Academics at nearby Austin College are also hoping to explore the episode. Typical for race riots of its day, the Sherman violence began when a black man was accused of raping a white woman. Locked in a steel cell inside the courthouse, he burned to death when a mob roiling outside dynamited the building. Scaling the wall, rioters snatched his corpse, cut off his genitals and dragged him through the black business district before burning it down, according to contemporary accounts. As a result, the county where Sherman is located has only two black professionals today, Williams said.
Locals describe the riot as the time the courthouse burned down.
Leaders of Wilmington, N.C., have consulted with their Tulsa counterparts on ways to acknowledge an 1898 riot in which white supremacists overthrew the city's mixed-race government. And in New York, crowds are pressing into a Manhattan gallery to confront 60 vintage photographs of lynch victims and mobs, images collected by an antique dealer and published in a new book. It's not coincidence that these and other long-hidden crimes are being examined at the same time, historians say. For one thing, the riots themselves peaked in the first 25 years of the century, and recent years have been their landmark anniversaries. But the new interest also belongs to a worldwide trend of recognizing, and apologizing, for crimes against minorities, said Elazar Barkan, a historian at Claremont Graduate University.