Fort Worth Weekly // February 15-21, 2023

Newly discovered eyewitness testimony confirms many aspects of the 1910 Slocum Massacre, and while we’ve come a long way since then, we are now lurching backward.

BY E.R. BILLS

EATS & DRINKS

Local chef slings some tasty burgers out on Camp Bowie West.

BY LAURIE JAMES

STUFF

What ticky-tacky holding call?

LVII was stupendous.

BY PATRICK HIGGINS

SCREEN

In trying to be serious, Quantumania loses the fun.

BY KRISTIAN LIN

MUSIC

The Stockyards will be the site of a country music festival and conference.

BY EDWARD BROWN

Kristian Lin

Hold That Thought

By Patrick Higgins

By Laurie James

CONTRIBUTORS

Christina Berger, E.R. Bills, Jason Brimmer, Buck D. Elliott, Juan R. Govea, Patrick Higgins, Laurie James, Kristian Lin, Vishal Malhotra, Cody Neathery, Wyatt Newquist, Madison Simmons, Teri Webster, Ken WheatcroftPardue, Cole Williams

EDITORIAL BOARD

Anthony Mariani, Edward Brown, Emmy Smith

By Edward Brown

Cover art by Chais Adrian Teal Laurie

BY E.R. BILLS

It’s Black History Month, and we just watched a Super Bowl. There were Black players and white players but mostly Black. And it was OK.

I mean, at least people who look like me — white — didn’t go out and kill a bunch of Black people for getting excited about it. It wasn’t such a big deal — but it used to be.

Especially here in Texas.

Ten years ago, I wrote a story about an act of genocide in East Texas. It was titled “Town’s 1910 Racial Strife a Nearly Forgotten Piece of Texas Past,” and it appeared in the Feb. 22, 2013 edition of the Austin American-Statesman. In the days and weeks that followed, I was contacted by Christen Thompson of The History Press, and she offered me a book deal.

I’d never written a book. I’d never even thought about writing a book, and I was reticent, to say the least.

First, I didn’t know if I was capable of writing a book. Second, no one had ever written a book on the subject, and I wasn’t sure there was enough information or research available to even complete a booklength manuscript on the topic. Third, the subject involved a massacre of innocent Blacks — and I am a white man. I thought that surely some Black graduate student or academic was pursuing it.

I researched the subject on the internet. I perused relevant academic journals online. I couldn’t find anything. I told Thompson, who is also white, that I wasn’t sure I was the right person to write the book. She pointed out that I’d already written about the pogrom for a major newspaper and it was honest and well-received. She wasn’t wrong.

The “1910 Racial Strife” piece attracted the attention of some of the descendants of the Rosewood Massacre in Florida. The Rosewood Massacre of 1923 had already re-

ceived film treatment, but they approached me about writing a book about it. I politely told them that I didn’t feel comfortable with writing about something that happened so far away, in another state, and thanked them for their interest. Then, I was contacted by a descendant of someone involved in the carnage I’d written about in the Statesman but not a descendant of a Black victim — an ashamed descendant of one of the white perpetrators.

The book that I wound up writing about this atrocity was The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas

By the early 20th century in the Slocum area of southeastern Anderson County, several Black citizens were considerably propertied, a few owning stores, businesses, and more. The rocky Reconstruction period after the Civil War was over, and some African Americans, previously born into slavery, had established footholds in the local economy. The Holley and Wilson families, for example, apparently owned one of the community’s only general stores and hundreds of acres of rich farmland.

This alone, in parts of the South, would have been grounds for white violence, but in the Slocum area, which included the small communities of Percilla (Houston County), Alderbranch, Denson Springs, and the “negro colonies” of St. James and Sandy Beulah, there were other issues. In early May 1910, a white regional road construction foreman named Enoch Williams put Abe Wilson, a Black man (the Wilson partner of the local general store and related to the Holleys by marriage), in charge of rounding up help for local road improvements, and a white man named Jim Spurger was infuriated. On May 20 or 23, Spurger showed up for road repairs with a gun and refused to help. He contributed one dollar for the day’s work and said he would join the effort “when we get a white man for an overseer.”

At a Juneteenth picnic on June 19, 1910, a white man named Reddin Alford troubled Marsh Holley over a bank note, and frustrations lingered. The following day, a Black man named Leonard Johnson was seized from the sheriff of the next county over (Cherokee County) by a mob of 150 white men and burned at the stake — no trial, no jury — for the alleged rape of a 17-year-old white girl named Maudie Redden. And several Cherokee County Blacks who believed Johnson was innocent “were beaten,” “otherwise harshly treated,” and, according to some accounts, murdered by the mob.

Then, when Black Galveston native Jack Johnson pummeled “Great White Hope” Jim Jeffries to remain the world heavyweight boxing champion in early July 1910, many whites construed the pride that Johnson’s victory inspired in African Americans as “uppity” behavior and general disrespect.

Jim Spurger began openly fomenting white discontent. Wild rumors began to circulate, suggesting that local Blacks were planning an uprising, and racist malcontents manipulated the local white population.

On Wednesday, July 27, 1910, Abe Wilson’s house was burned to the ground, and by Friday, July 29, 1910, white hysteria had transmogrified into a cold-blooded, murderous white rampage.

Goaded by Spurger and others, hundreds of white citizens from Anderson and the surrounding counties converged on the Slocum area armed with pistols, shotguns, and rifles. That morning, near Sadlers

Creek, they fired on three young African Americans headed to feed cattle, killing 18-year-old Cleveland Larkin and wounding 15-year-old Charlie Wilson. The third, 18-year-old Lusk Holley, escaped, only to be shot at again later in the day while he, his 20-year-old brother Alex Holley, and their friend William Foreman, were fleeing to Palestine. Alex was killed, and Lusk was wounded. Foreman ran for his life. Lusk pretended to be dead so a group of 20 white men wouldn’t finish him off.

For the next two days, white mobs reportedly marched through the area gunning down an unknown number of Black Texans. A 30-year-old African American named John Hays was found dead in a roadway and 20-year-old Sam Baker was shot to death in Dick Wilson’s house. Dick Wilson (Charlie Wilson’s father), his son Geffy Wilson, and a 70-year-old named Ben Dancy were killed while sitting with the body the following day.

In addition to the Anderson County murders, which occurred near the county line, Will Burley was killed just south of the line in Houston County. And he wasn’t the only one. According to contemporary newspaper accounts, white mobs traveled from house to house in Anderson and Houston counties, shooting African Americans who answered their hails and slaughtering more while they tended their fields.

