Millican, Texas

A few days ago, I learned about the Millican "Riot," 1868 project, headed by Texas A&M Prof. Amy Earhart. The website describes the Milican "Riot":

Details remain unclear, but we believe that the Klan marched through Millican, a small central Texas town on the Houston and Central Texas Railroad, during a Sunday church service led by Pastor George Brooks, a Methodist preacher, former Union soldier, and Union League organizer. The worshiping freedmen were armed and fired on the rally, driving the Klan out of town. After the rally, George Brooks began a black militia of about 200 townspeople. The white community asked Nathan H. Randlett, local agent of the Freeman’s Bureau and former union infantry Captain, to stop the militia action, but Randlett refused.

Newspaper accounts and maps help readers navigate the details of the events. A number of years ago I wrote a blog post about Perry Downs, Frederick Douglass's brother. Downs ended up in Millican after the Civil War. He contacted Douglass in 1867 and Douglass brought the Downs family up to Rochester that year, so they escaped the events of the "riot." My whole life I lived so close (relatively speaking) and knew absolutely nothing about this.

Prof. Earhart is now engaged in a community effort to have a marker dedicated to those events. May they be successful in placing the memory of this event in the landscape.