By Bud Kennedy
bud@star-telegram.com
GAINESVILLE -- This is a city of buried secrets, and don't you dare dig any up.
Half of Gainesville's old-timers are descendants of either a lynch mob or one of its 42 victims in the Civil War-era Great Hanging, and 150 years later is still too soon for some to talk about it.
"This little town needs to get over the notion that there was anything noble about what happened," said Leon Russell, 83, of Keller, a retired insurance executive home Saturday for a remembrance that city leaders discouraged.
"They ought to reconcile. Get over it."
No way, said the director of a video that premiered across town Saturday defending the mob and a renegade Confederate colonel who led an unauthorized slaughter of all who were feared loyal to the Union.
"There won't be any reconciliation," said David Moore of Parker County, director of
Black October 1862 and a Texas publicist for the Sons of Confederate Veterans heritage society.
"There needs to be acceptance. It was war. It was bad. Bad things happen in war. Bad things happened in Gainesville."
At first, the town's Morton Museum planned a shared observance. But the mayor pro tem said the event wouldn't fit a city a map company recently named the "Most Patriotic Small Town."
With the groups staging separate remembrances, a crowd of about 400 from the victims' families and even some from the other side filled the Civic Center for a symposium, Sons of Union Veterans tribute and loud Pledge of Allegiance.
Turnout at a fraternal lodge hall for the Confederate promotion: 40.
Next, Russell said family members want a monument with victims' names.
That was first suggested in 1916.
Ron Melugin, a history professor at North Central Texas College and chairman of the Cooke County historical commission, compared the city's attitude toward the anniversary to the mindset in 1862.
"They're worried Gainesville doesn't look patriotic," he said before his speech.
"But the Great Hanging was a result of too much patriotism."
Hint to Gainesville: This time, take the right side.
Bud Kennedy's column appearsSundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.817-390-7538.Twitter: @budkennedy
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