Almost every early newspaper report on the transpiring bloodshed in and around Slocum portrayed the African Americans as the aggressors, indicating that the local

continued on page 4

Art by Chais Adrian Teal

Newly discovered eyewitness testimony confirms many aspects of the 1910 Slocum Massacre, and while we’ve come a long way since then, we are now lurching backward.

white community was simply defending itself. These accounts were gross mischaracterizations. When Anderson County District Judge Benjamin H. Gardner closed saloons in Palestine and ordered local gun and ammunition stores to stop selling their wares on July 30, it was not to stop a Black uprising. It was to defuse what the Galveston Daily News called a one-sided “reign of terror” characterized by “a fierce manhunt in the woods” and resulting in bullet-riddled Black bodies everywhere.

When reporters gathered on July 31, up to two dozen murders had been reported and dozens more were suspected, but local authorities had collected only eight bodies. Once the carnage had begun, hundreds of African Americans had fled to the surrounding piney woods and local marshes, and by the time the Texas Rangers and state militia arrived, there was no way to estimate the number of African American dead.

On Aug. 1, a few Texas Rangers and some locals gathered up several African-American bodies and buried them (wrapped in blankets and placed in a single large box) in a large pit four miles south of Slocum. Some reports suggest the unmarked mass grave was full of dozens of corpses, because law enforcement just kept coming back out of the woods with more bodies. Farther north, Marsh Holley was found on a road just south of Palestine. He begged the authori-

ties for help, requesting that he be taken to the county jail for his own protection.

After the first several murders, most members of the African-American community began fleeing, but this didn’t stop the white

mobs. Most of the victims were shot in the back. Two bodies found near the former town of Percilla still had travel bundles of food and clothing at their sides.

Anderson County Sheriff William H. Black said it would be “difficult to find out just how many [Blacks] were killed” because they were “scattered all over the woods.”

He also admitted that buzzards would find many of the victims first, if at all.

With the arrival of the press — and after early attempts at spinning the news reports to portray the African-American victims as armed insurrectionists had failed — the guilty parties engaged in damage control. Some of the transgressors returned to the murder scenes to remove the evidence of their crimes. Some threatened potential witnesses and fellow perpetrators if they “crawfished,” but, regarding the official narrative, Sheriff Black was unequivocal.

“Men were going about killing Negroes as fast as they could find them,” he told The New York Times, “and, so far as I was able to ascertain, without any real cause. … These Negroes have done no wrong that I can discover. I don’t know how many [whites] were in the mob, but there may have been 200 or 300. Some of them cut telephone wires. They hunted the Negroes down like sheep.”

According to the local law enforcement leaders on hand at the time, eight casualties was a conservative number. Sheriff Black and others insisted there were at least a dozen more, and some reports suggest there may have been dozens if not hundreds more. Some witnesses counted 22 casualties. Elkhart native F.M. Power said there were 30 “missing negroes.” Slocum-area resident Luther Hardeman claimed to have knowledge of 18 African-American casualties, and that’s the original number reported by the Galveston Daily News and The New York Times (on July 31), but the body count seemed to shrink as the pogrom’s publicity grew.

continued on page 5

After Jack Johnson “pulverized” “Great White Hope” Jim Jeffries in July 1910, Slocum whites accused Blacks of acting “uppity” — before eventually murdering them en masse.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

When a Galveston Daily News correspondent visited Lusk Holley and Charlie Wilson on July 31, Wilson said he had recognized two of the assailants during the first shooting on July 29. Holley said that after he had been wounded in the second shooting later in the day, a different group of white men had come upon him while he pretended to be dead. He said he recognized the voice of a prominent local farmer named Jeff Wise, who deemed his apparent and his brother’s actual death “a shame” as he passed by.

The Black corpses scattered all over the area were being disposed of and the perpetrators of the bloodlust were making themselves scarce, so Judge Gardner made a tough decision. Instead of waiting for the proverbial dust to settle, he decided to arrest the suspects he could and charge them with the murders they could immediately prosecute — before all the evidence and any more of the suspects disappeared.

At the initial grand jury hearing, a large percentage of the remaining Slocum residents were subpoenaed. Some residents refused to testify and were arrested. Judge Gardner told the all-male, all-white jury that the massacre was “a disgrace, not only to the county but to the state” and that it was up to them to do their “full duty.”

According to the Aug. 2 edition of the Palestine Daily Herald, Judge Gardner attempted to clarify the charges and the issues at hand, explaining various statutes to the jury. He specifically noted that even if there had been threats or conspiracies “on the part of any number of Negroes to do violence to white persons, it would not justify” vigilantism. “The law furnishes ample remedy,” Gardner continued. “There is no justification for shooting men in the back” or “waylaying or killing them in their houses.”

When the grand jury findings were reported on Aug. 17, several dozen witnesses had been examined. Though 11 men were initially arrested, seven were finally indicted, including Isom Garner, B.J. Jenkins, Steve Jenkins, Andrew Kirkwood, Henry Shipper, Curtis Spurger, and Jim Spurger. Only Kirkwood was immediately granted bail, and another, Alvin Oliver, turned state’s evidence. Two cases moved forward, one based on killings in Anderson County and one involving the murder of Will Burley in Houston County. No one was ever indicted in the deaths of John Hays or Alex Holley, and no other victims were ever verified.

In the weeks and months following what came to be known as the Slocum Massacre, the local Black residents made a mass exodus, leaving homes, properties, and businesses behind. And that was fine with most of their white neighbors, whether they were perpetrators or bystanders.

On Nov. 14, 1910, the defendants in the Houston County case (Jim Spurger, Isom Garner, Andrew Kirkwood, William Henry, B.J. Jenkins, and Henry Shipper) were arraigned, and each pleaded “not guilty” to the charge of first-degree murder. The presiding judge denied bail to every defendant except Shipper. His was set at $5,000, and

his family and friends put up their lands and properties as his surety.

On Wednesday, Dec. 12, the defendants in the Anderson County case were arraigned, and Judge Gardner, on his own motion, announced the trial venue would be changed to Limestone County unless the attorneys for both the state and the defendants agreed to a different location in the counties of Navarro, McLennan, Williamson, Travis, or Harris. Judge Gardner preferred Navarro, but the attorneys for the state and the defendants agreed on a venue in Harris. This was very fortuitous for the defendants. The front-page Houston Post headline after Jack Johnson defeated Jim Jeffries read, “Ebon Gloom Loomed Deep As Negro Trounced Jeff,” and the lede was quite telling:

The ebon complexion of the world’s champion had nothing on the gloom that settled over Houston yesterday after the flash came that Johnson had knocked out the white man. The gloom settled down in such large squares, oblong and chunks as to be almost opaque.

And if you think that was an exaggeration of white despair (and desperation), consider this clip in the Honey Grove Signal threeand-a-half weeks later, on the day the killing began in the Slocum area:

Suppose a South African Gorilla had come over to the United States, put on store clothes, walked up to Jim Jeffries and demanded a fight. Would Jeffries have displayed any brains by recognizing him? He would have said to the gorilla: “You are not in my class. I shall keep my part of American sport in the human family.” And that’s exactly what he should have said to the big sifter-footed, liver-lipped burr-head who paralyzed him and pulverized him at Reno the other day.

