Lynching of Allen Brooks

Allen Brooks was a Black man living in Dallas, Texas, believed to have been born into slavery around 1852 in Maryland. He was in his late 50s or 60s at the time of his death and worked as a handyman in Dallas. In late February 1910, Brooks was accused of raping Mary Beuvens, a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, after he had been fixing her family's furnace and the child went missing before the two were found together. George Keaton Jr., director of the nonprofit Remembering Black Dallas, has stated there was no proof that Brooks was guilty of the alleged rape. Brooks was jailed and formally indicted the following day, and due to fears for his safety he was moved among several jails outside Dallas, eventually being held in Sherman, Texas, by early March.

On March 3, 1910, Brooks was brought to the Dallas County Courthouse to face trial. A crowd had gathered before his arrival, and he was held in the courthouse's jury room as the building filled with people by 9:00 a.m. Proceedings were recessed after his newly assigned lawyer requested time to consult, and by 10:00 a.m. at least 1,000 people were inside the courthouse; a ladder was placed against the building. Around 11:15 a.m., the mob overwhelmed between 70 and 150 law enforcement officers, including Ben E. Cabell, none of whom used firearms in defense. The mob reached Brooks on the second floor, tied a rope around his neck, and pulled him out a window. He landed on his head on the street, was further beaten by the crowd, and may have died from these injuries. His body was dragged by car to Elks Arch at Main and Akard streets, where he was hanged from a telephone pole or iron spike. Onlookers took pieces of the pole and his clothing as souvenirs. Estimates of the mob's size ranged from 2,000 to 6,000 people.

In the aftermath, Dallas Sheriff A. L. Ledbetter said protecting Brooks had been impossible. State Senator Erasmus Gilbert Senter publicly criticized the mob, though this view was not widely shared locally, and many newspapers defended the mob's actions. An official investigation never identified any mob members, and no one was ever charged. Postcards depicting the lynching were printed and mailed by the thousands; a federal prosecutor declined to intervene, saying only "the law of common decency" had been violated. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram produced a special edition on the lynching within hours, selling thousands of copies. Elks Arch was removed within a year.

The lynching site remained unmarked for 111 years. In 2018, the Dallas City Council approved efforts toward a memorial, and the nonprofit Remembering Black Dallas, through its subsidiary the Dallas County Justice Initiative, secured funding from the Equal Justice Initiative to place a historical marker in 2021 — Dallas County's first such marker — along with scholarships for students studying the history of racist violence and the civil rights movement in Dallas. A second marker was placed at the Dallas County Courthouse in July 2023.