Eighteen Negroes Killed by Whites — Slocum Massacre, Texas, 1910

Palestine, Texas, July 30, 1910. — A newspaper reports that at least eighteen Black people were killed in a racial massacre in the eastern section of Anderson County. Less conservative accounts place the total at between thirty and forty.

The Slocum Massacre began on July 29, 1910, when white mobs moved through the farms and roads of Slocum, Texas, hunting Black residents. Men working in their fields were shot. Families fled into the woods. Some escaped. Many did not.

The paper frames it as a “racial clash” and reports that “enmity between the races” had been brewing for weeks — as if the massacre were mutual. It was not. White men with guns moved through the county killing Black men. No comparable violence came from the other direction.

Seven white men were indicted. None were convicted.

The Slocum Massacre is one of the least known racial massacres in American history. This newspaper clipping — printed the day after it happened — is one of the primary documents that proves it occurred.

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