After Reconstruction, white southerners began adopting laws and codes, known as Jim Crow laws or black codes, that affected everyday life for African Americans. One instrument of enforcement was the threat of violence as well as actual violence, including lynching. Although more often associated with rural areas, lynchings did occur…
In the late 19th and early 20th century, racial tensions near the United States – Mexico border and the lower Rio Grande Valley erupted into violence. The change from ranching to commercial agriculture and a shift in racial hierarchies led to increased discrimination against Mexican Americans and Mexicans in the…
The history of McLennan County, like that of Texas and the nation, is marred by institutional racism sometimes manifested in violence. From 1860 through 1922, 43 lynchings were documented here. Following reconstruction, most victims were black. Jim Crow Laws and acts of violence were used to disenfranchise, segregate and impede…
On December 11, 1921, Mr. Fred Rouse, a Black citizen, husband, father, and non-union butcher at Swift & Co. meatpacking, was lynched at this site by a white mob. Five days prior, he was beaten on Exchange Avenue in the Stockyards by a mob of meatpackers from a whites-only union…
At this site, on Tuesday night, Nov. 19, 1929, Marshall Ratliff was hung from a utility pole guy wire until dead before a crowd of about 1,500 people. Ratliff was also known as the Santa Claus Robber for his dressing as Santa Claus and leading a gang of four to…
On September 12, 1884, a mob of at least 400 young white men lynched a 25-year-old Black man named William Allen Taylor near this location beside the Trinity River. Weeks before the lynching, Mr. Taylor was arrested after being accused of robbing and assaulting a white woman. During this era…