What does it cost to square your shoulders and say no — and mean it?
In every story we’ve told in this series on Black Resistance, that question has hovered in the background. What happens when Black people refuse to bow — to poverty, to humiliation, to violence? What happens when we look Jim Crow in the eye and do not blink?
This final story brings that question to its breaking point.
If you’ve followed this arc, you know where we’ve been. We began with Lula Sherman, a 14-year-old girl harmed in the most violent way — and a community that refused to stay silent. Then to Onancock, Virginia, where Black laborers were punished for demanding dignity. And Edgar Caldwell, a Black veteran sentenced to death for defending himself against white aggression.
This last chapter holds all of it: legal abandonment, mob violence, and the danger of self-respect under Jim Crow. We go now to Lamar County, Texas — to a place where public violence didn’t disrupt the system. It was the system.
Scott Arthur was likely born enslaved. Census records say he was born around 1851 in Alabama — which means he would have been 14 when Emancipation came. He couldn’t read or write, which was common for people who had been denied education by law.
Sometime after freedom, Scott made his way to Texas. Scott married Violet Arthur, who was born in Arkansas around 1861 — just four years before slavery ended. It’s likely she too had been born into bondage.
Together, Scott and Violet lived like most Black families of their time: working the land as sharecroppers, enduring the same backbreaking labor that slavery had once demanded — but now under the illusion of freedom. It was survival. Nothing more. But they did survive. And they built a family.
They had over ten children. Two sons, in particular, would carry their legacy forward — and face the full force of Jim Crow’s wrath. Herman Arthur, one of their older boys, was born around 1892. Irving Arthur followed in 1903.
Like their father, they worked the land. But Herman wasn’t just a farmer. He was also a soldier.
He served in World War I, fighting for a country that had barely fought for him. And when he came home, he wanted something more than survival. He wanted to live. Like a man. Like a citizen. In the nation whose freedom he had defended overseas.
But Herman was a Black veteran in the Jim Crow South — and as we explored in the story of Edgar Caldwell, this country had no tolerance for Black men who returned from war expecting dignity.
Black soldiers had seen the world. They had worn the uniform. And they were no longer willing to be silent under segregation. And that, for many in power, was the real threat.
The Arthur Brothers Said No
By the summer of 1920, the Arthur family had been in Lamar County for decades. Scott Arthur was 69. Violet was 59. Most of their children had grown and moved on. But six remained in the home: their sons Herman (28) and Irving (17), and four daughters — Eulah (16), Mary (15), Millie (12), and Cora (10).
The family worked for a white landowner named John Henry Hodges — a man who saw labor as profit and Black life as expendable. He owned 700 acres of land and treated his Black sharecroppers like property. The more they worked, the more he made.
But Herman and Irving were not going to be worked like slaves. Not after what their parents had endured. Not after what Herman had seen in war. So when Hodges demanded they work Saturdays, the brothers refused. It wasn’t just about the extra labor. Saturday was sacred. It was a day to rest, to tend to the home, to be with family — and to prepare for church on Sunday.
Hodges didn’t care. But Herman and Irving stood firm. They said no. And that’s when everything began to shift.
They Came Into Their Home — and Took Everything
When Herman and Irving refused to work Saturdays, the Hodges family turned to fear. They had a goal: keep the Arthurs working. And if demands didn’t work, they would use humiliation One evening, John Hodges and his son, William, stormed into the Arthur home. The family was preparing dinner. Violet and her daughters had food on the stove. Hodges didn’t care. He was there to make his demands clear — again. The Arthurs would work on Saturdays. No more questions.
As John barked orders, William pulled a weapon and aimed it at the family. Then, to drive the point home, John walked over to the stove and began throwing their food into the yard. But that wasn’t enough. He threw the stove out next. Then the furniture. Still not enough. As William held the family at gunpoint, John forced them to strip. Each one removed their clothes until they were left standing nearly naked in their own home.
Then John and William took the clothes with them. Along with the food. They called it payment for debt owed. But this wasn’t about money. It was about control. About power. About stripping them of dignity — not just clothing. Because under Jim Crow, Black labor always owed. And white power always collected.
