“Postcard Offers Look Into Deplorable Past”
by Bob Ray Sanders, Fort Worth Star Telegram, April 17, 2005
In recent weeks, as Peggy Womack approached her 78th birthday, which was Saturday, she started going through things to see what she could give away.
One day while rummaging through old keepsakes, she ran across a haunting postcard that had been sent to her grandfather by a friend in Sabine County. The card, she remembers, had been passed on to her when she was 10 or 11 years old. By that time, her grandfather had died, and her grandmother had moved out of their home and was living with relatives, she said. To this day, she doesn't know why her mother gave the card to her at that young age, and she has no idea why she kept it or why she never showed it to anyone.
Now, she wanted me to see the card to determine whether it should be passed on to someone else for historical purposes. I agreed to take it, and Womack and I met one night at a Fort Worth museum.
The fading card was postmarked in Brookeland in Sabine County on Aug. 19, 1908. A 1-cent stamp bore the image of Benjamin Franklin. Womack's grandparents, whose roots were in Jasper, a few miles south of Brookeland, were living in the West Texas town of Coleman at the time. The note on the card expressed regret that the friend had missed the grandfather when he had made a trip back to the old hometown.
“Say old boy, why didn't you tell me you was coming,” the friend wrote. “... sorry I didn't get a chance to see you.” Then the friendly note concluded: “Say, look at this picture on the other side and see how they do negros [sic] in this county.”
Womack's grandfather could not have missed seeing the picture already. It took up two-thirds of one side of the card. The caption reads: “Scene in Sabine County, Texas, June 15, 1908.”
The photo shows five black men hanging by their necks in the same tree, recalling the words Billie Holiday often sang: “Southern trees bear a strange fruit.”
“I was disturbed when I got it,” Womack said. “I guess what bothered me was, did it really happen?”
Yes, it really did happen, and I'll give you more details later.
“I couldn't see the U.S. Postal Service letting this go through the mail,” she said.
She didn't realize that lynchings were often publicized on postcards, and many witnesses to these brutal slayings used the cards to affirm that they had watched or even participated in the events. This card from Sabine County, which included a poem with the photo, was proudly published “by Harkrider Drug Co., Center, Tex.” Womack said that her family moved to Fort Worth when she was 7, and that her father couldn't stand secret organizations like the Ku Klux Klan.
“This particular card is something I've looked at frequently and could never understand why we did things like that,“ Womack said. She thinks her family kept this card ”not out of curiosity, but to remember how things were then.”
The card, she said, “is a reminder of what happened, what could happen and what we know in Jasper did happen” -- referring to the lynching of James Byrd, who was dragged to death in 1998. “That part of history is terrible -- what they let go on,” she said. “You wonder why people didn't do more.”
Many people in those days wore their participation in lynchings as a badge of honor, as old news accounts in Texas clearly show.
By the way, the poem on the card is called The Dogwood Tree, and it reads:
One day while rummaging through old keepsakes, she ran across a haunting postcard that had been sent to her grandfather by a friend in Sabine County. The card, she remembers, had been passed on to her when she was 10 or 11 years old. By that time, her grandfather had died, and her grandmother had moved out of their home and was living with relatives, she said. To this day, she doesn't know why her mother gave the card to her at that young age, and she has no idea why she kept it or why she never showed it to anyone.
Now, she wanted me to see the card to determine whether it should be passed on to someone else for historical purposes. I agreed to take it, and Womack and I met one night at a Fort Worth museum.
The fading card was postmarked in Brookeland in Sabine County on Aug. 19, 1908. A 1-cent stamp bore the image of Benjamin Franklin. Womack's grandparents, whose roots were in Jasper, a few miles south of Brookeland, were living in the West Texas town of Coleman at the time. The note on the card expressed regret that the friend had missed the grandfather when he had made a trip back to the old hometown.
“Say old boy, why didn't you tell me you was coming,” the friend wrote. “... sorry I didn't get a chance to see you.” Then the friendly note concluded: “Say, look at this picture on the other side and see how they do negros [sic] in this county.”
Womack's grandfather could not have missed seeing the picture already. It took up two-thirds of one side of the card. The caption reads: “Scene in Sabine County, Texas, June 15, 1908.”
The photo shows five black men hanging by their necks in the same tree, recalling the words Billie Holiday often sang: “Southern trees bear a strange fruit.”
“I was disturbed when I got it,” Womack said. “I guess what bothered me was, did it really happen?”
Yes, it really did happen, and I'll give you more details later.
“I couldn't see the U.S. Postal Service letting this go through the mail,” she said.
She didn't realize that lynchings were often publicized on postcards, and many witnesses to these brutal slayings used the cards to affirm that they had watched or even participated in the events. This card from Sabine County, which included a poem with the photo, was proudly published “by Harkrider Drug Co., Center, Tex.” Womack said that her family moved to Fort Worth when she was 7, and that her father couldn't stand secret organizations like the Ku Klux Klan.
“This particular card is something I've looked at frequently and could never understand why we did things like that,“ Womack said. She thinks her family kept this card ”not out of curiosity, but to remember how things were then.”
The card, she said, “is a reminder of what happened, what could happen and what we know in Jasper did happen” -- referring to the lynching of James Byrd, who was dragged to death in 1998. “That part of history is terrible -- what they let go on,” she said. “You wonder why people didn't do more.”
Many people in those days wore their participation in lynchings as a badge of honor, as old news accounts in Texas clearly show.
By the way, the poem on the card is called The Dogwood Tree, and it reads:
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This is only the branch of a Dogwood tree;
An emblem of WHITE SUPREMACY. A lesson once taught in the Pioneer's school, That this is a land of WHITE MAN'S RULE. The Red Man once in an early day, Was told by the Whites to mend his way. The negro, now, by eternal grace, Must learn to stay in the negro's place. In the Sunny South, the Land of the Free, Let the WHITE SUPREME forever be. Let this a warning to all negroes be, Or they'll suffer the fate of the DOGWOOD TREE. |
With the help of a super staff in the Star-Telegram library, I have identified the men hanging from the tree, and I've learned much more about the hateful atmosphere that existed in that part of Texas particularly.
In Wednesday's column, in a belated attempt to give these tortured men a little dignity, I'll tell you more about them.
In Wednesday's column, in a belated attempt to give these tortured men a little dignity, I'll tell you more about them.
Read follow-up article “One Episode in Our Tragic History”
