Long before The Real Rosewood Foundation was created, my mother strongly suggested researching the real truths of the Rosewood occurrence. The two of us shared the dark secrets of the Rosewood story over the years starting in 1943, when I was only five. For me, the most significant part of the Rosewood story is centered on its schoolteacher, Mom’s sister, my favorite aunt, and mentor, Mahulda Gussie Brown Carrier.
The memory of Rosewood is constantly on my mind. I have not been able to lay the burden of its history down. To my mother, Theresa Brown Robinson, Rosewood was a “song” etched in her heart. She promised my Aunt Mahulda that she would keep her secrets safely hidden, but the thought of what happened to her dear sister in Rosewood made the vow too tremendous a task to keep silent during the making of the movie, ROSEWOOD. As the title of the old Negro Spiritual suggests, “I Said I Wasn’t Gonna Tell Nobody but I Couldn't Keep It to Myself,” my mother was compelled to share her sister’s story, reliving the horrifying and hostile events she witnessed in 1923, at age 21. Mom contributed a great deal of information to the moviemakers; however, they used her information and did not properly give credit.
She was offended after watching the Rosewood movie and charged me with completing her Rosewood research, firmly stating, "Mommy didn't raise no fools. You finish my research and tell our own Rosewood story. I have given you enough oral family history to make a documentary and you must do just that!"
Because Mom was never satisfied with the violations her sister endured during the savage attacks on an innocent people, she assigned me the task of authenticating Rosewood's truths. “You must keep Sister’s name in Rosewood’s history,” aware her sister had suffered physically and mentally during the vicious raid of her hometown. Mom instructed me to start a scholarship in her sister Mahulda's name and build a museum honoring all Rosewood survivors and descendants. If I were to do a thorough job as requested by my mother, I understood it would become a lengthy journey and challenging project. And Mom's expectation of me radiated when she said,
If mama [I] wasn’t so old, I'd do it myself.
From my mother's point of view, as told to her by her sister the Rosewood schoolteacher, I set out with pen and pad to bring respect and dignity to a history that was dormant for years because of the embarrassment it would add to Levy County. The incomplete work of Rosewood is the glue that holds Mom’s lessons and my writings together.
Being an educator, I wanted to educate professors, teachers, and students. I could not begin to do such without supporting evidence, therefore, I made it my mission to confront the danger and take charge of a family history that I am proud of because I have learned truth and now use that same truth to impart important lessons and build better race relations. Educate people on the real Rosewood history… In order to do this, I dedicated time to researching the records dating back to 1845, when my great, great, grandfather, Henry McIntyre, arrived in Cedar Keys as a one-year-old toddler. Side Note: I have not been able to place him with a family. According to the Levy County 1870 Census, my great, great, grandfather was a 24-year-old black male, laborer and full-time stud, father of six children, and husband of a 25-year-old black female named Emma McIntyre. They lived on the adjacent Lot 202 next to who is believed to be Sheriff Robert Walker’s cousin, Harriet Walker, a white single woman with four children who lived on Lot 201, known then as "Outside of Cedar Keys District”. One can deduce that Sheriff Walker’s actions, working tirelessly to save Rosewood citizens, were because he knew many of the residents personally. Read Rosewood History
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