Slocum, Texas, July 29th,
1910 — Witnesses, both Black and White, stated that it seemed like hunting
season for the Negroes who had built successful lives in Slocum. “The White men
are shooting people like they were sheep,” Anderson County Sheriff William
Black told a reporter for the Houston Chronicles.
Another day another atrocity against
Black Americans by White Americans.
Racial tensions in Anderson
County were extreme because many Blacks had started to have success, and they found
it easier to invest their income and begin to build wealth and independence. In
Slocum, an organized but unincorporated town in the Southeastern part of the
county. Whites resented the financial success of these Blacks and their
ownership of land.
Racial tensions had been building
after a Black man was lynched in neighboring Cherokee county. From there events
seemed to spiral out of control. Whites began mobilizing for violent action
after a White farmer couldn’t collect a debt from a respected Black farmer. The
debt was in dispute with Mr. Abe Wilson, the Black farmer saying he had paid in
full. Also, Whites also took the placement of a Black man as one of the lead salesmen
on a road building project as an event of great disrespect. Whites were angry but
also afraid, the world wasn’t right to them, the natural order disrupted and
rumors that the Blacks were having secret meetings and collecting guns on how
to overthrow the White majority and kill them.
One farmer, Jim Spurger, had been
trying to agitate events by telling everyone that Wilson had stolen from the farmer
named Redin Alford. Spurger also told some sketchy tales about being threatened
by armed Black men, stories he presented without names or places.
The conditions were sadly perfect
for angry bigoted White men to do what they do, start a reign of terror. The
White men in Slocum sent off telegrams requesting other Whites come to Slocum
with guns to help their fellow White men defend their lives, they had also
spread this request through word of mouth. Over the next 24 hours men came from
Palestine, Elkhart, Neches, Cayuga and other spots. It wasn’t hard in the Jim
Crow era to gather Whites willing to kill Blacks just to kill Blacks.
Primed by local papers that reported
every minor incident Blacks had been accused of while defending all White
landowners. These papers frequently published ghoulish and appalling front page
stories of lynchings both in Texas and the rest of the South. Anderson County was
a hot spot for this violence with 6 lynchings in 1910 prior to the massacre.
The attack began about noon when
at least 200 armed White men started shooting at any Black person. They killed
at least four with this first volley and then began sweeping the town killing
any Black person they saw. The evening newspaper in Palestine stated it was a “Race
War” still attempting to make the Blacks being slaughtered as equals in violence.
Anderson County Sheriff William
Black left Palestine at 5 a.m. with a posse to try and make peace. He was not
alone as District Court Judge Benjiman Howard Gardner had ordered all the
saloons in Palestine closed the day before. Gardner had also ordered a
contingent of National Guard Troops led by Capt. Godfrey Reese Fowler to aid in
ending the violence and to assist in cleaning up. Texas Governor Thomas
Campbell ordered in a contingent of Texas Rangers to help keep the peace and support
Sheriff Black.
In the days that followed saw 13
White men arrested by either the Rangers or Black and his deputies. Some faced
multiple murders after a grand jury was convened, yet they never went to trial.
There is no official number of Black deaths, the papers reported broad numbers
from 8 to 22. Men like Sheriff Black estimated at least 40. It was easy to lose
bodies, especially after a mass grave was dug. Oral traditions by survivors say
200 were killed.
Texas ignored the truth of the
massacre for years. They finally added a brief note in the textbooks on Texas
history texts in 2011 and an historical marker was placed on site in 2015.
Sources:
https://www.teachslocummassacre.org/
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/the-slocum-massacre-1910/
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