The Lord knows the negro race was impudent enuf [sic] prior to the Johnson victory at Reno. You can scarcely pick up a newspaper without reading where some negro has been mobbed for his meanness. There are a lot of cerulean bellied yankee aristocrats who insist on referring to the coon as “Mistah” and the coon forthwith proceeds to rape some white woman or little girl. As long as the negro was a slave, he was harmless, for he realized that there was a great gaping hiatus yawning between himself and the white race and he cheerfully kept his post. The old “befo de wah” slave nigger had no more notion of breeding with a white woman than a monkey would breeding with a swan.

Appalling, yes, but, to be fair, Honey Grove sits between Bonham, Texas, where local whites and lawyers pilfered the massive land bequeathment of Thomas Bean from his extended Black heirs in multiple litigious scams during the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and Paris, Texas, where at least four Black men were burned at the stake from the Civil War era to 1920. But the citizens of Honey Grove did burn their own Black man at the stake in mid-May 1930.

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CARTER AMON MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

FREE FOOD | FREE ART | FREE TUNES

Thursday, February 16,

5–8 p.m. | FREE

2023

Enjoy an exclusive evening with free food, free art, and free tunes for college students. Choose your own adventure guide of the collection, meet Carter staff to learn more about what it’s like working at an art museum, listen to music in the galleries, and stop by The Lounge to make some art inspired by the collection.

Which draws our attention back to the lynching of Leonard Johnson, just two weeks before Jack Johnson “pulverized” Great White Hope Jim Jeffries. The 17-yearold white female whom Johnson was accused of assaulting and murdering was the daughter of W.H. Redden, constable for Precinct 6 of Cherokee County, and Johnson was actually a “county convict working off a crime” at Constable Redden’s place. According to the Palestine Daily Herald, “the negro was suspicioned and arrested, and the evidence was sufficient to warrant the mob in reaching the conclusion that the right man was arrested, though he stoutly maintained his innocence.”

And the lynch mob reportedly overpowered Sheriff C.K. Norwood and 10 deputies?! Then, several African Americans in the community heard what was happening and attempted to intervene and, again, were beaten and, in some cases, reportedly killed.

Should I mention that the white mob went to a lot of trouble to avoid due process?

Should I also mention that Leonard Johnson was still working Constable Redden’s land when he was arrested? So, if the mob and the Daily Herald got it straight — Johnson returned to his work after the rape and murder to fulfil the terms of his convict labor agreement?!

In early May 1911, attorney Ned R. Morris of Palestine successfully petitioned the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals to grant bail for the defendants. On May 10, all those charged were released on $1,500 bail, and none of the indictments were ever prosecuted.

At the same time, the personal holdings of many white Slocum-area citizens increased handsomely.

The abandoned African-American properties were absorbed or repurposed as the white population saw fit. Many Black landowners were either dead or missing, and their land titles were vacated or revised. And then a fire at the Anderson County courthouse conveniently destroyed many of the original titles, so the revisions couldn’t be examined or questioned.

A racial pogrom and the resultant racial expulsion. An opportunistic white land grab. Black men burned at the stake. Black citizens cheated out of their lands and their legacies. Possibly several unmarked, mass graves, still unverified and unexhumed today. All conspicuously absent from Texas memory.

The strange thing about the Slocum Massacre piece I’d written in the Austin American-Statesman in February 2013 was that I was actually researching another ethnic pogrom in West Texas when I stumbled onto the Slocum atrocity. I was looking for information on the 1918 Porvenir Massacre and kept seeing mentions of a “race riot” in East Texas a few years before. I’d never heard of or learned about either in school or college but was pretty far along in my research on the Porvenir Massacre when I took a closer

look at the Slocum Massacre. It shocked me.

I’d seen Mississippi Burning and Rosewood, and I had even heard about the Tulsa Race Massacre, but I wasn’t aware that anything like that had happened in Texas. And as I perused and scrutinized the reports of the carnage in the Slocum area of East Texas, I realized something was amiss. The reporting didn’t add up.

Hundreds of white men riding and/or marching around southeastern Anderson County and northeastern Houston County (Percilla, Augusta, others) — after emptying the local gun and ammunition stores — reportedly shooting their Black neighbors on sight. And only eight casualties?

The harder I looked, the more suspicious I became. I subscribed to a newspaper archive. I discovered that a local Star-Telegram writer, Tim Madigan, had written about the massacre in 2011. His work led to Texas House Resolution 865, which officially acknowledged the Slocum Massacre on March 30, 2011. I picked Madigan’s brain. I asked for information on his sources. But after Madigan’s stories and HR865, his sources didn’t have much to say. I suspected they faced reprisals.

I accepted a book deal with The History Press, but one book became two. I asked Thompson if I could write a collection of little-known Texas stories first and publish a book on the Slocum Massacre after. The collection — originally titled Texas Curiosities — would become Texas Obscurities: Stories of the Peculiar, Exceptional and Nefarious. Including chapters on the Slocum and Porvenir massacres, it was published just eight months after my Slocum Massacre piece in the Statesman

My book on the Slocum Massacre itself

would appear just six months later, on May 12, 2014.

Two books in 14 months, published six months apart, and that after a virtual standup start.

I didn’t know any better.

I worked on the Slocum Massacre book while I was finishing Texas Obscurities but immediately encountered frustrating obstacles. The first descendant of the Holley family (now spelled Hollie) whom I contacted to interview referred me to a Fort Worth preacher who served as the family spokesperson. When I got him on the phone and explained that I was trying to write a book on the Slocum Massacre and needed to speak with members of the Hollie family for details and background, he had only one question: “How much?”

I futilely explained that I was a freelance writer who drove a 7-year-old Nissan pickup, was not paid a book advance, was clearly not writing a book like Harry Potter or Twilight (that might make a fortune), that at that juncture I had never even published a book before, and that I was not rich or even well off. Our conversation ended succinctly but not impolitely.

I was off to a bad start already, and things grew markedly worse.

Denied access to the Hollie family, I reached out to the Anderson County Historical Commission. I got Commission chair Jimmy Ray Odom on the horn, and, when he heard what I was initially inquiring about, he was very keen on making sure I wasn’t a member of the NAACP. I assured him I wasn’t.

“I don’t truck with those folks,” he said. “They were here complaining about the Confederate flag at our courthouse a while back.”

I reassured him I wasn’t a member, and he proceeded to explain to me how there was never any real evidence supporting the notion that there was a massacre in Slocum and that the hoax was based on exaggerated newspaper reports from outside the region. I demurred and insisted I’d seen local reports detailing the bloodshed as well. We went back and forth briefly, Odom denying and me pressing, and then he got real quiet. He wasn’t getting anywhere with me, so, after a long pause, he asked me straight out: “Aren’t you a white man?”

