1910 Lynching of Allen Brooks
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
After Reconstruction, white southerners began adopting laws and codes, known as Jim Crow laws or black codes, that affected everyday life for African Americans. One instrument of enforcement was the threat of violence as well as actual violence, including lynching. Although more often associated with rural areas, lynchings did occur in towns and cities. In Dallas County between 1853 and 1920, five white males and six African American males were lynched by mobs. The lynching of Allen Brooks on March 3, 1910, was an example of strategic Jim Crow violence. As recorded in major newspapers, court records and personal testimonies, Allen Brooks was a 60-year-old African American domestic laborer accused of assaulting a girl in the home of his long-time employer. Local law enforcement attempted to keep the time and location of the pretrial hearings secret, but a local newspaper published the information and a mob subsequently convened at the county courthouse. Measures were taken to secure the building, but the crowd which had gathered shoved past and into the building and pulled Brooks to the second-floor window. The mob placed a rope around his neck and threw him from the window. They then dragged Brooks a half a mile down Main Street where he was finally hung from a telephone pole near the prominent Elks Arch at Main and Akard Streets. Following this horrific event, witnessed by an estimated 5,000 people, many citizens called for a state special grand jury to investigate the lynching, but no court convened and no one was held accountable. Although no other lynchings were documented in the city of Dallas after 1910, other forms of racial discrimination and oppression persisted. (2020)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
As Jim Crow tightened its grip after Reconstruction, the threat and reality of lynching enforced the racial order even in cities. On March 3, 1910, a mob stormed the Dallas County courthouse, seized 60-year-old Allen Brooks from a pretrial hearing, threw him from a second-floor window, and dragged him down Main Street to hang him near the Elks Arch before a crowd estimated at 5,000. Though many called for a grand jury, no one was ever held accountable.
Why it matters
The public killing of Allen Brooks lays bare how racial terror operated openly in the urban South, and stands as a reckoning that communities today confront in the work of remembrance and justice.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Allen Brooks
Related events
- · Lynching of Allen Brooks
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fire and Lynchings of 1860
Dallas, TX
In the brutal summer of 1860, a fire on a 115-degree day destroyed much of downtown Dallas as the nation edged toward civil war over slavery. Amid panic and unfounded suspicion of abolitionists, a self-appointed vigilance committee bypassed any trial and condemned three enslaved men—Sam Smith, Patrick Jennings, and 'Old Cato'—who were hanged on July 24, 1860. Generations later, in 1991, the ground was consecrated as Martyrs Park to honor them and confront the inhumanity of slavery in the city.
Moorland YMCA Building
Dallas, TX
When Dallas's YMCA expanded in the late 1920s, African American citizens of North Dallas raised $75,000—overshooting their goal—and, with a matching gift from the Rosenwald Fund, opened the Moorland YMCA in 1930. Named for YMCA leader Dr. Jesse Edward Moorland, the Italian Renaissance Revival building became a rare public gathering place for the Black community: a gym, a youth and education center, lodging for travelers turned away from segregated hotels, and a meeting ground for the local civil rights movement. It closed in 1970, and the building later became home to the Dallas Black Dance Theatre.
Tenth Street Historic District Freedmans Town
Dallas, TX
The Tenth Street District grew from the enslaved people first brought to Oak Cliff in the 1840s into a thriving African American enclave after the Civil War. By 1900 hundreds of Black residents lived here, building a segregated commercial district, churches, and schools that nurtured talents the marker credits, including blues artist T-Bone Walker and Olympian Rafer Johnson. Highway construction in the 1950s and integration reshaped the neighborhood, yet its historic homes remain among the best-preserved of their kind in Dallas.
Munger Avenue Baptist Church
Dallas, TX
Galilee Baptist Church was organized in 1894 near the railroad tracks on Central Avenue, where members famously hung heavy rags in the windows to muffle the din of nearby taverns — earning it the nickname "Rag Doll Church." After relocating to Munger Avenue in 1911 and taking that name under Rev. Abraham Lincoln King, the congregation built its first permanent structure and grew steadily through the pastorates that followed. A new sanctuary was completed in 1940–41, and the church became a center for worship, education, and civic life in the community.