(RNS) — As each new year approaches, Ebony Pickett looks back to the dark history of the massacre that began in the little-known majority-Black enclave in Rosewood, Florida, on Jan. 1, 1923.
Pickett, descended from residents of Rosewood, feels the legacy of the massacre in personal ways. She was one of the first students to receive a Rosewood Family Scholarship from the state after Florida passed reparations legislation a quarter century ago.
Pickett used her scholarship to attend Florida A&M University and earn a bachelor’s in occupational therapy in 1998. The mother of seven, she is now a part-time occupational therapist at two charter schools.