I was somewhat taken aback, but I recovered quickly.

“Yes,” I said, “but I’m also a human being, and the folks who died in the Slocum Massacre were human beings.”

Odom didn’t respond.

“I’m gonna tell this story,” I continued, “whether y’all help me or not.”

And “not” turned out to be the case, but I caught some breaks. I found a junior college research paper discussing the massacre tucked in a “Black History” or “Slocum” file at the Palestine Public Library. It gave me more detail and listed other sources. It made me aware of Felix Green’s 2012 book The Piersons and Barnetts of East Texas, which had mentions of the massacre and family victims affected by it. Then, I realized the massacre had spread into Houston County and camped out in the Houston County court archives and then visited the Houston County Historical Commission in person.

The county chairperson was a Black woman named Barbara Wooten, and when I informed her what I was interested in looking into, she was skeptical. But once she realized I was on the up and up, she gave me access to a cache of theretofore unpublished correspondence that helped me finish the book.

The publication of The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas turned out to be just the beginning. When Constance Hollie-Jawaid, the chief spokesperson for the descendants of the Slocum Massacre, became aware of the title and read it, she called me on the verge of tears. She was surprised by how much of the story she hadn’t been aware of and then furious at the family spokesman who discouraged me from speaking with her and the rest of the family.

Hollie-Jawaid asked me to assist her in applying for a Slocum Massacre historical marker. She sponsored the effort, and I wrote the application. When Hollie-Jawaid submitted the application to the Anderson County Historical Commission, Odom was immediately hostile. He criticized our application, variously claiming it was unprofessional, based on rumors, antagonistic, and, finally, too focused on negative history rather than positive. Then, Odom claimed the commission didn’t have a quorum and wasn’t going to consider applications that year. After that, he insisted that the commission would have considered the application but that I, myself, had put Hollie-Jawaid up to filing the historical marker application to increase the sales of my book at an Anderson County pioneer festival that neither Con-

Slocum Massacre victim descendants (from left to right) Tameka Hollie, John McKnight, Colecia Hollie-Williams, Barry G. Hollie, and Tammie Hollie-Bartlette fought intensely for the marker put in place and dedicated in 2016.

Courtesy of Paul Beatty

stance nor I had ever heard of before.

Odom obviously didn’t know Constance Hollie-Jawaid very well.

When she had had enough of the Anderson County Historical Commission’s machinations, she appealed directly to the Texas State Historical Association, and its members agreed to consider the application independent of the county historical commission. We were off to the races (pardon the pun).

During the Slocum Massacre historical marker application process, forces from every side of the effort tried to dissuade or divide us. Some of my white friends and associates accused me of being ashamed of my whiteness. Some of Hollie-Jawaid’s Black friends and associates believed she shouldn’t be pursuing justice for the Slocum Massacre with a white man.

With the date of a decision on Texas historical markers approaching in January 2015, Hollie-Jawaid and I were beset from every direction with criticism and predictions of failure. Our white detractors acted like it was an assault on the Republic itself. Some of our Black detractors also condemned it outright or told us it would not be approved without their support.

Constance Hollie-Jawaid ignored them all, and on Jan. 29, 2015, the Texas State Historical Commission unanimously approved the Slocum Massacre historical marker ap -

plication with a score of 98 on a 100-point scale. When it was placed and dedicated on Jan. 16, 2016, it became the first state of Texas historical marker to specifically acknowledge racial violence against African Americans.

Hollie-Jawaid and I were elated and, on

some level, relieved, but we both knew there was still work to be done. Over the next several years, we tried again and again to bring attention to the unmarked mass graves in news reports and features. We visited the Slocum Massacre historical marker on the July 29 anniversary of the atrocity every year, one or the other, or both, and usually with other members of the Hollie and Wilson families.

After the marker effort was approved, I think we both thought things would settle down, and we could focus more on other stuff, especially our families and lives. And we did. But the Slocum Massacre and its victims never went away. The specters of Hollie-Jawaid’s ancestors literally and figuratively never stopped haunting us.

In the intervening decade since my feature on the Slocum Massacre was published, we have corroborated on two screenplays based on the Slocum pogrom, and while both have been optioned, neither has been produced.

Every year or two, another journalist, filmmaker, playwright, or other kind of writer approaches us with ideas about a compelling filmic, streaming, stage, or radio production, but nothing ever comes of it. We have become cynical. We are exhausted.

But a positive note appeared near the end of 2022.

On pg. 92 of The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas, I mention that the remaining five defendants in Anderson

County District Judge Benjamin Gardner’s initial, still unprosecuted indictments filed a writ of habeas corpus at the state court of criminal appeals in Travis County. It was, again, early May 1911, and they were still incarcerated and being held without bail. I suspect Gardner knew there was little hope of their being successfully prosecuted and meted out what legal complications he could in lieu of the justice he was doubtful that the victims of the Slocum Massacre would ever receive. He was obviously proven right. Jim Spurger, B.J. Jenkins, S.C. Jenkins, Curtis Spurger, and Isom Garner were each granted bail and, after posting it, walked away free men. They were never tried in a court of law and were never punished for their crimes.

They weren’t the only ones, of course, just the most inconvenienced. Judge Gardner did what he could while he could, but dozens of the perpetrators of the Slocum Massacre were never arrested or charged, and dozens if not hundreds of the victims lost their lives and their property.

My father, E.R. Bills Sr., died while I was finishing my book on the Slocum Massacre, and I dedicated the book to him. On Nov. 10, 2022 — a day that would have marked my father’s 80th birthday — I received an email from Dr. Steven A. Reich of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. I learned that my research on the Slocum Massacre had been incomplete. I’d dug around in the Anderson and Houston county courthouse archives and found notes and basic proceedings on the cases against a few of the white folks behind the Slocum

continued on page 8

Writing The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas was just the start of the author’s mission.

Courtesy of The History Press

Massacre, but I’d never come across much actual testimony. And I — in my haste or inexperience — had missed the State Court of Criminal Appeals records at the Texas State Library and Archive Commission. Reich found them and reached out to me.

My research has unearthed records from the criminal proceedings, including the full transcript of the March, 1911, bail hearing that lasted 10 days. The more than 350 pages of sworn testimony from 54 witnesses, Black and white, offers a window onto the Black community, the massacre, its perpetrators, and its victims. It allows us to reconstruct the massacre ––at least the killing of six of the known victims –– with considerable precision. Even if the white people of Anderson County kept the crimes of their forefathers quiet for more than 100 years, their ancestors spoke on record about what happened. And their words have remained preserved in those court papers. Furthermore, the Black witnesses offer compelling testimony, on public record, about what happened to them and who pulled the triggers that killed their family members. The document reveals a remarkable effort by Black teenagers, women, and men to act politically with incredible courage to compel civil authorities to acknowledge and denounce the violence that visited their community.

