Brief Summary

Another negro burned at the stake in Texas. Common hanging or riddling with bullets has become obsolete in mob practice. Nothing now seems to satiate the mob’s thirst for vengeance short of the barbarities once practiced by the worst of savages. - The Daily Northwestern, March 14, 1901

From 1891 to 1922, Texans burned an average of one person of color at the stake a year for three decades. These burnings typically featured carnival atmospheres with thousands in attendance, including men, women and children who later described the spectacles as jovial “barbecues” or “roasts,” and commemorated the events with “lynching” postcards. It was a period when many white Texans—previously enraged by Reconstruction—reasserted white primacy and terrorized black Texans with impunity. Join author E. R. Bills in this recounting of an African American holocaust.