(Length: 6min)
Welcome to our video series on the fight for a state historical marker for the 1930 Sherman Riot & Lynching of farmworker George Hughes. Churches around Grayson County are talking and teaching this event as a seminal moment in Texas history. It's a teaching moment.
Many remarkable good things came out of this horrific event; like the heroic acts of black attorney William J. Durham, Texas Ranger Frank Hamer who tired to save Mr. Hughes, attorney Thurgood Marshall and the Hall family who hid 20 black residents in their house during the rioting. Heroes all.
But it's hard to teach the good things that resulted when you don't know the event ever happened. Before we can teach, we must know first what happened, and our own County officials have worked very hard to bury knowledge of this riot for the past 91 years.
Judge Bill Magers and the four Commissioners want absolutely nothing to do with this historical marker, and have skirted their responsibilities to bring it up on the Court's Business Agenda. The Judge and Commissioners are the administrative overseers of the County Courthouse, and that's where the marker needs to go because that's where it all started. By keeping it off the court's business agenda, they won't ever have to acknowledge it or vote on it. No courage there.
In this video, local church leader Father Wesley Evans of Saint Stephen's Episcopal Church in Sherman explains the universal Christian concept of repentance and penance. Before we move on, we must first understand what wrongs were done. Give it sunlight. Only then can we fully appreciate the good deeds that came later as a result of the riot.
7 сен 2021
