1910 Lynching of Allen Brooks

Marker Text: 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 towns and cities. In Dallas County between 1853 and 1920, five white males and six African American males were lynched by mobs. The lynching of Allen Brooks on March 3, 1910, was an example of strategic Jim Crow violence. As recorded in major newspapers, court records and personal testimonies, Allen Brooks was a 60-year-old African American domestic laborer accused of assaulting a girl in the home of his long-time employer. Local law enforcement attempted to keep the time and location of the pretrial hearings secret, but a local newspaper published the information and a mob subsequently convened at the county courthouse. Measures were taken to secure the building, but the crowd which had gathered shoved past and into the building and pulled Brooks to the second-floor window. The mob placed a rope around his neck and threw him from the window. They then dragged Brooks a half a mile down Main Street where he was finally hung from a telephone pole near the prominent Elks Arch at Main and Akard Streets. Following this horrific event, witnessed by an estimated 5,000 people, many citizens called for a state special grand jury to investigate the lynching, but no court convened and no one was held accountable. Although no other lynchings were documented in the city of Dallas after 1910, other forms of racial discrimination and oppression persisted.