I was dumbstruck at first and then mightily frustrated. I’d missed something, something that would have been incredibly useful in the skirmishes that Constance Hollie-Jawaid and I had with the Anderson County Historical Commission and others.

I had to see the record for myself. Reich had sent me excerpts and gave me a few clues but not the entire document. I located it immediately and ordered my own copy. Some of the surviving Black victims actually testified against the white defendants before a judge, even pointing out and identifying them at the time. And the defense team’s witnesses practically made the prosecution’s case for them. Here are some excerpts of from some of the damning testimony:

“I heard about the burning of that negro in Cherokee County, and I noticed the change in the negroes at that time. It seemed like to me it made the negroes worse; insolent and mean and impudent; more impudent than they had ever been before.”

“The negroes didn’t seem to be as quiet as they had been, and it seemed like they carried their guns more frequently.”

“They were bigoted and sassy among some white people.”

“And I noticed about their conduct after the Jack Johnson fight, and they would call each other Jack Johnson and say ‘well, you know, a negro is stouter than

anybody else, and is more of a man.’”

“I met several of them in the road and they didn’t speak to me, and I didn’t think they acted very polite. I have seen them pass by whistling and talking and going on just like they didn’t care. That is what I call a bigoted person.”

“I remember the trouble they had down there near Slocum when the darkies were killed. I think the first darkies was killed on Friday; that is what I heard, but I don’t know only from what I heard … that the negroes were up to some devilment.”

“The negroes down there are not disbehaving now.”

After reading the entire 350-page transcript, I realized what I’d missed.

A football metaphor. A game changer.

For my book, I had relied on newspaper reports and second-hand accounts. The record of these Black and white eyewitness accounts dispels the need for speculation and theory.

Certainly, bad news for chronic sufferers of white fragility and white denial in Anderson County and across the state but also bleak for conservative politicians, the regressive Texas legislature, and the delusional critics of Critical Race Theory.

In the next year or two, Reich will no doubt complete an invaluable examination of the economic disenfranchisement of Black citizens in Anderson County, Hous-

ton County, and probably across Texas. And by the time you read these words, Hollie-Jawaid will already be working on releasing an annotated version of the eyewitness testimony for your perusal (probably on the 2023 anniversary of the atrocity).

So, Chiefs, Eagles, Cowboys, Texans, NFL fans in general, you will soon become the final arbiters of what needs to be done. You will decide who was exaggerating and who was telling the truth. You will be tasked with delivering the justice the Slocum Massacre victims have so long been denied. And you’ll receive a crash course on why white conservative politicians in Texas are so leery of the truth and of admitting that they openly limit the voting rights of persons of color and still abridge their legal rights and economic opportunities every way they can.

Then, in the next decade or so, not just a historical marker but a full-blown state-funded monument — not unlike those standing to commemorate the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre in Oklahoma, the Rosewood Massacre in Florida, or the Elaine Massacre in Arkansas — will be standing in East Texas.

It will be bigger than a Super Bowl, and it’s somewhat ironic.

The rights and privileges that so many Texans have been complaining about losing the last several years are the same rights and privileges white conservatives were allowed to kill Black people for seeking or simply enjoying in 1910. My original Statesman article on the Slocum Massacre was an earnest but clumsy start, but these eyewitness court documents will serve as indisputable proof. l

SCREEN

Shrinking

The third Ant-Man movie trades in the fun and gets little in return.

BY KRISTIAN LIN

There was a lot to unpack in Avengers: Endgame, but thinking about the character arc of Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) made me quite sad in 2019. Poor bastard came out of prison and vowed never to abandon his daughter again, then he was trapped in the quantum realm for five years through no fault of his own, and his little girl grew into a teenager without him. After that, he went off to tell the Avengers about his plan to build a time machine. I would have handcuffed myself to my child until she became a thoroughly miserable adult.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is the first movie spotlighting Scott since Endgame, and it pits him against a villain who commands time and is canny enough to dangle the prospect of giving Scott back those years that he missed raising his daughter. Furthermore, this bad guy is so powerful that Scott has little chance of outsmarting or outfighting him. I’m sad to report that this is where the cleverness stops.

The film opens with Scott giving up that superhero life to write a celebrity memoir entitled Look Out for the Little Guy and be a father to his teenage daughter Cassie (a brunette Kathryn Newton). Cassie has become a science and engineering wiz in her dad’s absence, and she invents a device that will communicate with the quantum realm so that nobody ever becomes stranded again. This backfires, and the device transports

her, Scott, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), and Hope’s parents (Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer) to said realm, which Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) rules with an iron fist. He has history with Janet van Dyne, who turns out to have withheld a hell of a lot from her family about her 30 or so years at subatomic level.

Kang wants to return to normal size and makes the aforementioned offer to Scott in exchange for his help, and the movie’s most obvious blunder is that Scott never seriously considers it. At least when Kang makes the same offer to Janet 30 years prior so she can raise little Hope, she’s torn up about turning him down. Kang can’t be trusted, of course, but you’d think Scott’s disappearances from Cassie’s life would result in more than just a few bitter one-liners. The

Dallas native Majors is an imposing physical presence, and you believe him when he tells Scott in mid-confrontation, “You’re out of your league,” but in the end, he’s another boring Marvel villain who’s not much other than his desire to destroy stuff.

I’m concerned that the Marvel movies (with the notable exception of the Black Panther films) are starting to look the same. All those orange skies and billowing clouds of smoke and weapons glowing either red or blue — if you took a random frame from this and compared it to the same from the last Thor movie and the last Guardians of the Galaxy movie, you’d be hard-pressed to tell what came from where. The last Ant-Man movie had visuals like a Hello Kitty Pez dispenser blowing up to the size of a refrigerator during a car chase, but there’s no

such whimsy here. The fantasy world that the characters move around in doesn’t have enough visual cues, so that it’s hard to even tell when Scott grows to 10 times his size. The only creative bit is when Scott enters a “probability storm” that spontaneously generates thousands of clones of him, leading to the danger that he’ll be crushed by the dead bodies of himself.

This movie wants to give Scott more dramatic weight, but the thematic heaviness doesn’t suit the series or director Peyton Reed. The series was always better when it was funny, and despite Rudd’s best efforts, the comedy largely falls flat, and even Bill Murray’s presence as a boorish space lord who brags to Hank about his own wild sexual encounters with Janet can’t lift this. The subtitle of Quantumania promises wacky hijinks with the miniature world like we’ve seen with previous movies about multiverses. That doesn’t materialize. l

Kathryn Newton and Paul Rudd drift through a strange miniature world in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Jay Maidment

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Starring Paul Rudd and Kathryn Newton. Directed by Peyton Reed. Written by Jeff Loveness. Rated PG-13.

