Lizzie Robinson Jenkins didn’t want to spend the rest of her life researching Rosewood.
But she had to. Needed to. It was her destiny after all: The false accusation against her uncle sparked the ensuing inferno that would eventually eviscerate the once thriving Black town of Rosewood, Florida, leaving at least eight people dead in 1923.
“I took the story to school with me, to college, to work and it just became a part of who I am today,” the 84-year-old Jenkins, founder of The Real Rosewood Foundation, said to an audience Wednesday at Florida International University at the opening of An Elegy to Rosewood, a new exhibit on display at the Frost Art Museum.
