Against the brick background of the Old Red Courthouse in downtown Dallas, several white doves were released by a score of people on a grassy lawn Saturday.
As the birds flew to freedom, a group of people called out “Father, Son and Holy Spirit — and Allen Brooks.”
The group stood where Brooks, a Black man, was thrown headfirst from a second-story courthouse window, beaten and dragged half a mile to his lynching more than a century ago.
A few hundred people gathered about 11 a.m. Saturday at the corner of Akard and Main streets to commemorate Brooks as a blue-and-gold historical marker was unveiled at the site of his lynching. The marker stands as the city’s first permanent acknowledgement of Brooks’ murder, which thousands of white people gathered to witness.
Brooks was accused of the attempted sexual assault of a white child, and while he was awaiting a hearing a mob stormed the courthouse and attacked him.
A photo from March 3, 1910, of a Black body hanging from a telephone pole, surrounded by spectators, is the only image of the 59-year-old man. Burial records say Brooks’ body was interred in an unmarked grave in South Dallas.
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Saturday’s ceremony was somber, as people stood on the corner in reflection, watching as Brooks’ name, which had long been forgotten to history, was inscribed into the city’s landscape.
“These lynchings shaped entire communities and communicated a message of racial terror to the entire Black community, and we are confronting that history today, and we are also confronting the silence,” said Michaela Clarke of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization that opened the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., as a monument to the country’s lynching victims.
A local group, the Dallas County Justice Initiative, worked with the EJI for more than two years to secure the downtown marker. There are only two other such markers in Texas dedicated by EJI, one in Austin and the other in the East Texas town of Center.
“This marker represents a step toward honest reckoning with the history in Dallas,” Clarke said.
One face of the marker bears an inscription about Brooks’ lynching, while the other side, titled “Lynching in America,” memorializes three enslaved Black men who were falsely accused of arson and killed by a mob in the summer of 1860.
“For 40,805 days the city of Dallas has reached forth skyscrapers to the sky, pushed out the expanse of its city limits,” said the Rev. Michael Waters, who leads the Abundant Life A.M.E. Church in South Dallas. “All the while, Allen Brooks’ blood has continued to cry out from the ground to be seen, to be remembered, for semblance of justice to be served.
“Today, Mr. Brooks, we see you. Today, Mr. Brooks, we remember you. Today, Mr. Brooks, this space is forever marked to declare that your Black life mattered.”
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After the marker was unveiled, some in the crowd marched to the Old Red Courthouse.
A piece of African cloth that had been draped over the marker before its dedication was laid on the ground beneath the second-story window. A jar of soil collected from the lynching site was placed on the cloth as performers from the Pan-African Connection danced and sang in honor of Brooks.
Fifty-nine roses were laid next to the jar, one for each year of Brooks’ life. One hundred and eleven carnations had been left at the foot of the marker, one for each year since his death.
Joli Robinson, 39, of Dallas was among the crowd at the courthouse. She said the dedication was a long time coming.
“It’s not the end, but it is the beginning of healing,” said Robinson, CEO of the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance.
Public officials who were at the day’s events echoed that sentiment.
“We can’t stop ignoring the open wound. The best we’re going to get is a scar,” Dallas County Commissioner J.J. Koch said.
Mayor Eric Johnson was not in attendance, but said in a statement read by City Council member Paul Ridley that the marker is a reminder of the city’s commitment to “fight against poisonous hatred against our diverse communities.”
“Hate has no place in our city,” Johnson’s statement said.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, County Commissioner John Wiley Price and a handful of other state and city leaders also attended the dedication.
The Dallas County Justice Initiative has completed an application to secure a marker for another lynching victim, William Taylor, who was hanged by a mob in 1884. That marker ceremony is set for September.
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