STUFF

Superb Bowl

BY PATRICK HIGGINS

This past Sunday, Super Bowl LVII was the latest example of just exactly why the NFL sits high atop the mountain of national sports interest. The contest between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles managed to pull in a gobsmacking 113 million viewers, the third highest TV audience ever. Whether you tuned in because you’re a regular football fan or because this is America and one out of every five households is going to have the game on anyway and you were just there for the food, it was certainly worth your time. Well, the majority of it, anyway.

If, over the course of a broadcast stretched to nearly six hours in length, you could manage to fight through exhaustive

pregame coverage, the pomp of the usual halftime spectacle, and a literal hour’s worth of shoehorned celebrities, eye-rolling attempts at comedy, and the emotionally manipulative use of good puppy dogs in the biggest advertising splurge of the year, there was actually a damn good football game being played.

Amid all the extracurriculars, viewers witnessed two of the sport’s elites trading blows for 60 full minutes in an absolute clinic of big-game NFL quarterbacking. Led by the undeniable best player on the planet in Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City just managed to stave off an upstart Eagles team in the game’s final seconds. The 38-35 stunner could have been thought of as one of those riveting back-and-forth games you’re almost sad that someone had to lose, except one of those teams was the Iggles, so reveling in a Philly failure was just icing on the great football game cake.

I’ll hand it to him. With the exception of one extremely costly error, Jalen Hurts played a spectacular game. The Eagle QB’s

27/38 for 304 yards and four total TDs would easily have earned him a Super Bowl MVP trophy to go with the Lombardi had Philthy won. Sadly, the guy on the other side played even better.

After a first half that saw KC struggle to get their offense on the field as the Eagles churned drives with play counts numbering in the double digits time and again[,] and which saw them jump to a 10-point lead, Mahomes would ensure the Chiefs scored on every possession in the second half, going 13/14 for 93 yards and three TDs. His one incompletion was a throw-away toward the sideline to avoid oncoming Philadelphia pressure.

Not all of his work was done through the air. He also added a gutsy 26-yard scramble — on one leg, mind you — to bring the Chiefs into game-winning field goal range. The star signal-caller irritated the high ankle sprain he suffered in the AFC Championship on the final drive of the first half and was in visible pain afterward on the sideline. After such a leave-it-all-on-the-field performance, it was a no-brainer that No. 15 would

be awarded his second Super Bowl MVP.

If the game had one small blemish, it would be the controversial third-down holding penalty by Eagles defensive back James Bradberry. With the game tied at 35-35, the tug on KC receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster (Bradberry actually held twice on the play, IMO) at the 1:54 mark awarded the Chiefs a nail-in-the-coffin first down. After a headsup decision by RB Jerrick McKinnon to give himself up at the 1-yard line instead of what must have been a mighty tempting walk-in touchdown, the Chiefs were able to run the clock all the way down to just 11 seconds for the chip-shot Harrison Butker field goal for the win.

If you ask me, the only thing controversial about the call is that it is somehow seen as controversial. There’s no question Bradberry held him. The cornerback even admitted as such after the game.

“It was holding,” he said in a postgame interview.

Spare me the “Yeah, but you can’t call that at that stage of the game!” BS. Do rules somehow just cease to matter in a game’s final minutes? It’s also assuming a lot that if the Eagles did get the ball back they would have just marched down the field and scored a game-winning touchdown. Maybe next time just try not to commit a completely avoidable penalty at such a critical juncture of the game?

Despite the “controversy,” it was a thrilling game, and we’re all fortunate to have been able to witness it. The Philly fans whining only adds to the gluttony of Schadenfreude I’ve been gorging myself on for the last few days. The meme-ified image of punchable Eagles Head Coach Nick Siranni openly weeping has been playing on repeat in my brain, and the dopamine bursts it has provided me have spurred me on to a much springier step, a cleaner house (with completely finished laundry), and a noticeable 10% performance uptick at my day job.

I’ll just ignore the fact that the image was taken at an emotional moment during a moving National Anthem performed by country guitar hero Chris Stapleton rather than at Butker’s Super Bowl-clinching kick. l

The NFL delivered the goods with a shootout between two of the league’s best QBs, “controversial” penalty or not.

It happens every play, but our author thought it really stood out in the most important football game of the year.

Courtesy NFL

NIGHT &DAY

16

Thursday

This evening marks the beginning of a weekly comedy open-mic hosted by Marcus “M Dot” White at Cassidy’s Night Club (2540 Meacham Blvd, 817-6259911), where up to 20 performers will try to at least acknowledge your funny bone 8pm10pm Thursdays. To participate, DM Facebook.com/DeezytheComedian1.

17

Friday

Being super disappointed that The Lion King at Bass Hall sold out before I could get my paws on tickets, I may have to attend Drive-In Movie Night at Southcliff Church (4100 SW Loop 820, 817-924-2241). At 6pm, head to the north parking lot for a free screening of the film at sundown. The popcorn is free, and you can watch in your car or bring chairs and blankets for outside.

18

Saturday

That’s some pig. See a live-action production of Charlotte’s Web based on the E.B. White book of the same name, featuring everyone’s favorite pig/spider/rat team — Wilber, Charlotte, and Templeton — plus Fern, the little farm girl who loved them, at Casa Mañana (3101 W Lancaster Av, 817-332-2272) at 1pm or 5pm Sat and 11am or 3pm Sun. As the stock show has just ended, it will be refreshing to revisit the story of a little piggie who did not go to market. Actually, he went to market but made it back home unscathed, thanks to Charlotte, who was a true friend and, dang, a pretty good writer. Tickets start at $29 at CasaManana.org.

If you didn’t get enough of Groundhog Day or love

The Goldbergs and Stevie Ray Vaughan, tune in to KNON’s Reckless Rock Radio on 89.3-FM

at 10pm. Along with veteran muso Jimmy Wallace, actor/musician Stephen Tobolowsky will be interviewed by Reckless cohosts Lee “Big Mix” Russell and Greg “Spicoli” Reneau about the 1971 album A New Hi featuring SRV and other notable folks from the ’70s music scene in North Texas. (Tobolowsky grew up in North Texas and played with SRV back in the day.)

Hosted by Open Worship (@OpenDTX) and Mosaic Worship (@MosaicFUMC), the February installment of the fall Pub Theology series at The Bearded Monk (122 E McKinney St, Denton, 940999-7238) begins at 8pm. On the third Monday of the month thru Mon, May 15, drink beer and contemplate theological quandaries with masters-in-divinity scholar Jenny Bates and Pastor Laura Byrd, who both like “asking the hard questions with no Sunday school answers.”

