Bragg Williams Lynching

Bragg Williams was lynched on the courthouse square on January 20, 1919. A mob took him from the jail and burned him at the stake hours after his lawyers gave notice of appeal from his conviction for the killings of Annie Wells and her son Curtis. Governor Hobby had sent Texas Rangers to guard the trial, but journalist E. R. Bills reports they were ordered away after the January 17 verdict. His lawyers argued he was intellectually disabled. His nieces, Crady Johnson and Tonya Carmel, read Bills's 2019 article and applied for this marker.

What the plaque says

Bragg Williams Lynching On January 20, 1919, a violent mob burned an African American man named Bragg Williams to death on a stake. The members of the mob who carried out this extrajudicial execution were never punished. Dec. 2, 1918, Annie Wells and her four-year-old son Curtis were beaten to death, their bodies moved into the front room, and the home set on fire. A local newspaper reported that Bragg Williams, who worked for the Wells family, had recently had altercations with Annie. City Marshall J.W. Martin arrested Williams later the same day. Because a lynch mob was already forming at the county jail, Martin transported Williams to the home of attorney W.C. Wear, and then to Dallas. On Jan. 13, Gov. William P. Hobby received a message from district judge Horton Porter requesting the Texas Rangers to protect Williams, as the local sheriff had indicated he would not harm citizens to prevent a lynching. Hobby sent the Texas Rangers to escort Williams from Dallas to Hillsboro and provide security detail for the duration of the trial. On Jan. 16, Williams was escorted back to Hillsboro and the trial began. The next day, Williams was convicted and sentenced. On the morning of Jan. 20, he was scheduled to hang, but his lawyers immediately filed an appeal. Just before noon, a mob assembled at the Hill County jail, battered the jail door down and seized Williams from his cell. They tied Williams to a concrete "safety first" pole at the corner of Elm and Covington. Oil and a match was applied to a pile of hay, wood and coal, and Williams died in minutes. Williams' body was left for hours as the community went about everyday business. Photographs were taken as souvenirs. On Jan. 21, both Hobby and the NAACP denounced the lynching and requested the perpetrators be punished. Hill County attempts to hold those who murdered Bragg Williams accountable failed; however, anti-lynching laws gained crucial support in the aftermath. (2022)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hill County Courthouse — steps away
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Cleburne State Park — 30 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.
• Bosque Museum — 31 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.

More markers nearby

• Site of Old Lexington Village — steps away
• Hill County — steps away
• City of Hillsboro — steps away
• James L. Harris — steps away