Random horrors like they're everyday things

As I was searching for a steamboat named the Beeswing, I came across this slave auction in the Times Picayune (New Orleans) of March 9, 1844. The word "acclimated" means that the person was beaten into submission.

The past was an awful place for the people who did not have power, and those who yearn for the "good old days" need to be better informed that the old days were not good.

Having a vocation like Red River Historian has its perils. There's the occasional snake encounter while exploring old cemeteries and ghost towns; a shaky bridge when trying to cross a creek; and the feeling of creeping despair when driving into towns along old roads that have been replaced by interstate highways.

Chief among these dangers, though, at first might appear fairly innocuous: searching long-ago newspapers for historical snippets. Invariably, I will come across disturbing articles, written like mere missives, that explain the past's abilities to inflict pain and horror on marginalized people, and even delight in it.

These finds are almost always unintentional. Concerted attempts to actually find certain instances of known incidences -- like the lynching of Henry Smith or the torture of Jesse Washington or the wholesale destruction by white supremacists of African American communities -- are often missing from regional newspapers altogether. It's only in the margins on the 3rd, 4th, or 5th pages in historic newspapers where racism and misogyny come to light, and the reporting acts like these random horrors are everyday things.

So for the past few months, I collected these "finds when trying to find something else" to show how often and how mundane reports on lynching, rape, terror, murder, intimidation, and domestic violence occurred in the back pages of newspapers; and how false nostalgia that vaguely wishes for "the better past" can be a short-sighted and harmful idea.

I'll let the images I found (and will continue to find) explain.

This "editorial" by the McKinney Advocate, reprinted in the Denison Daily Herald in 1878, advocates killing a child. I was searching for Denison the McKinney cotton gin when I found this little report.

Searching for ferries at the Sulphur River also gave me this result: a lynching in Avery, Red River County, Texas that was reported by the Austin American Statesman on July 30, 1905.

A dispute between two labor groups near Lewisville, Lafayette County, Arkansas -- "section negroes" and "millhands" -- was dismissively described as a "Negroes in Battle" in this short report in The Marshall Messenger, March 29, 1895.

The promotional book "A World of Plenty," published by the MKT Railroad in 1903 to entice settlement into North Texas, explained why white people should hire Mexican labor. I was looking for peanut farming when I came across this atrocity. It makes me wonder if anyone wishing for "the good old days" might be coding for this kind of viewpoint.

While trying to find information about schools for an exhibit I was designing about Lewisville, Denton County, Texas, I found this "throw away" about a Christmas program at "the negro church" (Macedonia Baptist) being disrupted by a "mob of drunken white men" in 1885. One thing I noticed throughout these incidental finds is that blacks and women were always summarily described by their group, while actions by white men were excused or explained with more descriptive language... for example, these white men were not only drunk, but "principally from the country."

Again, while seeking articles related to Lewisville, Denton County, Texas, I found plenty about Lewisville, Lafayette County, Arkansas... none of them good, by the way. This Dallas Morning News blurb from March 1903 describes a mob of 25 (!!!) men riding into town and lynching a black man whose "body is supposed to be in some of the nearby cane brakes." This disproportionate revenge act was justified, in a way, because Frank Robertson "confessed to firing a store" and that there have been "many cases of arson in North Louisiana."

The Dallas Morning News of May 16, 1886 explains that a farmer in Denton County, committed an "outrage" (euphemism for rape; like the word "ravish") on a neighbor's daughter... and his own 14 year old girl. This is why I hate using the words "outrage" or "ravishing" in modern language, and have tried to avoid them (not always successfully) as I know their historical connotations: violence against female humans.

Like the article just above this one, I was simply conducting searches for "Denton County farm" when I found this article from the Dallas Morning News, November 26 1886: a woman who was horribly killed by her horse that had a "burr placed under the saddle." This incident was described as "a ghastly joke," although it was fairly obvious from the report that her estranged husband was most likely to blame. How would I know, you ask? See below.

An article from December 1, 1886 in the Dallas Morning News that the husband of the woman killed by her runaway horse was arrested and charged "as being the person who placed the objects under her saddle which caused the horse to throw her off, resulting in her terrible death." Premeditated murder? Today, this kind of act would have caused a sensation. 140 years ago, it was just another domestic dispute.

The word "ravish" is once again used for "rape" in this article from the Dallas Morning News, October 1895, in which a black man was accused of raping two young girls who "were suffering such pain that they were compelled to tell their mothers." Although the accused man countered that "a white man on Baker's place was the guilty party," a mob (most likely headed by Baker) tried to take over the Denison jail to lynch him. Black men ultimately having to pay for crimes perpetrated by people in power was a common trend in actions that resulted in lynchings. After all, a dead man can't testify, and powerful men could intimidate at will.

I always wonder how much history was lost due to these one-off reports. For example, this Dallas Morning News blurb from August 31, 1905 reveals that a man sued the MKT Railway for losing his four-year-old child. What happened to the child? What happened to the lawsuit? Since I was searching a completely unrelated topic at the time, I have not gone down the rabbit hole... yet.

Again while searching for Lewisville (Denton County, Texas) farming and schooling history, I found this random bit of information in the El Paso Herald, April 13, 1899. Why so far away? From bits of information I'm piecing together, I've learned that the African Americans who lived in the eastern section of the town (between the railroad tracks and Kealy Street) were forcibly removed to the southern section of town, where there were no water or electrical services until the 1960s. I believe the incident reported here was one of the many "troubles" that occurred in Lewisville at the turn of the 20th century that created the town's very obvious racial divide (including the incident at the "negro church" as reported further up in this post).

I once was told by a reader that northwestern Louisiana schools did not have trouble with integration. But why, I asked, were so many schools shuttered in the 1970s; white children of means started going to private schools; and black/ poor white children were bussed into Natchitoches? Well, schools in NW Louisiana were still having integration problems into the 1980s. This article from The Times (Shreveport- Bossier City) explains the difficulties -- and the political bias -- in desegregation that ultimately shuttered high schools that served African American students.

When someone in today's world (I'm writing this in early 2025) waxes nostalgic about the past, wants to dismantle the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Immigration Act, celebrates the opening of an extra-legal detention camp on foreign soil, and insists on white supremacist myth of "Nordics" having founded the United States, know that they are informed by editorials like this one in the Marshall Messenger of March 1895, where an elected politician encourages the forced removal of an entire segment of Americans. This kind of thought was accepted and even lauded, and led to patterns of localized violence. Unfortunately and unconscionably, there are still low-IQ people around that think this way.

You know what stops these "random acts of horror" from being reported like they're "everyday things?" Education. Education! Like this blog post, hopefully. So always be extra vigilant when politicians and people in power (even those who pretend they don't have any) want to dismantle schools and ban books... they have the most to lose when we all raise our awareness.