Lynching of Hullen Owens

Hullen 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.