In early January 1923, a tiny Florida town primarily inhabited by prosperous African American families was burned to the ground by angry whites from a neighboring town. At the time, official reports stated that two to six people from the black community were slain. The rest of the town's residents fled into the swamps and never returned. Neither the perpetrators nor the victims spoke of the incident which was promptly forgotten until 1983 when a reporter stumbled across the old story and began investigating. Interviews with surviving victims indicated that the previous reports were wrong; in reality, between 70 and 250 people were killed in Rosewood during the four-day attack, an attack that was based on the false allegations of a white woman who was too afraid to tell her husband that she had been beaten up by her white lover. With a few fictional embellishments, filmmaker John Singleton rewrites this grim page from American history. One of those fictions is the addition of the enigmatic WW I veteran, Mr. Mann (Ving Rhames) who comes to town on the last day of 1922 astride a fine horse. He is welcomed by the wealthy Carrier family. Though many are suspicious of Mann, he turns out to become a major force in saving the townsfolk from total annihilation. The town grocer John Wright (John Voight), one of the few white residents, also plays a key role in saving lives, but before he does, he must resolve painful racial issues and make a difficult personal choice.