After the humiliation — after being stripped, threatened, and robbed in their own home — the Arthur family made a decision: No more. They were done working the land for John Hodges. Done accepting abuse. Done living under the shadow of someone else’s power. They began making plans not just to move — but to leave Lamar County altogether. But somehow, the Hodges family got word. And that changed everything.
The Hodges were a former slave-owning family. And the Arthurs, almost certainly, were descended from those once enslaved. The relationship was not just economic — it was generational. During slavery, when Black people fled the fields, it was called escape. It was illegal. Running from a white man’s land was considered a crime — punishable by violence or death. But by 1920, that system was supposed to be gone. Black people were no longer chattel. They were citizens. Leaving wasn’t a crime. They didn’t have to run at night. They could walk away in the light.
At least, that’s what it should have meant for the Arthurs. But to the Hodges — and to Jim Crow — the rules hadn’t changed. In their eyes, the Arthurs were still less than. Still bound to the fields. Still expected to labor — without rest, without refusal, and certainly without leaving. And if the family walked away now, the profits would walk with them.
So in the minds of the Hodges, this wasn’t a family relocating. It was a runaway. And they intended to treat it as such.
They Tried to Leave. The Hodges Came to Stop Them.
On the morning of July 2, 1920, the Arthur family woke up with one goal: get out of Lamar County. They had borrowed a truck and were packing what little they owned. This was it — a quiet escape, a decision to reclaim their lives.
But as they loaded their things, John and Will Hodges showed up again. Just like before, Will raised his weapon. John began yelling, insisting the family wasn’t going anywhere. He claimed they owed him money and would stay to work it off. Then, as a final act of control, John stormed over to the truck and began throwing their furniture into the yard.
This time, though, Herman and Irving didn’t stand down. They had had enough. Herman had fought in war. He had defended freedom abroad, and now, he was going to defend his family at home. Together, the brothers made a decision — to resist.
We don’t know the exact sequence of events. We don’t know who moved first or what was said. But we do know what happened next: John and Will Hodges opened fire, and Herman and Irving fired back — in self-defense. When it was over, both John and Will Hodges were dead.
A Mob Took the Law — and Their Lives
News of the Hodges’ deaths spread quickly. Within hours, white mobs were scouring Lamar County and the surrounding areas, determined to find Herman and Irving Arthur. Four days later, the brothers were arrested in Valliant, Oklahoma, and brought back to Paris, Texas — where a crowd of hundreds was already waiting for them.
The mob made its intentions clear. The Chicago Defender reprinted a sign circulated locally: “Niggers caught; black brutes who killed Hodges will be burned in the fair grounds. Be on hand.”
Judge Ben Denton pleaded with the crowd to remain calm, promising a swift trial and convening a special court session. But the mob wasn’t interested in trials. They overpowered the deputies, broke into the jail with a sledgehammer, and dragged the brothers from their cell.
They took them to the county fairgrounds, where wood had already been piled beneath a flagpole and fuel had been prepared. A crowd of over 3,000 white residents had gathered — some running to make sure they wouldn’t miss it.
In the face of death, the brothers stood firm. When asked if he was sorry for what he’d done, Herman reportedly said: “No, I am not sorry; I would do the same thing again. I would kill any man who imposed upon my mother and sisters.”
Afterward, their charred bodies were tied to the back of a truck and paraded through the streets in a caravan of seventeen vehicles. The mob drove the remains through Black neighborhoods, shouting: “Here are the barbecued Niggers! All you Niggers come out and see them and take warning!” But the horror did not end there.
The Arthur sisters — Cora, Millie, and Eulah — were taken into what officials called “protective custody.” Instead, they were held overnight in a jail and assaulted by twenty white men, beaten and raped in the aftermath of their brothers’ deaths.
They were then handed a bucket of molasses, some bacon, and a sack of flour. And told to leave. They wandered for two days before finally being reunited with the rest of their family.
The System Responded — But Not for Justice
In the weeks that followed, local and national pressure forced officials to respond. A special grand jury was convened in mid-July to investigate the lynchings of Herman and Irving Arthur and to identify those responsible. Judge Ben Denton, the same judge who had pleaded with the mob to wait for a trial, gave the jury detailed instructions on the laws that had been violated.
The grand jury was made up of prominent white business and civic leaders — men with what one historian called a “huge vested purpose to save the image of Paris, Texas.” Letters poured in to the mayor from local citizens who saw the investigation not as justice for the Arthurs, but as a chance to repair the city’s reputation. They applauded it as a repudiation of “mob law.”
