Florida Man To Serve Jail Time For Hate Crime Against Black Men

David Allen Emanuel, a white Rosewood, Florida, resident, will serve jail time for his racially motivated attack on a group of Black men in 2022.

In July 2022, a jury in Gainesville, Florida, convicted 62-year-old Emanuel on all counts for committing hate crimes on Sept. 6, 2022. He was facing up to 10 years in prison. More than a year later, Emanuel will serve a year and a day for each count simultaneously, the New Miami Times reported.

As BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported, a professor emeritus in psychology from Florida International University was with his son and a small group surveying a property he co-owns in Rosewood when Emanuel questioned him.

Dr. Marvin Dunn, his son, Doug Dunn, and six others were called the N-word and other expletives, including” ‘[racial slur] get out of these woods’ before Emanuel drove a pickup truck directly at the group, nearly striking one of them,” according to a press release, from the Department of Justice. The attack took place at the site of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.

“My neighbor comes out in a pickup and says, ‘What’s going on here?’ Then he makes a U-turn out of his driveway, comes back at us, and almost kills my son,” Dr. Dunn previously told the Miami Herald. “I was afraid to be on the property, so I came back to Miami.”

A week later, Emanuel was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Man convicted for racially motivated attack at Rosewood Massacre site gets year in prison https://t.co/dFcvXKdQyR

— Dr. Marvin Dunn (@MarvinDunn4) October 20, 2023

Emanuel’s final judgment comes after Dunn asked Judge Allen Winsor for a lighter sentence. During sentencing on Thursday, Oct. 19, Dunn said that race is “America’s most indigestible problem” and “for America to become whole, the lumps, thorns, and rocks must be removed.”

“For me, my faith requires forgiveness, and so I must,” Dunn’s statement read. “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.”