Unsolved case · 1922
The short answer
Hullen Owens, an African-American man, was lynched by a white mob in Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas, on May 19, 1922, after being accused of shooting police officers while fleeing arrest.
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Suggest coverage for Lynching of Hullen OwensHullen Owens was an African-American man who was lynched in Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas, by a white mob on May 19, 1922. According to a 1926 report by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, this lynching was the 26th of 61 recorded lynchings in the United States during 1922.
Texarkana straddles the Texas–Arkansas state line, with the western portion in Bowie County, Texas, and the eastern portion in Miller County, Arkansas. The city grew around the junction of two major railways connecting the region north to St. Louis, Missouri.
According to the account, Owens was arrested in Texas on May 18, 1922, on suspicion of car theft. While being taken by police to recover stolen items, he produced a gun he had hidden and attempted to escape. During the chase that followed, Owens was shot in the mouth but reportedly fired multiple times at Chief of Police L. J. Lummus and fatally wounded officer R. C. Choate. The chase ended when Owens allegedly tried to drown himself in a pool of water. Sheriff John Strange pulled him from the water and transported him across the state line to the Miller County jail in Arkansas.
A mob of thousands gathered, seeking to lynch Owens for shooting at the chief of police and killing officer Choate. Judge H. M. Barney attempted to calm the crowd but was unsuccessful. The mob stormed the Miller County jail, using a battering ram to break down the jail door, and dragged Owens outside and back across the state line to the Texas side of the city. There he was shot multiple times, and his body was dragged behind a car through the streets. The mob transported his body to the Union Depot near the intersection of First and State streets, doused it in kerosene, and set it on fire. Some sources describe an alternate account in which Owens was dragged alive for eight city blocks before dying of strangulation from a rope around his neck.
The case is referenced in connection with the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 26, 2018. The memorial documents lynchings across the United States, including through a Memorial Corridor containing 805 steel rectangles representing counties where lynchings occurred, each inscribed with victims' names. Duplicate rectangles have been made available for communities such as Texarkana, the site of this lynching, to install as local memorials.
Hullen Owens was arrested in Texarkana, Texas, on suspicion of car theft; during transport he produced a hidden gun and attempted to escape, reportedly shooting at Chief of Police L. J. Lummus and fatally wounding officer R. C. Choate. He was later taken from a pool of water by Sheriff John Strange and jailed across the state line in Miller County, Arkansas.
A mob of thousands stormed the Miller County, Arkansas jail, seized Owens, dragged him back into Texas, shot him multiple times, dragged his body behind a car, and burned it at the Union Depot in Texarkana.
The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary published a report listing the lynching of Hullen Owens as the 26th of 61 documented lynchings in the United States during 1922.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama, memorializing lynching victims including those documented in Bowie County, Texas.
Victims first. Every legal label is set from public records and court outcomes, not from the prose.
African-American man lynched by a white mob in Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas, on May 19, 1922, after being accused of shooting police officers while fleeing arrest.[5]
Police officer fatally wounded by Hullen Owens during the chase following his arrest; his death was cited by the mob as justification for the lynching.[5]
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Credit: JeremeKCC BY-SA 3.0SourceUNSOLVEDListenTexarkana, Texas/Arkansas border region · 1940s
In early 1946, an unidentified attacker dubbed the "Phantom Killer" struck eight people over ten weeks near Texarkana, Texas/Arkansas, killing five; the case remains legally unsolved though officials later focused on career criminal Youell Swinney, who was never charged with murder.
SOLVEDListenNew Boston, Texas, United States · 2020s
On October 9, 2020, Taylor Parker murdered 21-year-old Reagan Simmons-Hancock, who was 36 weeks pregnant, at her home in New Boston, Texas, then cut the unborn child from her body; the infant also died. Parker, who had spent months falsely claiming to be pregnant herself, was convicted of capital murder and kidnapping and sentenced to death in November 2022.
Credit: File:1903 Poor's Missouri Pacific Railway.jpgPublic domainSourceUNSOLVEDListenGuernsey, Hempstead County, Arkansas · 1920s
John West, a 50-year-old African-American man, was forced off a train and lynched by a group of white men near Guernsey, Hempstead County, Arkansas, on July 28, 1922, following a workplace dispute with a white co-worker.
Credit: W.H. Whitehead per imagePublic domainSourceUNSOLVEDListenRosewood, Levy County, Florida, United States · 1923
In early January 1923, white mobs in rural Levy County, Florida, killed at least six Black residents and destroyed the predominantly Black community of Rosewood after a white woman in nearby Sumner alleged she had been assaulted by a Black man; two white men were also killed in the resulting violence, and no one was ever prosecuted.
Image recordPublic domainSourceUNSOLVEDListen1st Street and 2nd Avenue East, Duluth, Minnesota · 1920
On June 15, 1920, a white mob of thousands broke into the Duluth, Minnesota city jail and lynched three Black circus workers—Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie—who had been arrested on an unsubstantiated rape accusation. No one was ever convicted of the murders.
Credit: PCN02WPSCC BY-SA 4.0SourceUNSOLVEDListenClinton, South Carolina, United States · 1924
Norris Dendy, an African-American father of five, was taken from his jail cell in Clinton, South Carolina, by a mob of white men on the night of July 4–5, 1933, and beaten and hanged after a physical altercation with a white truck driver. Five men were later indicted but a grand jury declined to charge anyone.