Despite reluctance from many witnesses — and outright silence from others — the grand jury moved forward. On July 26, 1920, they indicted five white farmers as ringleaders of the lynching: Wilber C. Clough, Ernest Coggins, Tom Dobbs, Charley Luckey, and T.D. Holderness. Two fled town when it became clear that public opinion was shifting — not out of grief for what happened, but because the violence had become an embarrassment.
Judge Denton ordered the trials to be moved to Grayson County, citing the “prejudice and excitement” in Paris as too great to allow a fair proceeding. But the outcome was never recorded. Court records were destroyed in a fire, and no convictions were ever documented. In fact, census records show all five men still living freely in Lamar County in the years that followed.
The jury may have been willing to name the crime. But the system never delivered justice for it.
The Lie of Freedom
After watching his sons dragged away… after watching his daughters arrested and brutalized… with no idea whether he would ever see them again — Scott Arthur had a choice to make.
Did he stay and wait for the mob to come for the rest of his family? Did he trust that the violence was finished? He couldn’t risk it. Not at 69 years old. Not with Violet beside him, and the youngest daughters still unaccounted for. So Scott fled — not to safety, but to the only place left: the woods.
The Arthurs escaped into the swamps. They lived in the open for weeks, without shelter, without food, surviving off what they could steal from nearby farms and watermelon patches. At some point — after enduring the worst horrors inside that jail — Cora, Millie, and Eulah found their way back, walking aimlessly until they stumbled across their family, hiding in the brush. Somehow, Scott convinced a local white farmer to let them sleep in his barn.
Imagine that. A Black man who had once been enslaved — now sleeping in a barn, with his family, like livestock. Treated like cattle as a boy. Sleeping with the cattle as a free man.
He had survived slavery. But this? This was worse. Because in slavery, burning a Black person was a financial loss. It meant destroying property. But in 1920? Burning Herman and Irving wasn’t just allowed. It was sport. It was public theater.
Scott Arthur couldn’t protect himself when he was a slave. And now — decades after emancipation — he still couldn’t protect the people he loved most. Everything had been taken from him. His sons. His daughters’ dignity. His home. His right to exist without fear. He was not free. Not really. He was as bound in 1920 as he had been before 1865. Because freedom — without protection, without justice, without dignity — is not freedom at all.
Flight, Arrival, and the First Safe Breath
In early September 1920, with help from the Texas NAACP, the Arthur family fled to Chicago. They had nothing — no money, no food, no home. Just grief, fear, and survival.
Word of their arrival spread. One man, Dr. W.W. Lucas, secretary of the Co-Operative Society of America, went looking for them. At the train station, he found Scott and Violet Arthur, along with five of their children, sitting quietly in the waiting room. They were exhausted, unsure of what to do next.
Dr. Lucas approached gently. “How are you doing?” he asked. Scott’s reply was quiet: “I don’t know.”
At first, Scott was hesitant. He didn’t know if he could trust this man. But Lucas explained that he had heard of their escape through NAACP channels and was there to help. With no other options, Scott agreed to go with him.
The family had one question: Are we safe? Lucas reassured them. There would be no mobs in Chicago. No burnings. No rope. No fire.
That day, the Arthurs finally breathed — and ate their first warm, safe meal in weeks.
What the Arthur Story Leaves Us With
The Arthur family fought to live. Not to make a point. Not to start a movement. Just to live. And for that — for choosing dignity over submission — two sons were lynched, three daughters were violated, and a family was shattered.
This wasn’t just the failure of one town or one mob. It was the failure of law, of citizenship, of a country that promised freedom and delivered fear. Even after escape, the Arthurs carried what had been done to them. They carried it in silence. In scar tissue. In memory.
And yet — they did survive. Because resistance is not always loud. Sometimes it looks like saying no. Sometimes it looks like getting on a train. Sometimes it looks like breathing again.
If you haven’t seen the other stories in this series — Lula Sherman, The Onancock Riot, Edgar Caldwell — I hope you will. Each one adds another layer to what this family was up against. Because Black resistance is not one moment. It’s a pattern. One that deserves to be seen in full.
Watch the full series below.
