A great tragedy remained hidden from view for decades. A University of Florida doctoral candidate, inspired by a sense of social justice, is digitally resurrecting the African-American town destroyed in 1923 by racial violence.

Fresh from high school graduation in St. Petersburg in 1963, a friend and I drove through Florida on a lark. Exploring hinterland pockets along the state's Gulf coast, we wandered off State Road 24 into the eerie remains of what must have been a long-ago town.

Creeping jungle shrouded a few battered chunks of brick that were scattered like bones of ancient buildings. It was a hot June day, so silent not even a bird twittered, and the heavy air seemed to smother our own strained voices. We soon scared ourselves, fled to the snug comfort of my compact car and hummed back to the highway. Only then did we take deep breaths and look at each other. What the heck was that, we wondered.

Years later, I learned. In the early 1980s journalists and scholars began to unravel the details of a horrible racial episode that had been hidden for decades: the deliberate burning of African-American homes in the town of Rosewood.

It happened in 1923. On New Year's Day, a white woman alleged that a black man from Rosewood had attacked her. The accusation ignited a week of lynching, arson and pitched gun battles between blacks and whites. At least eight people died and many more were injured. Every African-American dwelling in Rosewood was burned down; every black resident fled, never to return.

My friend and I had unwittingly discovered Rosewood's remnants during that happy-go-lucky graduation trip. When the new research about Rosewood's history began to emerge, I was fascinated. I was well into a journalism career and mulling story ideas, so I made two or three trips to the spectral town. I never did write an account, but did look up lots of history. I wondered: What did Rosewood look like, what did it feel like before that terrifying day in 1923?

Soon we'll know. Rosewood will virtually rise from the ashes, thanks to modern technology. Edward Gonzalez-Tennant, 35, a University of Florida doctoral candidate, is using computer programs to create a "virtual" Rosewood that will be available for all to see online.

Using census reports, Levy County property records and oral histories, he is recreating Rosewood as it existed before 1923. We'll be able to see the town's three-dimensional character – with houses, streets, stores, hotel, train depot, churches and other buildings. (For a look at the project, including 3D examples, visit www.virtualrosewood.com.)

Gonzalez-Tennant, who has a background in anthropology and archaeology, wants his cutting-edge Rosewood work to honor the community and remember what was lost there.

"The community that predates (the destruction of) Rosewood has only come to us in fragments," he said. "If you can flesh that out, what was lost in 1923 becomes more real... We can really feel and understand the community and what was really there."

Gonzalez-Tennant has spent weeks doing research for this project at the Levy County courthouse. He combed through thousands of property records dating to the 1860s. What he gleaned contradicted stereotypical concepts of Rosewood. For example, African Americans owned a great deal of property in the town, sometimes large chunks. Moreover, the community was not strictly segregated.

"The Rosewood community is more complex than (indicated by) the history we have. It is more interesting to have this nuanced picture. You have blacks and whites living together during the (1910s) and '20s during this tumultuous time in American racial history," he said.

Rosewood was largely an agricultural community where yeoman farmers cultivated orange groves. Nearby Sumner had a sawmill and was more of an industrial community. Named for the red cedar that once proliferated there, Rosewood had a population of perhaps 300 in 1923.

Rosewood burned at a time of intermittent racial violence around the nation. Between 1910 and 1930, 870 African Americans were lynched nationwide, according to statistics compiled by the Tuskegee Institute. Many cities experienced racial violence, including Tulsa, Okla., East St. Louis and Chicago. The Ku Klux Klan re-emerged as a powerful tool of white supremacy.

A historical marker commemorating Rosewood can be seen on State Road 24. It has been vandalized as recently as 2010, but Gonzalez-Tennant said he encountered no hostility while researching an unpleasant aspect of Levy County's past.

"I've experienced the complete opposite,'' he said. "People go out of their way. I come in (to the courthouse) and they say ‘Oh, you're back, I've found some records for you.'" Moreover, the county records are meticulously organized, microfilmed, scanned and available as .pdf files, he said. "You can do most of your research on their computers."

In 1994, Florida became the first state to compensate survivors and their descendants for damages incurred because of racial violence. Ten years later, the state declared Rosewood a Florida Heritage Landmark. The roadside marker names the victims and describes the week of fear culminating in the fire.

Social justice is a major theme of his project, Gonzalez-Tennant said. He hopes it instructs and inspires others to create their own such virtual projects or their own views of Rosewood.

"I want to give... communities the ability to do what I did. Schools, community organizations, encourage them to do basically what I'm doing. I want to make sure kids have these alternative ways of exploring the past," he said. "If what I'm doing does nothing more than open up conversations about Rosewood and other (subjects) like it, then my goal to broaden the arena of conversation, to publish my research so that it reaches different audiences in various formats has been achieved."

Jon Wilson for VISIT FLORIDA

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Jon Wilson for VISIT FLORIDA