This silence was an exception to the practice of oral history among black families. Minnie Lee Langley knew James and Emma Carrier as her parents. She kept the story from her children for 60 years: "I didn't want them to know what I came through and I didn't discuss it with none of them ... I just didn't want them to know what kind of way I come up. I didn't want them to know white folks want us out of our homes." Decades passed before she began to trust white people. Some families spoke of Rosewood, but forbade the stories from being told: Arnett Doctor heard the story from his mother, Philomena Goins Doctor, who was with Sarah Carrier the day Fannie Taylor claimed she was assaulted, and was in the house with Sylvester Carrier. She told her children about Rosewood every Christmas. Doctor was consumed by his mother's story; he would bring it up to his aunts only to be dissuaded from speaking of it.