John Singleton puts out some depressing movies.I saw Rosewood in '97 and I was barely able to handle it. I just watched it again here in '18 and I'm no better able to handle it.These types of movies show the worst side of human beings--and in this case it was white southerners. The south has a sordid past indeed and even though it pains me to watch movies regarding the sins of the south I think they are important. The truth of the matter is; I'd never heard of the events of Rosewood until I watched this movie. No one likes to relive such travesties, not the victims or the perpetrators, but it's a story that should be told... that needs to be told. We can't bury our heads in the sand and pretend these things never happened because they actually helped shap the society we live in today. The very least we can do is learn from it, progress from it, and prevent it from ever happening again.Rosewood is a trying movie to watch. I ask myself why am I watching it again? Because I feel it's that important to know. Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it. It's these historical events that have left legacies amongst people and if we can be honest about it then we can move forward. The perpetrators of the Rosewood massacre were hateful and ignorant on a massive scale but that hate and ignorance doesn't have to be perpetuated. It can stop, it can be ended. So, whereas I find movies like this hard to watch I can still appreciate them.

There's not much doubt about the nature of the event. In 1923 a white woman is found beaten in Rosewood, a small Florida village, and accuses an unknown black man. As the information spreads it acquires the familiar form -- she was also raped. The film shows us that the actual perpetrator was a white boyfriend of the married woman, but white townspeople focus on the shadowy image of an African-American man named "Jesse" who hasn't actually been involved.Dogs track a scent to the house of a black man and the posse beats and kills him. They get drunk and begin beating and lynching black men almost at random. A few residents shoot back, killing two white men, and are themselves killed. A respectable and prosperous elderly woman is also murdered.The black population, who are in the majority, hide in the woods while the mob burns the town down. They hunker down in the swamps until rescued by train. There is no investigation and no convictions.It's a shameful episode from the country's past and we're still paying the bill, both African-Americans and whites. The currency is white guilt and black resentment. And this was just one of the more flamboyant examples of the racism that pervaded communities, most intensely in the South.If it all seems formulaic -- ignorant red necks carrying torches and whooping it up while lynching blacks -- well, sometimes that WAS the formula. The ghost of the formula lingers. In Revere, Massachusetts, a man shoots and kills his pregnant wife, blames it on an anonymous black man, and the police roughly roust the black neighborhoods. A young woman in Union, South Carolina, murders her own children, blames an anonymous black man, and the hunt is on. Maybe the story needs to be retold so that we might learn something from hearing it again.The movie treats some of its characters with understanding. There is the good white guy, a storekeeper played by Jon Voight. There is the representative of law and order, the sheriff played by poor Michael Rooker who is condemned to a career full of meanies and serial murderers, caught in the middle, doing his best and failing. Don Cheadle is the black man who will not take much guff from the whites. He shoots back while others want to pray their way out.Yet there's a repellent and unnecessary element of fiction in this movie.One of the central characters is a robust African-American veteran of World War I, a decorated hero, played by Ving Rhames. He's taciturn. He rides into the town on a horse, wearing a cowboy hat and a leather harness carrying two .45 automatics. He smokes a miniature cigar. When he is attacked by a mob, he emerges from the forest firing his two pistols and drives off the half-dozen armed men in a heroic act of self defense. After he organizes the darkies and herds them off into the swamp and saves their hides, the gang find him and try to lynch him. But he's strong-willed and smart and manages to cut his way free of the noose and escape. He helps dozens of others onto the rescue train and as the drunken posse pursue he picks them off one by one with his shotgun. "This is a war. We in the trenches," he pronounces.The character Rhames plays, named "Mr. Man," is fictional, a thinly disguised "Man with no name" from the Clint Eastwood Westerns. What is this, a joke? Evidently not.I understand the need for drama and a central figure in the narrative but this kind of stuff is simply made up in order to make the product more commercial. There isn't actually that much information available, notorious as this riot was. Hardly anyone was willing to talk about it and Rosewood remains only a memory today. But the Voight character could have served as someone for the audience to identify with. His depiction seems to be relatively accurate, although the name has been changed. He did hide blacks in his house, putting himself and his family at risk. And his wife was more strongly protective, more gutsy, than he was, which is shown in the film.The whole trajectory of these incidents of collective madness is pretty familiar, but we don't seem to recognize them when we ourselves are involved. The woman who claimed victim status at the beginning had no idea of the implications of her claim. Neither did the young girls in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1693, when they had fits during which they accused marginalized townspeople of being witches. The lunatic conspiracy theories always belong to someone else. OUR lunatic conspiracy theories are always justified.

Less than 100 miles away from me is a town that is a reminder of the hatred that exists in those who grew up in the rural South. I just read Olympia Vernon's book on a similar subject, so it is fresh in my mind. The inhumanity of man towards our fellow man is incomprehensible to me. Whether it is Schindler's List or Rosewood, it is hard to understand. We only have each other, and to think than any one of us is better than the other is pure crap.This film hits hard. It will move you to tears and anger you at how some people close by are seething with hatred. I would even go so far as to say that if it doesn't viscerally affect you, then you are either dead or part of the problem.The film itself features outstanding performances by Ving Rhames, Jon Voight, Don Cheadle, Esther Rolle and many others. Their work will hopefully inform the viewer of this great tragedy and remind them that it is not something in the past. Florida's election fiasco of 2000 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina serve as evidence that the State and federal government is full of racists who continue these acts today.

This is one of John Singletons' best. I am glad he had the courage to bring it to the big screen, however, a lot was left out, as a friend of mine is a relative Sylvester Carrier. She paints a much more gruesome picture than we see on the screen,which I am sure his editors left on the cutting room floor. The movie was painful to watch with my friend, as she relived old memories told to her as a child, but still entertaining. The actors he chose, fit their parts perfectly, especially the ones that lived in Sumner.They almost made you forget they were just actors, because of such convincing performances.Vingh Rhames was incredible as I believe this was his debut and Michael Rooker is one of my favorites since "Tombstone".If you ever need a lesson on what "lies" and "jealousy" can destroy, this is the movie.