As a Washington Commanders fan, like tens of thousands of others, I waited in anticipation of the historic rivalry between the Washington Commanders and Dallas Cowboys football teams. It was a relatively warm afternoon for late November, which made for classic football TV watching weather. I just knew my team would put up a fierce battle and send the defeated foe back to the locker rooms crying and wondering why they even had the audacity to even come out on the same field… I was wrong. They came out there on that field and whooped that thing… and then they whooped it some more. I ain’t even want to eat Thanksgiving dinner after that. Me: Ya’ll put my plate in the refrigerator… I don’t want to eat…” With all that azz whooping going on in Arlington, Texas, on Thanksgiving Day in front of millions, I wondered what else had also happened there.
Give It Up!!
So, our story begins in Sherman, Texas. It is about 80 miles northeast of Arlington, Texas, scene of the brutal mauling and dissection of the 4-8 Washington Commanders. Yep… I’m feeling some kinda way… So, anywho, this event started on May 3, 1930. Now although Sherman, was in confederate Texas, there were a surprising number of loyal Unionist living there. Of course, the Confederates were like there’s only one thing lower than a Texas darkie and that is a Texas darkie lover. Now I am using the word “darkie,” but I can assure you the racist in Texas used much more “colorful” words… As a matter of fact, the Unionist plucked the confederate racist nerves so bad, that in 1862, they arrested close to two hundred of them and hanged forty-two. “What you talking about Willis??!!” I said the racist hung forty-two white men in Sherman, Texas, in 1862!! After the Civil War, Sherman became known as the “Athens of Texas. Many institutions of higher learning migrated there. The title comes from Athens, Greece, which was a world renown center of learning in the late 5th Century BCE. Sherman wasn’t the only city which had earned the title. Among the others was Waco, Texas. Some people say that Waco, Texas was the birthplace of Trumpism. There was a standoff there in 1993 between agents of the federal government and 2nd Amendment Rights activists at a compound run by a man named David Koresh. They told him to give it up!! Feds: “Give us your guns and come on out with your hand up and nobody will get hurt…” Koresh: “Make me!!” The federal government blew that shat up resulting in the death of 75 people, including women and children. Conservatives have been feeling some kinda way ever since about their views on how the government intrudes into people’s personal lives. Some think it was thirty-three-year-old David Koresh’s right to have three or four thirteen-year-old wives, sixteen children and screwing them until his hearts content, while building a weapons arsenal large enough to equip an army to fight in the race war against the nigra hordes and white elitist… and sure… I know because I said that Ima have to sleep with it under my pillow from now on… Racist: That’s right boy!! You better keep one under your pillow… cause when we catch you, we gonna tear you a brand new shiny one… you’ll never have a problem with constipation again…” Me: “Gotcha…” Anywho, back to our main subject… Sherman, Texas was doing okay after the Civil War, all the way up to October 4, 1929. That was the day the Great Depression started. So, most of us heard about the Great Depression. It was a worldwide depression after the stock markets fell in the United States. This was the one that had white folks people jumping out of windows. One day they were all powerful like the Wizard of Oz… the next day, they were like the Nigras shining shoes for two bits and a grin… So not only were white folks jumping out of windows, but they were grabbing Nigras by the neck on the way down.
My Mind On My Money…
So now you got the Great Depression, and you got angry white folks mad because they money got faqued up. But for real, for real everybody’s money was faqued up, including George Hughes and that’s how it started. George Hughes was a forty-one-year-old black farmer. He had been working for a white farmer and on the morning of May 3, 1930, he went to collect his dough. The farmer owed him six dollars. Thats about a hundred and ten dollars in today’s money. He knocked on the door and said, “Tell yo’ husband I’m here for my money… I needs my money!!” The farmers wife said, “Wait a minute nigra!! You bedda take some of that bass out yo’ mouth!! Don’t you know you talking to a gawd fearing red blooded white woman!!” First of all, my husband ain’t heh! and if he was… I’d tell him to smack you across yo lips with dat money and throw you off our gawd fearing land after he pulled down yo’ pants and taken yo’ azz to the shed!!”
Hughes: “Okay…”
Now I don’t know if it went down like that, but Hughes did go there to get payment for money he was owed. Now according to history, Hughes left and returned later… WITH A TWO BARREL SHOTGUN!!
