Rosewood man David Allen Emanuel accused of racist attack on Black historian Marvin Dunn in Florida town faces assault charge

By Edward Era Barbacena

An uneducated racist lowlife white man accused of screaming the N-word at a prominent Black historian and others and then threatening to run them down in Rosewood, a small Florida town with a notorious racist history, has been arrested.

According to an arrest report from the Levy County Sheriff’s Office, David Allen Emanuel, 61, was arrested and charged Monday night with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Police determined he threatened Marvin Dunn, a professor emeritus of psychology at Florida International University, and his group with his pickup truck last week while they were gathered on the side of a public roadway.

Dunn spent the past week hounding the sheriff’s office for what he perceived as inaction after the unprovoked altercation with Emanuel, a neighbor who Dunn said had nearly run over his son after screaming N-words at them.

On Tuesday, Dunn, a prominent South Florida Black historian, said he finally felt appreciated and that a constant stream of urgent emails he had been sending to the Levy County Sheriff’s Office would stop.

“I feel more respected,” said Dunn. the author of several Black history books, who said he had sent a stream of emails to the sheriff’s office in Levy County, which handles law enforcement in Rosewood. Over a decade ago, Dunn bought piece of a 5-acre property in the historic town that was almost wiped off the map during race riots in the early 1920s.

“I feel as if I got listened to,” he said. ”The police did their job.” Emanuel’s arrest report was brief and didn’t offer much new information. It said he was arrested and charged with the third-degree felony Monday night after a judge signed off on a warrant. His bond was set at $50,000. His arrest history, according to state records, has been clean since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the state dropped charges against him for burglary and fleeing from police. Calls to the Levy County Sheriff’s Office were not returned. Emanuel hadn’t been contacted by late Tuesday morning.