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Originally I acquired a small list of killings from another web site. While researching these to make certain they were documented, I came across other incidents, so many that I decided to create a separate page to list them.
There were many white people in Hopkins County who allied themselves with their black neighbors and some of these paid for their friendship by being lynched or ejected from the county. Many of the newspaper articles detailing these lynchings speak of "cooler heads": white people who confronted the mobs, pleading for court trials. One, an unidentified editor of the Sulphur Springs Gazette, was "roughed up" for his interference. Undeterred he continued to plead in vain for the man who would be lynched.
In some cases, the newspaper articles chronicling these incidents are the only documentation that the subject ever lived. For this reason alone it is important that these stories be preserved. If anyone has more information about these incidents, especially regarding the victims, I would be happy to add it to these pages.
Slavery and Reconstruction (1865-1877)
Unidentified Man, a slave, 1860.
"...after a slave was arrested for the attempted rape of a white woman, a mob broke into the jail and hanged him."
The Laws of Slavery in Texas: Historical Documents and Essays,
By Randolph B. Campbell, William S. Pugsley, Marilyn P. Duncan, p. 63
"Five good men of families", hanged in the Spring of 1860. These may have been white men, union sympathizers, as the author - threatened with lynching - was white. From a report made by Church of God missionary B. Ober, History of the Churches of God in the United States of North America, by Christian Henry Forney, 7th Texas Eldership, page 591.
The following killings come from the Joe M. Easley letter from Hopkins County to the Freedman's Bureau, Sulphur Springs, July 17, 1868. I have found no documentation on what happened to Joe Easley.
Many of these crimes were perpetrated not by citizens of Hopkins County, but by Ben Bickerstaff and his gang of outlaws who terrorized the area for a short time. You can read more about Ben Bickerstaff and The Knights of the White Camellia, Hopkins County and Reconstruction.
- Charles Grimes, 17 JUN 1868
- Minerva James, JUL 1868
- A man with the last name of Flowers, 14 JUL 1868
- A man with the last name of Starr and his young son, 15 JUL 1868
- Everett Jackson, JUL 1868
- Luke Starr, JUL 1868
Several members of a black militia formed to protect black families against the Ku Klux Klan. Henry Fowler, a slave owner in Sulphur Springs, organized with Ben Bickerstaff to attack the black militia meeting at the African Methodist Church. Lee Pearce reports in his WPA Slave Narrative that, "They kilt sev'ral of the militia and wounded lots more. That's after the Yankees done leave." That would have been around 1868.
Unidentified man, 12 JUL 1868
Galveston Daily News, Thursday, July 30, 1868, Page 2.
Unidentified Man
"A few years after the Civil War ended," south of the old Lollar store," Frontiersman James Selen Stout
This incident is referenced in "Out of the Darkness, The Black Face of Hopkins County," by Bobby McDonald. Womack Jones (1872-1970), a child at the time of the incident, was interviewed in 1953. He recalled that he saw the man hanging from a tree the following day. Others said the body was never removed and that "bones were visible on the ground for many years." McDonald estimates the time period to be the early 1880.
Disenfranchisement - 1877 - WWI
The period of time after 1877 was marked by continuing disenfranchisement of black Americans. Poll taxes, literacy and understanding tests, and increased residency requirements were used to deny blacks the right to vote and to, therefore, serve on juries. Lynching denied blacks the citizenship right of a fair trial.
John Williams, Sulphur Springs, Hopkins County, TX, 29 JUN 1894
"A NEGRO named Perry was lynched at Sulphur Springs, Texas, for the murder of farmer Jones and his wife, robbery being his motive."
Ludington Daily News, Dec 18, 1884
Benjamin Gay, accused of arson, Hopkins County, TX, 3 AUG 1896
Thomas Williams, Sulphur Springs, Hopkins County, TX, 14 AUG 1905
Unidentified man, "...hanged by a mob in Sulphur Springs, Texas, for attempted rape of a white girl." [photograph]
The Negro, his Origin, History and Destiny, By Henry Parker Eastman, page 438.
Unidentified Man, taken from courtroom and lynched, 1913
A Death in Texas: A Story of Race, Murder and a Small Town's Struggle for Redemption,
By Dina Temple-Raston, p. 113
King Richmond, Sulphur Springs, Hopkins County, TX, 29 AUG 1915
Joe Richmond, Sulphur Springs, Hopkins County, TX, 29 AUG 1915
-TSS
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