Second of two parts. Read part one.
PALESTINE -- When Vernon Denmon describes the Slocum Massacre of 1910 to younger residents of this East Texas city, the response is almost always the same."'That can't be,'" said Denmon, 60, a Palestine City Council member and area leader for the NAACP. How could such a thing have happened and so few in the area know about it?But that cultural amnesia is increasingly prevalent, Denmon said. Stories of the 1910 bloodshed near Slocum, 18 miles south of Palestine, have been shared privately over the generations, but many of the tales have died with older residents. There is scant mention in history books of the massacre, in which at least eight blacks were shot in the back by angry mobs. Many African-American families fled the area and lost their property.Now as North Texas descendants of some Slocum victims push for the incident to be restored to history, they've found an ally in Denmon, who hopes to organize a major commemoration in time for Black History Month next year."I think we should do this up real big," Denmon said. "Let's get to where we can get this out in the open, and let generations of this time know what our forefathers went through."One of Palestine's most prominent white residents agrees that the Slocum mass killings should be remembered. State District Judge Bascom Bentley III, a student of local history, recalled a conversation from his youth with an elderly black man, who said he had hidden in a swamp for three days during the massacre."It needs to be told," Bentley said. "How do you tell it? I'd have to give that some thought. But if we had had an Indian uprising and 10 pioneers had been killed, you would be reading about it or it would be remembered. If anyone was killed, particularly over something like this, it should be remembered."The Slocum massacre occurred when racial violence was common in Texas and across the nation, particularly in the South. Between 1885 and 1942, 465 lynchings were recorded in Texas, 339 of them of blacks, the third-highest number of lynchings of any state, according to the Texas State Historical Association. One lynching occurred in Fort Worth in 1921.But the Slocum massacre ranks as one of the worst single incidents in history, an episode that some Anderson County residents would rather forget."I'm not going to talk about it," one older man said at a home near Slocum. "There are some things you just don't mention."Michael Vickery's family goes back generations in Slocum, and the retired correctional officer still lives there. Vickery, 64, recently recalled conversations from decades earlier with relatives and neighbors. His grandfather pointed to bullet holes in an oak tree and to a place in the country where black victims of the massacre were said to be buried.Another man showed Vickery a pistol used in the killings. Vickery's grandmother spoke of an elderly black shot to death while he rocked on his front porch. But when Vickery tried to learn who did the shooting, the answer was the same:"I don't know."Vickery said he believed that Slocum's old-timers were aware of who was responsible but kept it to themselves."I've been here 65 years, but nobody would tell me a darn thing," he said. "I don't know who shot who. Yeah, they knew, but they pretty much stood together."In recent years, two North Texas cousins, Constance Hollie-Ramirez and Colecia Hollie-Williams, have worked to bring the massacre out of the shadows. One of their ancestors, Jack Holley, was a leading Slocum landowner at the time. One of his sons was killed and another wounded, and the Holley family lost property that included a store, a home and several hundred acres of farmland."They were chased away. They ran to save their lives," Hollie-Ramirez said. "I want what's rightfully ours, but more than anything, I want recognition that this was an atrocity. This did happen."Denmon and others agree that the time in East Texas has come."People want to take things like this and sweep them under the rug, and hope you never roll the rug back," Denmon said. "I'll do whatever I can to bring this out."(EDITOR'S NOTE: Comments on this story have been removed for numerous policy violations.)Tim Madigan, 817-390-7544
