(1997) As they deplore the horrific hostilities that have taken place between ethnic & religious groups - as between Uzbeks and Krygyz in Kyrgyzstan, Sunnis and Shi'ites in Iraq, Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, Palestinians and Israelis in the Middle East, Catholics and Protestants in Ireland - most people in the United States don't want to watch movies such as this one because they don't want to be reminded of the racial atrocities committed in this country.

Basing his screenplay on actual events, Gregory Poirier's damning script/indictment - beginning with furtive acts of sex and ending in an abortion of an innocent community through indiscriminate killing - was powerfully dramatized by director John Singleton. Not until investigative journalists in the 1980s uncovered the events of six decades earlier, mostly from interviews with witnesses (only one of whom was white) to the violence, and reported their findings in the media was the massacre made public. In 1993 the Florida Legislature commissioned a report, which led to compensation paid to survivors and their descendants.

In Levy County, Florida, on December 31st, 1922, following rumor spreading of black convict Jesse Hunter's escaping from a chain gang, a stranger, Mr Mann (Ving Rhames), rides his horse Booker T into Rosewood, a whistle stop on the Seaboard Railway and self-sufficient society of colored people who own all of the property and businesses, except for white shopkeeper John Wright's (Jon Voight) store and home.

The music teacher, Sylvester Carrier (Don Cheadle), invites the drifter into his home for a New Year's Eve dinner with his family and relations, including his wife Gertie, his mother Sarah (Esther Rolle), his cousins - 17-year-old Beulah (Elise Neal), called Scrappie, who takes a shine to Mr Mann, who begins to reciprocate with reflection; Jewel, who works for Mr Wright in his store; Big Baby; Arnette, a few days from his thirteenth birthday - and their father James Carrier (Paul Benjamin), the town's preacher.

Recently married to Mary (Kathryn Meilse) to mother his two boys after his wife's death less than eight months ago, John Wright carries on a secret affair with Jewel. In the exclusively white-populated village of Sumner, while Aunt Sarah and Philomena perform chores around the house, James Taylor (Loren Dean) copulates with his wife Fanny (Catherine Kellner) and then brutally beats her, calling her a "swamp tramp," for accusing him of having an affair with another woman. Shortly after her husband leaves for work, Fanny cries out that she's been battered by a black man, though the two colored women know otherwise.

During an auction for a parcel of five acres, belonging to John Bradley and adjacent to Mr Wright's store, with Mr Mann (who has designs on it for a home) bidding against Mr Wright (who has plans for expanding his business), news arrives that Fanny Taylor has been violently violated by a black man (though she had refuted initial suggestions of having also been also raped).

Assuming the rapacious rapist to be the escaped convict, a mob of men follows hounds to the residence of Aaron Carrier, another of Sylvester's cousins. Though John Wright speaks up for the character of the young man and Sheriff Ellis Walker (Michael Rooker) ineffectually attempts to prevent a lynching, Duke Purdy (Bruce McGill) and other hotheaded crackers quickly take matters into their own hands, getting Aaron to confess that Sam Carter, the blacksmith, drove off to hide someone.

Inside his uncle's church, as Sylvester exhorts his fellow townspeople to "stand up and defend your rights," Mr Mann takes his leave, saying he'd just fought a war (for which he'd been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor) and doesn't want to get involved in another.

On Saturday, January 2nd, Judge Johnson examines Sam Carter's dismembered corpse and rules the cause of death to have been "mischief at hands unknown" while reminding Sheriff Walker to maintain control of the niggers; Aunt Sarah defines "nigger" as "just another word for guilty." With the best of intentions the sheriff urges Sylvester to take his advice of getting on the train to Gainsville for a spell, but the piano man refuses to retreat. That night a vicious, bloodthirsty mob appears at the Carrier home as the family celebrates Arnette's birthday.

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