Hughes: WOMAN !!! I SAID I NEEDS MY MONEY!!
Wife: “Oh dear… Mr. Hughes… Mr. Hughes can you please remove that shotgun barrel from around me like you getting ready for the Fourth of July…
Hughes: HELL NAW!! GIVE ME MY MONEY FO’ THEY HAFTA PUT A PICTURE OF ME IN THE POST OFFICE!!
History says Hughes attacked the woman. So, while all this was happening, the authorities were alerted. In the meantime, a couple of racists went over there thinking they were going to teach that disrespectful nigra some manners. “BA!! BOOOM!!!” Huges let one fly… The racist hauled azz…!! (They regrouped a little later… this time with a deputy.)
Deputy: Now George… put that shotgun down and let’s talk about this… I promise we won’t hang you until “after” the trial..”
Hughes: “BA!! BOOOM!!“(George let the other barrel fly…)
Deputy: “OKAY NIGRA!! I guarantee you will be sitting at the feet of the savior before the day is over if you fire that thing again!!”
Hughes: “I NEEDS MY MONEY!!”
So, like I said earlier, I’m not sure that’s how it went down… but history does say that after Hughes emptied the second barrel, he was arrested.
Are They Loaded At Least.?
Hughes went on to plead guilty… because he bedda. Deputy: Nigra if you don’t plead guilty, we gonna go in the other room and start filling out a report about how you cut both of them off and hung yourself from the flagpole in front of this building…” So yeah, he pleaded guilty. In the meantime, rumors started circulating about what he had done to the farmer’s wife. While the altercation had only been verbal, it morphed into… “The nigra rape her and mutilated her breast… Then he cut her throat, and she was hanging on to life by a thread.” I’m not joking this time. The racist put that exact story out. None of it was true. So, like I said in so many articles, that back then white men were compelled to “protect” white women from the perceived sexual “threat” of black men. Nine out of ten black men hanging from the tallest trees they could find, was over some interaction with a white woman. This deep-seated fear of black men having sex with white women was so prevalent that it played a central role in the first bona fide movie blockbuster: D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. “Birth of a Nation,” cast black men as sexual predators, whose only thought was to rape white women. Insane? Absolutely, but they were more serious than a heart attack. After the showing of the highly offensive and racist film at the White House, lynchings went up substantially down South. Woodrow Wilson was president at the time and the movie was based on a book called the Clansman. It was written by Thomas Dixon, who happened to be a good friend of Wilson. Wilson kept a copy of the book in the Oval Office.
Anywho, after Hughes was arrested and word had spread that a white womans honor had been soiled, well they wanted to see the bottom of somebody’s feet. The Tuesday after Hughes was arrested a group of young men went to the jail and demanded that Hughes be released to them. When the county attorney told them he was not there, they drenched him with water from a hose and threw rocks through the courthouse windows. They even uprooted a telephone pole and tried to use it to gain entry. The sheriff called the Governor and asked for help. The Governor sent “four” Texas Rangers… Now we all know that the Texas Rangers are supposed to be some kind of bad… hush yo’ mouth…, at least that’s what we see in the movies, but really? Four men to stop a blood thirsty town bent on hanging a nigra that “defiled” a gawd fearing white woman in the confederate state that was the last to surrender and in which some had even ripped a telephone pole out of the ground to get at that savage nigra? Racist: Come on ya’ll, help me rip this telephone pole out the ground… they think we playing!!” Four of them… really? He knew what he was doing… he sent them down there to help… Anywho, one of the rangers he sent was a man named Frank Hammer. Hammer was the one who lead the team that killed Bonnie and Clyde.
Nanny, Nanny, Boo, Boo…
As the trial started, a group of five thousand hardcore racist of the 9th degree gathered outside.
Racist: WHAT DO WE WANT!!
Crowd: TOES DANGLING!!
Racist: WHEN DO WE WANT IT!!
Crowd: RIGHT NOW!!
Racist: WHAT DO WE WANT!!
Crowd: TOES DANGLING!!
Racist: WHEN DO WE WANT IT!!
Crowd: RIGHT NOW!!
