A Great Crime Is Finally Recognized
“Texas, as I emphasize over and over again in the book, is more complicated than most people think.”
Unveiling of the Sherman riot of 1930 historical marker, March 29th, 2025. Photo by Michael Hutchins / Herald Democrat
On Saturday, March 29, citizens of Sherman, Texas gathered to commemorate a horrific chapter from their past – the 1930 lynching of George Hughes and the destruction of the town’s courthouse and its thriving Black business district by a white mob of 5,000. 95 years later, an interracial crowd gathered for the unveiling of a state historical marker at the site.
At the unveiling, Kurt Cichowski, the Historical Marker Chairperson for Grayson County, described efforts in past decades to suppress the truth about 1930, including threats made against researchers. “There are those who say that you can’t fully recover until you record what actually happened here,” he said. “If we’re gonna hold true to the marks at the top of our courthouse [‘the people’s welfare is the supreme law’], we have to record what happened on that dark day almost 95 years ago and then move on from it, take the lessons learned and move on.”
This marker was approved by Grayson County authorities and the Texas Historical Commission in the midst of efforts by the Trump administration to suppress the recognition of events such as the murder of Hughes. The unveiling, one of a number of official recognitions in recent years of some of the most appalling things to ever happen in Texas, reflects a point that I make in the book’s epilogue: that “when it comes to telling Texas history in public, many more voices are at the table than a year ago.”
Historical markers and statues in Texas, like the rest of the United States, skew toward celebrating white men involved in the military and electoral politics. Texas monuments, many erected in the aftermath of the 1936 centennial celebrations that I discuss at length in chapter nineteen, tell many important stories, but until recently the racial violence that was so prevalent from the 1830s to the 1930s was barely noted in the formal commemorative landscape.
If you know Texas, you’ll recognize right away that most of these places – Sherman, Hillsboro, Waco, Presidio County – are quite conservative. Yet they have been willing to take the kind of measures that drive national conservatives nuts. Texas, as I emphasize over and over again in the book, is more complicated than most people think.