U.S. History Collection
Northern Jim Crow and Housing Segregation in the 1920s

Black Southerners Face Racial Violence

Ossian Sweet was born in 1895 in Bartow, Florida. Despite contributing to the town’s economy by helping build the railroad, Black residents were subjected to Jim Crow laws. Businesses were segregated, and many of the town’s amenities and essential services were closed to Blacks.

East Main Street, Bartow, Florida.

A black and white photo shows an unpaved street with rows of buildings on either side. Some of the first floors of the buildings have awnings and appear to be storefronts.

Black residents of Bartow also faced racial violence. When Sweet was 5 years old, he witnessed the lynching of Fred Rochelle, a 16-year-old Black man accused of killing a white woman. The racial dynamics of Bartow were not unique in the South. From 1877 to 1950, Florida reported 311 lynchings; 12 southern states had the highest number of reported lynchings.

Newspaper headline about the lynching of Fred Rochelle.

A newspaper clipping shows the heading "Negro Murderer Burned at Stake By a Mob of Avengers in Florida" followed by the sentence "Taken from jail to the scene of his crime, Frederick Rochelle meets awful death in fierce flames."

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