Shat was starting to get real. It went south when the victim let out a shriek when she saw Hughes in the courthouse. The crowd rushed the courthouse but were held back by tear gas and the four Rangers showing lead. As an aside, I didn’t know they had tear gas in 1930. It was invented in 1928 by Ben Carson and Roger Stoughton. We call it tear gas, but its actual name is CS gas. The gases name is derived from the last letters of the two scientist surnames. Okay, now back to our regularly scheduled 1930’s lynching…
They decided to move Hughes. He was evacuated to the district clerk’s office and put into a vault of steel and concrete. The clerk’s office was inside the jail. The hostile racist was mad as shat… it was no way they were going to be able to get at him in there. So, they did the next best thing. They set the courthouse on fire! Two men doused it with fire and a courthouse which had been there since 1876 went up in flames. The fire department did everything they could to put out the fire, but it was to no avail. Those racists had slashed all the fire hoses. It was either come out nigra or cook in there like you was TV dinner made by Sara Lee!! Still, Hughes did not come out of the vault. About this time the National Guard started trickling into town. The racist mob attacked them by throwing bottles, stones and anything else they could get their hands on. Then they turned their attention back to Hughes who was still inside the vault. Hughes: “Yeah, that’s right!!! Come on in here and get me mfers!!! I’m in here looking at pictures of white women!! Nanny, Nanny, Boo, Boo!!! ” Racist: Remember boys… we want “THAT NIGRA ALIVE!! I MEAN THE FIRST THING THEY GONNA SEE OF HIS AT THE PEARLY GATES IS A MOUTH!!” Okay… they didn’t say that… As a matter of fact, there was no sign that Hughes was still inside the vault. Everything had burned to the ground except the vault, and they were determined to open it. So first they used tools to try and open it, then they tried dynamite… finally they got an acetylene torch and breached the outside. When they breached the outside, they started salivating at the mouth… Racist: “Now when we get that nigra out… this is what we gonna do first…. then we gonna…” So, although the torch had breached the outside of the vault, they still had to use the dynamite again. They blew a hole in the side of the vault and rushed in to get “THAT NIGRA!!”
Thanks For Nothing
Inside was Hughes lifeless body, having been smothered to death from the smoke of the fire. The racist were PEE-ISSED ALL THE WAY OFFFFFFF!!!! They pulled him from the burning building and tied his body to the back of a car and dragged him to a black neighborhood named Shermans Black. There they hung his lifeless body from a tree across the street from a black owned general store. They then broke into the store and used it’s furnishing as kindle for a pyre that they placed beneath Hughes body and set it on fire. Now to show you how petty and insecure these racists were, somebody cut off his manhood. So, what they are going to do with that shat is beyond me. I’m like if I’m over your house and you pulled out somebody’s severed dick, well I got some re-evaluation to do about our relationship as friends. Anywho, being denied the spectacle of burning and hanging a black man alive, they turned their attention to the black neighborhood. In a display of vile racist mob violence, they destroyed the Black-owned businesses district and ran us out of town. To get away from their deadly assault black folks were forced to hide in the woods and in sewers. The next morning Shermans Black business district was a heap of ashes. George Hughes mutilated body was cut down by the National Guard. Later on, they found out pictures had been taken of him hanging up there and were being sold. Martial law was declared, and the National Guard set up machine guns around the jail. In the end, only one of the 32 rioters who were arrested was convicted – not for the lynching, but for arson. There were five thousand people that were involved in the lynching and only one conviction. The man who was convicted name was J.B ” Screw” McCasland. He received four years in a federal prison, two years for arson and two years for rioting. McCasland also had some other charges before the riot took place. In all he was serving thirteen hard. However, the Governor granted him a conditional pardon and he was released in 1934, four years after George Hughes lynching. He died in 1997 at the age of 85 years.
Presently, there is a push to memorialize the burning of Shermans Black and the lynching of George Hughes. Unfortunately, there is a lot of opposition to the idea, with some calling the idea divisive race baiting. Now to show you what kinda folks they are dealing with down there; don’t you know they rebuilt the courthouse and put a monument to the Confederacy in front of it. As for the Shermans Black business district, well that’s a parking lot now. George Hughes? He was put in a pauper’s coffin, and buried in an unmarked grave, where he lays to this day. There’s not a trace in Sherman, Texas as to the events that happened on May 9, 1930.
So that’s the story of George Hughes. One of the millions of African Americans who lived through the racist brutality of the Jim Crow era. How many untold stories are out there? We don’t know, but we will keep bringing them to you as long as we find them. Join us next week as we explore more African American history.
Thanks for reading ©Hill1News
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