Sherman Riot of 1930

The aftermath is the other half of the record. Governor Dan Moody declared martial law at 10:30 p.m. on May 10, at fifty community leaders' request, and soldiers were told to shoot anyone setting fires or damaging Black-owned property. A military court of inquiry gave evidence to a grand jury, which on May 20 returned seventy indictments against fourteen men, none for lynching. The case moved to Dallas, and by October 1931 two men were convicted, for rioting and arson, each given two years. The Handbook says the Sherman Daily Democrat did not lament the killing of George Hughes.

What the plaque says

Sherman Riot of 1930 The Sherman Riot of 1930 was one of a number of major incidents of racial violence that occurred in the United States at the onset of the Great Depression. On May 3, 1930, George Hughes (b. 1889), a black farm laborer, was accused of assaulting a white woman during a wage dispute. For the May 9 trial, local officials suspected they would need help keeping the increasingly agitated crowd under control and appealed to Governor Dan Moody, who sent the Texas National Guard and Texas Rangers. The morning of the trial, Hughes was transported to the Grayson County Courthouse. An estimated five thousand person crowd called for Hughes to be given to them, and the courthouse was set alight by the mob. Hughes was hidden in a two-story documents vault where he subsequently suffocated as the courthouse burned down. The mob blocked fire department efforts to extinguish the flames. Hours later, the mob dynamited open the still-standing vault and threw Hughes' lifeless body out of a window where it was dragged to the city's black business district, hanged from a tree and burned. The mob set fire to black-owned businesses on Mulberry Street including the office of William J. Durham, a civil rights attorney. Gov. Moody declared martial law the next day, lasting until May 24. Sixty-six Grayson County citizens were taken into custody with 14 indicted for crimes. Three were considered for trial, and one was convicted for arson of the courthouse and incitement of a riot. No one was charged with lynching or murder. Hughes was buried in an unmarked grave at the Grayson County Poor Farm. (2021)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site — 8.9 mi
  The small frame house beside the Katy tracks in Denison where Dwight Eisenhower was born in 1890, bought by townspeople in 1946 and given to Texas in 1958.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.
• Eisenhower State Park — 12 mi
  A bluff-top park on Lake Texoma opened in 1958 on land leased from the Corps of Engineers, in the Red River country of Fort Johnson, Colbert's Ferry and the Butterfield stages.
• Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site — 23 mi
  The two-story farmhouse west of Bonham that the longtime Speaker of the House built in 1916 and kept as his home, left as he lived in it and open as a museum since 1975.

More markers nearby

• Eleventh Texas Cavalry — steps away
• Peter W. Grayson — steps away
• Grayson County — steps away
• Home County of Allison Mayfield, Conservationist — steps away