Celebrate Fat Tuesday at Club Pilates North Fort Worth (2317 N Tarrant Pkwy, Ste 423, 817-3126030). At all classes from 5:30am to 9:30pm, you are encouraged to “show your best teaser to earn your beads.” According to GymMembershipFees.com, a four-pack of classes usually costs $89, but you can take your first class for free, and this is a fun day to do it. Meanwhile, if you’re looking to drink your way through the holiday, check out our Mardi Gras & Margaritas ideas in ATE DAY8 a Week a few pages back.

Hearth Wisdom Store (2899 W Pioneer Pkwy, Arlington, 682-323-5085) invites you to stop in and sample a different flavor of coffee from the shop’s patron java vendor, Woke Witch Coffee, on Woke Witch Wednesdays 11am-2pm. “Hear about what tones and intentions are betwixt the curated roasts and warm the spirit up while you shop.” Ladies, you had me at “coffee”!

By Jennifer Bovee

I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR ART AND THE DIGITAL SCREEN

February 12–April 30

Examining the screen’s vast impact on art from 1969 to the present, this exhibition includes the work of fifty artists in a broad range of media including paintings, sculpture, video games, digital art, augmented reality, and video. These artists demonstrate the screen as a powerful and valuable artistic and social tool.

Cassidy’s hosts a new comedy open-mic night Thursdays with “M Dot” White every Thursday.

Amber Marie Flores stars as Charlotte and Alli Franken as Wilbur in Casa Manana’s production of Charlotte’s Web thru

EATS & drinks

West of Where the West Begins

In a redeveloping part of town, restaurateur Gigi Howell flips burgers in homage to her grandpa JD and a bygone time.

JD’s Hamburgers, 9901 Camp Bowie West, FW. 817-888-8914. 11am-4pm Sun, 4-9pm MonTue,11am-9pm Wed-Thu, 11am-10pm Fri-Sat.

STORY AND PHOTOS

BY LAURIE JAMES

Texas is full of once-burgeoning small towns that withered when an interstate passed them by. Camp Bowie Boulevard, a.k.a. Highway 80, passed through Westland, where Gigi Howell’s grandpa lived. JD Jimeson drove trucks and loved his granddaughter and the small town that faded into

relative obscurity as larger interstates grew to the north. When Howell was ready to open a restaurant of her own, she went back to her roots — to Westland, which is experiencing a small-scale revival — where she named her restaurant after her grandpa. The vibe in the eatery that looks like it used to be a gas station is definitely laid-

back. JD’s Burgers has been open a few months and apparently has a rabid following. When my dining companion and I rolled up on a Friday evening, the place was crowded –– with multigenerational families, folks from the new Walsh Ranch developments, and those like us who don’t quite manage to get that far west unless we’re go -

ing on purpose. In warmer weather, the back patio should offer a reprieve from the wait, but on a cold February day, the solution was to belly up to the bar and grab a beverage to kill whatever ailed you from your workday. Twenty-two beers, including the bespoke Martin House Westland Rattler, a few mockcontinued on page 14

A glorious riff on a bacon/blue-cheese burger, the Irene & Jack was just about perfect.

Eats & Drinks

continued from page 12

tails, and a variety of mixed drinks will help. Kate’s nopales margarita — tequila, prickly pear puree, lime, and simple syrup –– was a fresh, cute, punchy take on the classic. The giant Morton’s salt flakes that adorned the rim were a little fluffier than straight granulated salt and provided a satisfying sweetto-salty ratio.

The deviled egg starter was perfect for two: four ovoid halves decorated with different flavors augmenting the creamy yolk. One had smoky bacon, another a dainty dab of flavorful guacamole, and two halves had a kickin’ pico de gallo accompaniment. Appe -

tizers aren’t strictly necessary here because the kitchen’s pretty quick under pressure.

JD’s burgers are named for couples with a little fame (or notoriety) in these parts ––you’d have to sit down with Gigi to find out more. She was moving at close to the speed of light when we dined, so my curiosity will have to wait. The flat-smashed burgers come in one shade (more well-done than not) and are topped with an inventive array of groceries. The Irene & Jack is a glorious riff on a bacon/blue-cheese burger, kicked up with piquant, vinegary wing sauce. Ask for a little extra for added dipping and to use with the fries. The Cheryl & Bo was too much goodness for one bun to hold, with a perfectly spicy hatch chile queso and caramelized onions. The melted cheese was a little thicker than it would be as a dip and was a nice

change from a slab of cheddar. Vegetarians can sub a black bean patty for the beef if desired.

Entrees come with your choice of fries, traditional or sweet potato. Opt for the hand-cut regular. The sweet were fine, but nothing can compare to the crispy-onthe-outside, soft-and-slightly-mealy-inside ones. You can upgrade to okra fries (thin slivers of the veggie, breaded).

A Texas Chili Company hotdog, grilled cheese, and a grilled chicken sandwich round out the menu. The weekend brunch includes a FunkyTown maple-bacon slider, with a fried egg, maple bacon, and cheese atop a FunkyTown Donuts maple donut.

If not too full, warm Jesse’s blackberry cobbler with a scoop of tart buttermilk ice cream is just about perfect. The crust

is more of a buttery short crust pastry. The sweet, cookie-like crust, copious berries, and the tangy ice cream were, quite surprisingly, a better choice than plain Blue Bell Vanilla for this dessert.

The tiny, white-washed restaurant is full of old pictures from the Westland Civic League –– trucks, livestock, and women with voluminously curled hair. There are stories in this town, and in this joint, I look forward to hearing more of them. l

The deviled eggs appetizer was pleasant if not completely necessary.

The perfect sweet-salty balance infused Katie’s nopales margarita, with the giant, fluffy salt crystals rimming the glass.

Last I checked, eight divided by two equals four. After hitting four places for Mardi Gras and four more for National Margarita Day on Wed, Feb 22, I may need some help with that math.

Top Choices for Celebrating Mardi Gras

1.) Ampersand Bar (3009 Bledsoe St, 682707-9626) invites you to join them for Mardi Gras Weekend 10pm-2am Sat-Sun, featuring music by DJ Cat Lopez, DJ Eddie Love, and DJ Xclusive. This event is free to attend, but you must be 21+. For information on VIP tables, text 214-893-4634.

2.) The Bearded Lady (300 S Main St, 817-349-9832) hosts its annual Mardi Gras Brunch 11am-3pm Sat with some special items from neighboring Dusty Biscuit Beignets (411 S Main St, Ste 109, 817-841-9255). While the 2023 details have yet to be revealed, this event typically features food and cocktail menus inspired by Mardi Gras, unique beers on tap, and more. For updates, keep an eye on Facebook.com/TheBeardedLadyFortWorth.

3.) The 31st Annual Krewe of Kowtown Mardi Gras Costume Ball rolls on into The Post at River East (2925 Race St, 817-9458890) 8pm-11pm Tue. Forget the beads. Jerry Abrams, Guitar Frenchie, Gary Grammar, James Hinkle, Latin Express Horns, Ginny Mac, and others are well worth the price of admission. Tickets are $20 on Eventbrite.com.

