After an alleged racist assault earlier this week near a lot he co-owns, the professor says his plans are on hold.
"This sets back the dream," Dunn tells New Times.
On Tuesday, Dunn, who's 82, and his son, Doug Dunn, were standing with a group on the road near his property in Rosewood, the site of a 1923 massacre of Black residents at the hands of a white mob.
Dunn tells New Times he and two men were discussing clearing his five acres when a neighbor approached in a pickup truck and asked what they were doing and why Dunn's car was parked on the neighbor's side of the road.
Dunn says that after he explained that the thoroughfare is a county road and the vehicle was legally parked, the neighbor became incensed.
"He went into a rage. Started screaming at us and calling us 'niggers,'" Dunn recounts. "Then he guns his truck at us at full speed and makes this attempt to hit us."
If Doug hadn't stepped back, Dunn says, the truck would have hit him.My son Douglas (as a high school student) nearly killed in Rosewood yesterday by a racist in a pickup truck because he parked on the man's side of the road. The man was screaming about "niggers" as he assaulted my son with his truck. Doug stepped back at the right instant. pic.twitter.com/Z8ukyhxcqp
— Dr. Marvin Dunn (@MarvinDunn4) September 7, 2022
Dunn called the Levy County Sheriff's Office (LCSO) to file a report about the incident, and a deputy came to take witness statements from his group. Reached by New Times over the phone on Thursday, LCSO Lt. Scott Tummond said the deputy has not yet completed the incident report.
Shaken by the encounter, Dunn says he's re-evaluating his plans for a "Teach the Truth Tour" early next year to mark the centennial of the Rosewood Massacre.
With sponsorship from the Children's Trust and the Miami Heat, Dunn had been gearing up to take 40 young students and 20 adults on the tour, which would involve an overnight field trip through Florida to examine the state's history of racial violence.
Dunn envisioned the trip making multiple educational stops, including at the site of the Newberry Massacre, where at least six Black people were lynched just west of Gainesville in 1916.
The main event, though, was to have been a session of reflection and prayer at Dunn's property in Rosewood: a now-vacant lot with a preserved section of railroad tracks that served as an escape route for the Black population of the town as they were driven out by a mob of white men from neighboring towns.
Rosewood was ransacked and razed to the ground in January 1923. An all-white mob had formed around the town in response to claims by Fanny Taylor, a white woman from Sumner, that she had been assaulted in her home by a Black man. The mob tore through Rosewood looking for the supposed perpetrator, leading to an armed standoff at the home of Taylor's Black laundress, Sarah Carrier, which made news across the nation.
Over a span of several days, the mob burned down Rosewood and murdered its residents. Florida's governor, Cary Hardee, later ordered an investigation into the attack, but an all-white grand jury found there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.
In 1994, Florida passed a $2.1 million compensation bill for survivors of the Rosewood Massacre and their descendants.
Dunn's nonprofit, the Miami Center for Racial Justice, has raised $50,000 for the "Teach the Truth Tour" and its scheduled excursion to Rosewood. But after Tuesday's events, Dunn is uncertain at the prospect of bringing children to his property.
"Now I don't know if parents will let the kids go. This jeopardized everything I was planning," he says.
The historian also had long-term plans to create a "peace house" on the property as a place where racial conflicts could be worked out in the spirit of reconciliation. But he says he no longer feels safe there on his own.
"Now I feel like I've gotta go up there with a gun or put video cameras out. It all raises a lot of problems," he says.
Dunn emphasizes that the white community in Rosewood has never given him any trouble since he came into possession of the property in 2008, and this is the first and only racist outburst he has experienced in the area.
Apart from his work on Black history documentaries and books, Dunn is known for his long-held post as a psychology professor at FIU, where his research focused on race relations and education programs for students at risk. A U.S. Navy veteran, Dunn cofounded the Academy for Community Education, a Miami-Dade County high school now known as the Dr. Marvin Dunn Academy for Community Education.
