Lynching of Hullen Owens
Hullen Owens was an African-American man who was lynched in Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas by a mob on May 19, 1922. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 26th of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States. [1]
| Part of Jim Crow Era | |
 Location of the burning of Hullen Owens Texarkana | |
| Date | May 19, 1922 |
|---|---|
| Location | Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas |
| Participants | A white mob made up of thousands of people. |
| Deaths | Hullen Owens |
Background
Texarkana is a city that is bisected down the middle by the state borders of Texas and Arkansas. The west of the city is in Bowie County, Texas and the east is in Miller County, Arkansas.
Hullen Owens had been arrested on May 18, 1922, for alleged car theft. He was taking the police to recover some stolen items when he was able to pull a gun he had earlier stashed and made an escape. During the ensuing chase, he was shot in the mouth but was able to get off a number of shots at the Chief of Police L. J. Lummus and some which fatally wounded R.C. Choate. The chase ended with Owens allegedly trying to drown himself in a pool. Sheriff John Strange was able to pull him from the water and bring him to the Miller County jail across state lines in Arkansas.[2] [3]
Lynching
By this time a mob of thousands of people gathered to lynch Owens. Judge H.M. Barney tried to calm the enraged mob to no avail. They stormed the Miller County jail and used a battering ram to break down the jail door. He was dragged outside and taken to the Texas side of the city. There he was shot multiple times and then his body was dragged through the streets before being taken to the Union Depot near the intersection of First and State Streets, where his body was doused in kerosene and lit on fire.[2] Some sources, however, say that he was dragged alive eight city blocks before he died of strangulation.[4]
National memorial
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 26, 2018. Featured among other things is the Memorial Corridor which displays 805 hanging steel rectangles, each representing the counties in the United States where a documented lynching took place and, for each county, the names of those lynched.[5] The memorial hopes that communities, like Texarkana where Hullen Owens was lynched, will take these slabs and install them in their own communities.
See also
Mr Norman was an African-American man who was lynched in Texarkana, Miller County, Arkansas by masked men on February 11, 1922.
References
- Notes
- Bibliography
- "Mobs Drags Negro By Robe Until He Dies". Durham Morning Herald. Durham, North Carolina. May 20, 1922. OCLC 9519695.
- "Negro Who Killed Cop Lynched At Texarkana". The Gastonia Gazette. Gastonia, North Carolina. May 20, 1922. OCLC 51932367.
- Robertson, Campbell (April 25, 2018). "A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It". The New York Times. Retrieved January 29, 2022.
- United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary (1926). "To Prevent and Punish the Crime of Lynching: Hearings Before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on S. 121, Sixty-Ninth Congress, First Session, on Feb. 16, 1926". United States Government Publishing Office. Retrieved January 23, 2022.
- "Jail stormed; Negro Lynched". The Union Daily Times. Union, South Carolina. May 20, 1922. pp. 1–4. ISSN 2471-0563. OCLC 13088988. Retrieved March 4, 2022.