Lynching of Irving and Herman Arthur


Herman Arthur, a World War I veteran, and his brother, Irving "Ervie" Arthur, African Americans, were lynched – burned alive at the Lamar County Fairgrounds in Paris, Texas, July 6, 1920, in a barbaric event that extended and amplified regional and national flashpoints for

Background

The Arthur brothers – stepsons of Scott Arthur, a sharecropper tenant of the Hodges' farm – were accused of fatally shooting, on July 2, 1920, the landlord, John Henry Hodges and his son, William M. Hodges, during a The prevailing story was that the Arthurs refused Hodges' demand to work beyond noon Saturdays and full-Sundays – to pay a
This account was chronicled in a letter from a Paris citizen, who requested anonymity, to James Weldon Johnson, Acting Secretary of the NAACP, who, in turn, forwarded it for publishing in newspapers that included the New York Age and Negro World. The letter explained that, against the usual custom in Paris, Hodges compelled the Arthurs to work all day Saturday, which they did for a period; and, on Sundays, they washed and ironed their clothes. But, at some point, the Arthurs refused to work past noon Saturdays and all-day Sunday, John Hodges and his son, Will, went to their home June 29, 1920, and took their dinner off the stove and threw it into the yard, then kicked their stove and furniture into the yard. During this time, Will Hodges held a gun on the Arthurs. He also compelled the boys to pull off their shoes and clothes and their sisters to pull off their dresses and give them to him, claiming that they were in debt to him. When the Arthurs attempted to move from the farm, permanently, three days later, the Hodges appeared again, this time fired a gun towards the family as they were packing a borrowed truck. One of the Arthur sons slipped into the house, retrieved a gun, and returned fire, killing the John and Will Hodges.
With the assistance of a tip from "Pitt" McGrew , Herman and Ervie Arthur were arrested the morning of July 6, 1920, in Valliant, Oklahoma, by McCurtain County Deputy Sheriff Weaver and the City Marshall of Valliant who brought them to Hugo, and at about noon, placed them in the Choctaw County Jail. At about 1:45, the captors left with their prisoners for the Lamar County jail in Paris. When they reached the Red River, about fifteen automobiles were waiting at the south bank; but no one attempted to take the prisoners. They reached their destination at 3. McGrew, who was African American, has been chronicled as notorious and disliked by the African American community.
Notice of Herman and Ervie Arthur's impending lynching was openly advertised, :en:wikt:to wit|to wit: "Niggers caught. Black brutes who killed Hodges will be burned in the fair grounds. Be on Shortly after their arrival, several hundred men approached the jail with a pinch bar and the leaders :en:wikt:batter#Etymology_1|battered the outer door. The jailer and two guards, all heavily armed, were inside the jail. After some ":en:wikt:parlay|parlaying," the jailer proposed that if twelve of the mob came forward as a committee, he would surrender the keys. At 7:30, July 6, 1920, twelve men took Herman and Ervie Arthur from the jail, dragged them out North Main, to the fairgrounds. At 8:00, the Arthur brothers were burned
According to the NAACP letter, members of the mob dragged the charred remains behind an automobile for hours through the streets of an African American neighborhood – up West Sherman Street and down 7th Street SW, between Sherman and Washington Street, past the Will Hodges' residence – while screaming, "Here are the barbecued Niggers, all you Niggers come out and see them and take One witness remembered it as a "regular parade of seventeen cars and a truck, all filled with armed men." According to the Dallas Morning News, July 8, 1920, Pine Bluff Street was "the general dividing line between the two
Meanwhile, the three sisters – ages 14, 17, and 20 – were being held at the Lamar County jail under the :en:wikt:pretense|pretense of "protection." While the Arthur brothers' remains were being dragged through Paris, the sisters, while in jail, were severely beaten taken to the basement, stripped of all their clothing and there raped by 20 white men. After the sexual assault they were given bacon, molasses, a sack of flour and told to leave the
None of the mob members were masked, but, according to a claim by some newspapers, none could be identified due to the
As was reported by the McCurtain Gazette, July 10, 1920, Ernest Christain Steen, office deputy for Choctow County Sheriff Ben Fitzgerald '', was present when the Arthurs were burned to death. He said that he was within of the pyre. He said that he would never again witness such a scene, that it was too terrible.
With respect to the assaults on the three sisters, in 2018, historian Hollie A. Teague, wrote, "It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which some of those 20 White men were not jailers, police officers, or sheriff deputies. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine a scenario in which those officials would not at least be aware of the prolonged assault taking place or who was participating in it. Yet, not only was the assault allowed to continue, no arrests were made afterward. This stands in stark contrast to the reaction that followed attacks on white women or children."
The next day, July 7, 1920, McCurtain County Sheriff John William DeWitt, of Valliant, told the news media that Lamar County Sheriff William Everett "Eb" Clarkson confided in him – while in Idabel the night before searching for the those who he thought were the actual killers – saying that he was sure that one if not both of the lynched Arthur brothers would have been found innocent. Clarkson insisted that one of the lynched victims was not the murderer and that the other could not be There was also a claim that the Arthur brothers likely acted in self-defense following two armed provocations, both by William Hodges, who allegedly, during the second incident, fired the first gunshots. Herman Arthur, a World War I was reportedly a skilled

Ensuing protests, disciplinary actions, and criminal proceedings

Wilbur Carter Clough

Charles William Luckey, granted bond

Thomas Lempe Dobbs, jailed on default of bail

Ernest Lee Coggins

Thomas Brooks Holderness

Scott and Violet Arthur family photo

The family photo was arranged by the Chicago Defender, who originally published it September 4, 1920, with the following caption:
Rev. Dr. Lucas '' posed with the family in the photo, but was cropped out. The photo has endured for years – having been published in government reports, history books, and online; but the Arthur family has rarely been identified.

