Rosewood Man Sentenced for Assaulting Historian Marvin Dunn in Racist Rage

David Allen Emanuel was sentenced to one year and a day in prison for driving his pickup truck at Black historian Marvin Dunn and his son during a racist attack in Rosewood in 2022.

Emanuel, a 62-year-old white resident of Rosewood, was convicted on six federal hate-crime counts in July and faced up to ten years in prison. Instead, U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor sentenced him to a year and a day for each count, to be served concurrently.

Dunn, 83, had asked the judge for mercy for Emanuel during sentencing on Thursday, October 19.

"For me, my faith requires forgiveness and so I must," reads Dunn's statement on behalf of the victims. "It requires me to love my neighbor as well, but I have more work to do on that. I am not asking my neighbor to love me or even to apologize to us. I only ask that he assures the court that we can live in peace as neighbors."

The Florida International University emeritus professor told the judge he wanted to set an example of how to peacefully move on from conflict.

"Despite our differences, we must respect each other and live in peace," Dunn continued. "Race is America's most indigestible problem. It is the lump in our collective throat, the thorn in our collective side, and the unmovable rock in our common path. For America to become whole, the lumps, thorns, and rocks must be removed."

Dunn tells New Times the defendant’s grandchildren played a factor in his decision to ask for a light sentence, especially seeing them in court on Thursday.

"I thought the sentence was fair. The judge took into account my letter from the six of us," Dunn says, referring to the group that was with him when Emanuel became enraged.

On September 6, 2022, Dunn and a group of men, six Black and two white, were meeting on his five-acre property to plan the construction of a "peace house" in honor of the Rosewood Massacre, in which a white mob killed Black men, women, and children in 1923. As the group stood on the roadside, Emanuel drove up and demanded to know why they were there and why their vehicle was parked next to his property across from Dunn's lot.

After Dunn explained that he was legally parked on the county road, Emanuel lost it and started shouting racist epithets.

"He started screaming at us and calling us 'niggers,'" Dunn told New Times following the encounter. "Then he guns his truck at us at full speed and makes this attempt to hit us."

Dunn said Emanuel nearly struck his son with the Ford F-250 truck before driving off. A week later, the Levy County Sheriff's Office arrested and charged Emanuel with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon — the truck. On his way to jail, prosecutors claimed Emanuel said, "I didn't do a goddamn thing...get treated like this shit over a fucking nigger, man. I didn't do a goddamn thing to them, son."

Emanuel was indicted on federal hate-crime charges for "willfully intimidating and attempting to intimidate" the six men with his truck.

In their October 16 sentencing memo, prosecutors had sought a sentence of 57 to 71 months based on the pre-sentencing investigation.

Emanuel's federal public defender had asked for probation and no jail time, telling the court Emanuel "wants to offer his deepest apologies to the victims in this case."

The assault came nearly 100 years after the massacre of Black residents, which began on New Year's Day in 1923 when a mob of white vigilantes razed and tore through the town 50 miles southeast of Gainesville. The mob came from a neighboring town after a white woman claimed a Black man assaulted her inside her home. Those who survived the massacre had to flee as the town was burned to the ground.

Dunn still intends to build his "peace house," a replica of the railroad depot that once stood on the property. Dunn and his nonprofit, the Miami Center for Racial Justice, continue to bring students to Rosewood as part of the "Teach the Truth" tour.

State charges against Emanuel over the assault are still pending.