Grant's Colony in Huntsville,Texas is South on Texas Hwy. 19 about 48 miles_lets traveled back to Crockett.From Crockett,Texas traveling on Texas Hwy.19 North just 24 miles is a small town called Slocum,Texas.
In My Backyard....so to speak! An Act of Genocide in East Texas.
{There are several theories as to what motivated the massacre. According to an account in the Semi-Weekly Courier Times of Tyler, the incident was attributed to a dispute between black businessman Marsh Holley — father of Lusk and Alex Holley — and a white farmer over an unpaid debt. Marsh’s father, Jack Holley, owned several hundred acres of land and sold goods from his store to both black and white customers. He was among those who escaped the violence, leaving behind all he’d worked for.
Another account involved Jim Spurger, a white man alleged to have instigated the event because he reportedly didn’t want to take orders from a black boss on a road maintenance crew. Some said the killings were simply a land grab, as they believed white residents begrudged the prosperity of their black neighbors.
Another theory, according to newspaper reports, claimed white residents believed black people were planning an attack against them. “The third and the most serious reason which is believed to be directly responsible for the tragedies is the seemingly baseless and unfounded wild reports and rumors which gained currency and which were magnified as they were repeated from mouth to mouth,” read The Dallas Morning News on August 1, 1910. “These were to the effect that the Negroes were preparing to rise and kill all of the white people.” } Source: TIMELINE MAGAZINE Editor: Coshandra Dillard
Then as now it was spun by_NEWSPAPERS_across the States _& deemed a Violent Race War, a Race Riot....OTHER than what it really was_"AN UNPROVOKED MASSACRE BY THE WHITE COMMUNITY ON THE BLACK RESIDENTS."
When this drew NATIONAL attention,a group of Ministers in Washington,D.C. pleaded with President Taft to do something about the violent acts of Whites against Blacks.
The "MOB KILLINGS" went on for several days until the Texas Rangers stepped in to preserve Law & Order. The details of what happened are very disturbing.All of it was based on lies that the African-Americans in that community had created a mob to kill White people. It was just a matter of Southern White principal and racial hierarchy that the White mobs committed acts of genocide on the Black community.
The murders of eight men were reported. However, many others were killed in back woods,etc...and never accounted for. Eleven White men were arrested. The Grand Jury indicted seven men. The case was moved to Harris County but were never PROSECUTED...."PURE EVIL". All known victims were unarmed and most were shot in the back;no whites were injured.
Slocum resident Henry Rogers recalls what he knows of the massacre that threatened to rid his town of its black residents more than a century ago. (Ron T. Ennis/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT via Getty Images)....
Of course,this HISTORY in Texas and America has been "SWEEP UNDER THE RUG"...(To conceal something in the hopes it won't be discovered by others). More than one hundred years after the slaughter, the incident was detailed in E.R. Bills’ 2014 book, The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas.
This book is an excellent source of what happened in the...1910 Slocum Massacre. The Bibliography is very resourceful for further study. Many may find this event unimportant in the History of Racism in Texas and America. I find it very disturbing_especially when I grew up next door to another Generation of Holley's.They were relatives of Jack Holly whose photo is shown above. It is painful to know that in 2018 certain people and their Press sources repeatedly spin the "Black Lives Matter Movement" as a Hate Mob.Just as the group of men lied about the MOB status of the African-Americans in Slocum!
PURPOSE OF BLM....Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an international activist movement, originating in the African-American community, that campaigns against violence and systemic racism towards black people. BLM regularly holds protests speaking out against police killings of black people, and broader issues such as racial profiling,police brutality,and racial inequality in the United States criminal justice system.THAT IS THE MEANING OF BLM .
Slocum,Texas...Act of Genocide in East Texas...24 miles from Crockett_Deep in the Heart of East Texas....
2 comments:
Like the massacre in Tulsa. You can’t help but wonder how many more there were that few people know about.
YOU are so right Jan!I'm reading "Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America" by Cameron McWhirter ."Red Summer" refers to the Summer and early Autumn of 1919, which was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the United States, as a result of racial riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities and one rural county. In most instances, whites attacked African Americans. In some cases many black people fought back, notably in Chicago and Washington, D.C. The highest number of fatalities occurred in the rural area around Elaine, Arkansas, where five whites and an estimated 100–240 black people were killed; Chicago and Washington, D.C. had 38 and 15 deaths, respectively, and many more injured, with extensive property damage in Chicago.
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