothing but praise for this film and, in particular, for Gregory
Poirier's screenplay. How do you take an event such as the Rosewood massacare
(in which, officially two whites six Blacks and were killed, but witnesses put
the number of Black victims at anywhere from 40 to 150) and turn it into a
dramatic work that anyone, Black or white, can bear to watch and that will
provide not only an unvarnished representation of the racism that caused this
tragedy but also a sense of empowerment and hope. Poirier, by sticking close
to the facts of these events as they have been revealed in recent years, but
by also creating the powerful, larger-than-life fictional character of Mann
(played by Ving Rhames) in counterpoint to that of the local white
storekeeper Wright (played by Jon Voight) finds a way to infuse such elements
into the narrative. I came away thinking that this is a film I wish everyone
in America would see.

    We need to know this story. We need to realize what a vicious and
murderous brand of racism flourished just up the road from here just a few
years ago in order to begin to understand race relations here and now. When
Aunt Sarah Carrier (Esther Rolle) explains why she doesn't, at first, tell the
authorities that it was a white man not the rumored black fugitive who gave
Frannie Taylor the beating that started the trouble in Rosewood, she remarks
that "Black man" means "guilty" in the eyes of the law. It's easy to see the
truth of her statement in that context and thus easier to understand why,
decades later, whites and Blacks still have such very different experiences
of the criminal justice system in this country.

   We need to know that the story of Rosewook and other places like it is a
part of our history.  Not just to see another case of victimization, but also
the history of self-sufficient, successful Black communities, to know that
there were Black war heroes in the First World War, to know the courage of the
people who resisted the Rosewood mob, and to know that there were at least
some white people who sheltered and protected their Black neighbors. As Rep.
Al Lawson said during his efforts to pass the bill that provided reparations
to the survivors in 1993, there would have been no survivors of Rosewood if it
were not for the efforts of a few white individuals, including the locomotive
engineers, who helped the women and children to safety in Gainesville.

   Of particular interest to Women's Show listeners is the representatio of
two heroic women in this film, one Black, one white who have the courage to
face the drunken, racist mobs at their front doors. One tells them the truth
they don't want to hear--that the perpetrator of the assault against the young
white woman was her white lover and she is shot dead for her trouble. The
other is a white woman who will not tell them the truth they want to
hear--that she is harboring some of her Black neighbors in her house. She
faces them down with a rifle and in response to their question asks them one
"Are you willing to shoot a white woman to find out?" They are not, and skulk
away to continue their murderous rampabe somewhere else.

For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Fil