E. R. Bills

Black Holocaust: The Paris Horror and a Legacy of Texas Terror

Fort Worth: Eakin Press, an imprint of Wild Horse Media Group

Paperback, 198 pages, with numerous b/w images, 978-1-68179-017-6, $19.95

August 24, 2015

Reviewed by Si Dunn

Fort Worth writer E.R. Bills offers an unusual caution in his book’s preface: “If you’re fragile—white or black—this is not a book for you.”

Indeed, his new work displays a stern cover warning: “Contains graphic images.” It also contains vivid, disturbing descriptions of gruesome lynchings that occurred in Texas between the 1860s and the 1930s.

Black Holocaust: The Paris Horror and a Legacy of Texas Terror focuses on how dozens of African Americans and at least one Mexican were seized by Texas mobs and publicly burned at the stake, usually in front of large, raucous crowds and often with approval from local elected officials and newspapers.

Frequently, those who were lynched had been accused of serious crimes but not yet tried. And some of them later were determined to be innocent — after their murder by fire.

Usually, the lynching victims were tracked down by ad hoc search parties. Or mobs stormed jails and grabbed them from outnumbered law enforcement officers. The seized black men were bound to stakes erected near or above large piles of wood, sometimes in the middle of town or on courthouse squares. Some lynching victims were doused with flammable liquids and quickly immolated. Others, however, were tortured, tormented, and roasted slowly, in excruciating pain, until they finally succumbed and flames reduced their bodies to ashes.

Americans today recoil at horrific killings by ISIS. Yet many in this nation are unaware that medieval-style barbarisms occurred in the United States, as well, as late as the 1930s and beyond.

“Burning a living, breathing human being at the stake is never simply a matter of murder or lynching,” author Bills writes. “It’s an act of terror, monstrosity and madness, and its political, societal and psychological repercussions are hardly quantifiable.”

Part of his book’s subtitle refers to the “Paris Horror,” which Bills contends “became a catalyst for a three-decade regimen of holocaust in Texas, intentionally perpetrated by whites against persons of color.”

More than thirty pages of Bills’s book are devoted to that horrific event. It occurred in Paris, Texas, on Feb. 1, 1893, after a black murder suspect, Henry Smith, was captured in Arkansas and returned to the Lone Star State, supposedly for trial.

“The Paris that Henry Smith was returning to was hellishly festive,” Bills describes. “Folks from Dallas, Fort Worth, Sherman, Denison, Bonham, Texarkana and southern Arkansas were pouring into the city to witness the spectacle as rapidly as the supplemented train service could deliver them. They wanted to see the ‘loathsome freight of incarnate fiendishness’ arrive. They wanted to be able to say ‘I was there’ when the ‘beast’ was burned.”

The previous day, Bills notes, “the city of Paris hadn’t just sent an armed escort to Texarkana to bring Henry Smith back; they had also collectively and definitively determined Smith’s sentence and punishment.” He adds: “Smith’s guilt had long been established in the public mind and the Parisians saw no need for the normal, constitutional rights of due process or a trial hearing. It was generally agreed upon that Smith would be ceremoniously tortured by members of the victim’s family and then burned at the stake.”

Indeed, a ten-foot-high wooden scaffold had been constructed near downtown Paris. And, Bills points out, many of the town’s shops and businesses were closed for the burning. The town’s bars also were closed, and schoolchildren were given the day off.

Texas Gov. James S. Hogg, an outspoken opponent of lynching and burning at the stake, ordered local law enforcement officers to protect the prisoner for trial, as well as “protect the majesty of the law and the honor of Texas and your people from committing murder.” But the sheriffs and deputies escorting Smith were met in Paris by up to “10,000 enraged citizens.”

The unbelievable horror that followed brought sharp condemnations from around the country and several parts of the world. Yet, public support for mob “justice” and “white sovereignty” continued for many years, as Bills demonstrates. His book—well researched and well written—recounts the grim details of numerous other Texas lynchings that involved with mob-driven murder by fire.

Similar horrors occurred elsewhere besides Texas, of course. “A recent study on American lynchings documented almost 4,000 African American victims in a dozen southern states (including Texas) between 1877 and 1950,” Bills points out.

Many white and black lynching victims were hanged or shot. But, particularly in East Texas, ghastly “[b]urnings at the stake were almost exclusively reserved for persons of color.”

This important book should be read. But you definitely must be strong.

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