Red Summer of 1919

This uprising was one of several incidents of civil unrest that spiked during the so-called American Red Summer of 1919. Terrorist attacks on black communities and white oppression in over three dozen cities and counties. In most cases, white mobs attacked African American neighborhoods. In some cases, black community groups resisted the attacks, especially in Chicago and Washington DC. Most deaths occurred in rural areas during events like the Elaine Race Riot in Arkansas, where an estimated 100 to 240 black people and 5 white people were killed. Also in 1919 were the Chicago Race Riot and Washington D.C. race riot which killed 38 and 39 people respectively, and with both having many more non-fatal injuries and extensive property damage reaching up into the millions of dollars.

100-year remembrance

ago – on July 7, 2020 – a group of about 20, which included decendants of Scott Arthur and Violet Arthur , parents of the Arthur brothers, and decendants of the Hodges – while donning face masks and maintaining social distance for protection against COVID-19 – met for the first time in a Remembrance Ceremony at the Red River Valley Veterans Memorial in Paris.
On the Arthur family side, attendees included Janese Walton-Roberts,, great–granddaughter of Scott and Violet Arthur – by way of Mary Lee Arthur and Mary Lue Sims . Put another way, Janese is a grandniece of Herman and Ervie Arthur. On the Hodges family side, attendees included Melinda Watters – great granddaughter of Vinckley Meadows Hodges, one of John H. Hodges' five children. The Remembrance was the idea of Watters. Unfortunately, the 2020 COVID crisis kept away most Paris residents due to fears of the disease and social distancing restrictions.
Walton-Roberts, who grew up in Chicago and now lives in Killeen, said, "If anything comes out of this, then it was worth it to go back." Walton-Roberts didn't know of any descendants of the Hodges family until she stumbled across a letter written by a Hodges-descendant who apologized for her family's role in the
Walton-Roberts noted, "The city never offered any type of apology." "I appreciate it because her letter was something that needed to happen."
According to the Chicago Tribune, as of 2020, there are three surviving grandchildren of Scott and Violet Arthur – by way of their mother, Mary Lee Arthur: Rufus Arthur Sims,, of Chicago's West Side; Dorothy Williams,, of Country Club Hills, a Chicago suburb, and Annie Violet Sims,, of Atlanta. None of the three were able to attend. But, Rufus, reflecting on the 100-year Remembrance, expressed to the Chicago Tribune'' that the story harbored over the years by his family has been particularly painful. Rufus, though, was pleased that it was being told – the remembrance was momentous. "It was a beautiful thing to bring everything out, especially with the way things are going at this particular time," said Rufus. "My uncles were burned up, burned alive in a field because they fought back. A lot of people lost their lives for fighting back. It's important for the younger generation to understand that."
Paris has been the site of 12 documented lynchings since 1892. The Arthur brothers were the last.

National Memorial

opened in Montgomery, Alabama, years ago in a setting of six acres. Featured, among other things, is a sculpture by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo of a mother, chain around her neck, infant in her arms, registering a horror she can't escape. On a hill overlooking the sculpture is the Memorial Corridor, featuring 805 hanging steel rectangles, each representing the counties in the United States where a documented lynching took place, and for each county, list of names of those lynched. For Lamar County, Irving and Herman Arthur are memorialized; and the exhibit also states that their lynching occurred at a fairground in Paris while a mob of 3,000 watched.

Herman Arthur's service in the U.S. Armed Forces

During World War I, Herman Arthur enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was inducted April 29, 1918, at Mount Pleasant, Texas, and trained for a little over a month with the Company, Battalion, Depot Brigade at Camp Travis – a World War I training camp in San Antonio that existed from 1917 to 1924, then was absorbed by Fort Sam Houston. On July 14, 1918, Herman Arthur was transferred to the Army Corps of Engineers and attached to Company A, Engineers Service Battalion – an all-African American unit that mobilized at Camp Travis. The was one of 53 Engineers Service Battalions composed entirely of African Americans. Each Battalion had about 1008 men.
On July 15, the Engineers Service Battalion – Field and Staff, Headquarters Detachment, Medical Detachment, and Companies A thru D; 878 total personnel – departed from the Army's Hoboken Port of Embarkation aboard the USS Great Northern to Brest, France, to serve on the Western Front of the European theatre as part of the American Expeditionary Forces. The Battalion's mission was: "Service of supply, general construction to September 17, 1918; then Army on road and miscellaneous duties."
Although the Armistice of November 11, 1918, took effect at 11, Company A, and the entire 537th, remained in Europe. On June 28, 1919, Company A, with Private Arthur, departed Brest, France, aboard the USS Mount Vernon and arrived in the Hoboken Port of Embarkation, July 5, 1919 – a year and one day before being burned alive with his younger brother. Private Arthur was honorably discharged July 14, 1919, at Camp Mills – following the July 1919 demobilization of the. Capt. Willis Dhu Aine Peaslee, an electrical engineer and graduate of Stanford, was the Commander of Company A.

Events

Furthur reading