Lynching of Allen Brooks



Allen Brooks was a black American man who was lynched by a mob on March 3, 1910, in Dallas, Texas. Brooks, in his sixties, had been accused of raping a young white girl, and on the day he was set to face trial at the Dallas County Courthouse, a large mob pulled him by rope out of a second-story window at the courthouse, dragged him to Elks Arch, and hanged him from a telephone pole.

The site of Brooks' lynching was unmarked for 111 years until a nonprofit placed a historical marker in 2021. The organization Remembering Black Dallas planned activities and programs for local high school students, with scholarships that support students writing on the history of racist violence and the civil rights movement in Dallas. Financial support for the marker and the scholarships was provided by the Equal Justice Initiative.

Background
Allen Brooks was a black man who lived in Dallas, Texas. He worked as a handyman. In late February 1910, Brooks was accused of raping Mary Beuvens, a two-and-a-half-year-old girl. He had been fixing her family's furnace when Mary went missing. Shortly afterwards, the two were found together. George Keaton Jr., the director of Remembering Black Dallas, told The New York Times that there was no proof to indicate that Brooks was guilty.

Brooks was taken to jail and formally indicted a day later. 200 people gathered by the jail the day after his indictment. While Brooks was initially held in the Dallas County jail, fears for his safety prompted the authorities to keep him in several jails outside the city limits. By early March, he was held in nearby Sherman, Texas.

Lynching
On March 3, 1910, Brooks was in the Dallas County Courthouse to face trial. As a crowd had already begun to gather before he arrived in Dallas, Brooks was sent to the courthouse's jury room. The courthouse was filled by 9:00 in the morning. Brooks' lawyer had only recently taken the case—an earlier lawyer had quit—and so the case was recessed for thirty minutes while they consulted. At 10:00, the judge, R. B. Seay, heard a request to prolong the recess. By this point, there were at least 1,000 people in the courthouse. A ladder was soon placed on the side of the building.

Around 11:15, the mob forcibly attempted to overtake control of the proceedings and fought with 70–150 law enforcement officers, including Ben E. Cabell. The officers were overwhelmed, though none made an effort to use a gun in his defense, and upon reaching Brooks, who was on the second story of the courthouse, the mob tied a rope around his neck and pulled him out a window. Brooks landed on his head on the street below, where more of the mob waited. Despite being unconscious, he was subjected to further violence by the mob, including being kicked and stomped on. A contemporary report described Brooks' face as having been "crushed into a pulp". Brooks may have been dead by this point. He was dragged by a car to Elks Arch at the intersection of Main Street and Akard Street, an arch built by the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks to celebrate the organization's national meeting. There the mob hanged him from a telephone pole or an iron spike beneath the arch. People carved pieces from the telephone pole and took pieces of Brooks' clothing as souvenirs. Historian Herbert Shapiro reports that by the time Dallas's undertaker arrived at the scene, he found that Brooks' body had been reduced to a "shapeless mass of flesh," with his undershirt and flannel&mdash;the only clothes still on his body&mdash;in tatters.

The mob's size was estimated to be 2,000–6,000 people. A contemporary report published by the Dallas Times Herald estimated that 2,000–3,000 were in the mob as it went from the courthouse to Elks Arch, and 5,000–6,000 were at the arch.

Aftermath


After the lynching, the city's sheriff, A. L. Ledbetter, said that it had been "impossible to protect" Brooks. Erasmus Gilbert Senter, a member of the Texas Senate, wrote an open letter criticizing the mob's ignorance of the rule of law, but many in the community did not share his view.

The lynching was widely covered in contemporary papers. Many local newspapers defended the actions of the mob as carrying out justice. An investigation undertaken by Dallas authorities never named any members of the mob; Shapiro writes that punishing the mob members was "out of the question" because the police officers who had been charged with protecting Brooks would not identify any of them. No one was ever charged in connection to the lynching.

Postcards were published depicting the event. One such postcard included written commentary on the back: "This is a token of a great day we had in Dallas, March 3, a negro was hung for an assault on a three year old girl." History professor Terry Anne Scott wrote that the postcard conveyed a "grotesque, murderous scene" as a "salutation and [...] a friendly jolt for a reciprocal jester." Such postcards were reprinted thousands of times. William H. Atwell, then a United States District Attorney, denied requests to halt the mailing of them, stating that the only law broken was "the law of common decency and love of the city in which one lives".

Amon G. Carter, of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, had written a special edition covering the lynching by 12:30 that same day. Two paperboys traveled with Carter to Dallas, selling all of the one thousand copies they had brought in thirty minutes. They had sold a further four thousand copies by the day's end, and one thousand more in nearby Sherman and Denison.

Elks Arch was taken down within a year of the lynching. In 2018, the Dallas City Council approved efforts to create a memorial. The nonprofit Remembering Black Dallas initially requested that the Dallas city government apply for a historical marker funded by the Equal Justice Initiative in December 2018, but in November of the following year applied for funding independently of the city. Remembering Black Dallas created a subsidiary group, the Dallas County Justice Initiative, to manage the project. The site of Brooks' lynching was unmarked for 111 years until the Dallas County Justice Initiative placed a marker in 2021, which was described as Dallas County's first such marker. Remembering Black Dallas also planned activities and programs for local high school students, with scholarships that support students writing on the history of racist violence and the Civil Rights movement in Dallas. Financial support for the scholarships was provided by the Equal Justice Initiative. In July 2023 a second historical marker was placed at the Dallas County Courthouse, where Brooks was held before being lynched.