Son of Rosewood survivor to speak at Hamilton College on February 3

Arnett Doctor, the son of a woman who survived the Rosewood Massacre in 1923 and a leader in efforts to research and make public the events at Rosewood, will lecture at Hamilton College on Wednesday, Feb. 3 at 8 p.m. in the Chapel. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is being sponsored by the Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center and Assistant Dean of Students Karen R. Green.

In the winter of 1923 the town of Rosewood, Fla. -- a hard-working middle-class community of blacks -- suffered a decimating attack by an organized white mob. It was a planned assault that lasted a full week and happened with the knowledge of both the local sheriff and the governor of Florida. By the time it was over, the town had been burned to the ground, and its inhabitants had been killed or had dispersed.

Among the survivors, the atrocity was a hushed secret until 1982 when a St. Petersburg reporter happened upon an early mention of the Rosewood Massacre and contacted Doctor for further detail. That began a long process of personal soul searching, family reconciliation and legal battling that uncovered both the horrors of the massacre and the government's complicity. In 1994, the Florida state legislature finally voted $2 million in compensation for the surviving families. Production of the 1997 Warner Brothers film, Rosewood, has returned the incident to America's consciousness.

Doctor served in Vietnam and later worked in several major service industry companies. He was a vocal civil rights activist, serving as an officer in Florida's NAACP Youth Council as a teenager and working as a civil rights consultant for a law firm as an adult. He now is on the college lecture circuit, speaking about his experiences.