Dec 14, 1922

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On December 13, 1922, two Black men were accused of stealing two horses from another Black man named Sam Gertin in Pilot Point. The horses went missing on Monday night, December 11, and returned Wednesday morning, December 13, when Sheriff Goode and Deputy Nick Akin traveled to Pilot Point to investigate the possible crime. The saddles were found west of town and while the Sheriff’s Department was “convinced the negroes arrested got the horses” they found no witnesses or information which could lead to a county charge. With no regard for habeas corpus, the two men were held in custody in Pilot Point in an unguarded jail overnight.

On the morning of December 14, 1922, W. J. Miller found a note tacked to his office door which stated, “Both the negroes were given what they had coming. Let this be a warning to all negro loafers. Negroes, get a job or leave town.” Similarly, when the jailers arrived at the jail to give the two men breakfast, they found the men missing along with the lock to the jail door. The officers from Pilot Point informed the Denton Record-Chronicle that they had “absolutely no trace of the two negroes” but that they assume the letter to the Post-Signal referred to the same men. While it was not reported as such in local papers, African American publications called the event a lynching and stated that the Ku Klux Klan had perpetrated the attack. Every publication (save for the Denton Record-Chronicle) stated that the disappearance was very similar to one several months beforehand, presumably, the attack on October 20, 1921.

There was no investigation that followed the disappearance of two men on December 13, 1922. The general law enforcement response to each of the five men who went missing during the fourteen-month period was a resounding “meh” followed by a period of excuses for inaction. This blasé response by the men entrusted with keeping the peace was a powerful statement of ideological agreement with the Ku Klux Klan. In the criminal justice system of Denton County in the 1920s, Black criminals faced heavy sentences while white vigilantes went uninvestigated, unindicted, unaccused, and unknown.