Arnett doctor biography

Rosewood, Florida

Though it was originally settled in 1845 by both Black and white people, black codes and Jim Crow laws in the years after the Civil War fostered segregation in Rosewood (and much of the South).

Employment was provided by pencil factories, but the cedar tree population soon became decimated and white families moved away in the 1890s and settled in the nearby town of Sumner.

By the 1920s, Rosewood’s population of about 200 was entirely made up of Black citizens, except for one white family that ran the general store there.

Fannie Taylor

On January 1, 1923, in Sumner, Florida, 22-year-old Fannie Taylor was heard screaming by a neighbor.

The neighbor found Taylor covered in bruises and claiming a Black man had entered the house and assaulted her.

The incident was reported to Sheriff Robert Elias Walker, with Taylor specifying that she had not been raped.

Fannie Taylor’s husband, James Taylor, a foreman at the local mill, escalated the situation by gathering an a