4.) Trig44 presents A Mardi Gras “Fat” Trig Tuesday at Tulips FTW (112 St. Louis Av, 817-367-9798) with a full-band performance by Dustin Schaefer, lead guitarist for Shane Smith & The Saints. This evening is a singer-songwriter song-swap night, so you’ll also get to hear Tyler Bond, Trey Rose, and Raina Wallace (of the Lowdown Drifters). The show starts at 8pm, but come early for drink specials 4pm-7pm, including $7 house cocktails, $4 tallboys and wells, and $2 off drinks from the draft wall. Tickets start at $20 at Prekindle.com.

Top Picks for National Margarita Day

1.) Starting at 11am on Wed, Feb 22, all area Chuy’s will celebrate with specials on their regular house rocks or frozen margaritas in lime, strawberry, or swirl, plus, for a limited time, try the frozen white peach sangria. Make it a grande for $2 more or enjoy an extra pour of tequila or orange liqueur with dollar “floater” add-ons. From 3pm to 6pm, you can also purchase a $5 queso. For a dollar more, add seasoned ground beef, guacamole, and pico de gillo. To find the location nearest you, visit Order.Chuys.com.

2.) Gloria’s Latin Cuisine (2600 W 7th St, Ste 175, 817-332-8800) — known for Salvadoran, Mexican, and Tex-Mex dishes — invites you to try the new La Dueña Margarita, crafted with Casa Amigos Mezcal, tamarindo, chipotle pineapple syrup, and sweet and sour. From 11am to 9pm Wed, there will be specials on frozen house margaritas and signature drinks.

3.) Texas Republic Bar & Kitchen (945 Foch St, 817-887-9797) celebrates National Margarita Day on Wed, Feb 22, with food, drink, and more, including margarita flights and a DJ. Specials include $7 Casamigos margaritas all day, dollar margaritas and street tacos 4pm-5pm, then $2 street tacos 5pm-9pm and $3 margaritas 5pm-11pm.

4.) On Wed, Feb 22, you can also hang out with your local service industry friends at the Cupid Shuffle Bar Crawl starting at 7:30pm at Bodega West 7th (2921 Morton St, 682-250-6399). This month’s event is hosted by Who’s At? app, “the official matchmaker of service industry professionals and patrons.” It will be the launch night of the latest version of the app that lets you know where your favorite bartenders are working any given night. Nice!

By Jennifer Bovee

Celebrate Mardi Gras now thru Tuesday.

Courtesy iStock

Try the new La Dueña Margarita at Gloria’s Latin Cuisine.

Courtesy Facebook

MUSIC

Country, Time Artists and industry insiders from across Texas will converge on the Stockyards for an inaugural festival and conference in March.

BY EDWARD BROWN

Over the past few years, several nonprofits and groups with city backing have launched initiatives to promote and support local

RIDGLEA THEATER

FRI 3/3 JR WOMAN’S CLUB OF FORT WORTH

SPRING SHOW MUSICAL

SAT 3/25 THE ITCHYWORMS US TOUR 2023

RIDGLEA ROOM

THUR 2/16 BLOODLINES W/SPECIAL GUESTS MOTHALTAR AND BRAVE DAYS PLUS MORE!

SAT 2/18 SNAKE FATHER, BOTTOMFEEDERS, YOSEMITE IN BLACK AND MORE

THU 2/23 BYSTANDER, OUTFOX, INSTINCT, ROOTS REMAIN, HEAD OVER HEELS, AZIMUTH ZENITH

SAT 2/25 KURT TRAVIS w /SPECIAL GUESTS AMARIONETTE, PREDISPOSED, GIVEAWAY

RIDGLEA LOUNGE

SAT 2/18 LAUREN ANDERSON LIVE

SAT 3/11 SUPERBLOOD (LA)

W/SPECIAL GUEST SARIKAYA +MORE BANDS TBA!

musicians. Hear Fort Worth, a nonprofit managed by local musicians and Visit Fort Worth (the city’s arm for promoting tourism), hosts monthly mixers where new and established performers meet and mingle.

Amplify 817, an initiative of the Fort Worth Public Library, pays local musicians $300 to stream their songs at Amplify817.org.

Many performing artists need that help and more to cobble together enough income to make musicmaking a full-time job. Even as inflation hit upwards of 10% for several months last year, many venues continue to pay a paltry $100 for two hours of music.

Newcomer Fort Worth Music Festival & Conference aims to provide a platform for Texas musicians to grow their careers through networking events that connect industry professionals with Texas performers, talks, and concerts. The festival at several Stockyards venues in early March is headed by the mega-booking agency Live Nation, Fort Worth Chef Tim Love, and Larry Joe Taylor, the veteran singer-songwriter, rancher, and festival producer.

Taylor said the event is geared toward aspiring “managers, artists, promoters, and talent.”

The vision behind the festival, Love has said, is to celebrate the musical heritage of the neighborhood.

“The Stockyards is home to so many iconic venues,” he added. “It couldn’t be a better time to showcase the destination through the lens of live music.”

dozen scheduled speakers and panelists include: Rick Lambert, Miranda

The

Award-winning singer-songwriter Roger Creager will perform Fri, Mar 3, as part of the inaugural Fort Worth Music Festival & Conference.

continued on page 18

Music

continued from page 17

Lambert’s manager and father; Josh Abbott, frontman for the Josh Abbott Band; Brendon Anthony, head of the Texas Music Office, which is tasked with using state funds to promote Texas Music; and Quinn Donahue, senior talent buyer at C3 Presents.

Over the course of several days, the professionals will address several topics, including tips for how to find the right type of management and insights into the music publishing and promotion industries.

Fort Worth singer-songwriter Jacob Furr told me the festival is a good idea and one that builds on the efforts by Hear Fort Worth and Amplify 817 to provide robust resources and networking opportunities for Fort Worth musicians. His only worry is that the focus on country music not just from Fort Worth leaves out local hip-hoppers, punk rockers, and performers of other genres.

“While country and Red Dirt are a huge part of the music community in North Texas, it is not at all the entirety of music in Fort Worth,” Furr said. “I hope that in the future, they will embrace a more diverse cross-section of Fort Worth music, like Amplify817 and Hear Fort Worth are trying to do.”

The four-day event kicks off Wed, Mar 1, with a performance by singer-songwriter Kevin Fowler at Tannahill’s Tavern & Music Hall. Thursday will feature more than a dozen acts at Tannahill’s, the White Elephant Saloon, and the Love Shack. Gary P. Nunn, Roger Creager, Treaty Oak Revival, and other groups will headline Friday. On Saturday, Amanda Kate Ferris, Larry Joe Taylor, and more than a dozen others will perform at all the venues above plus Billy Bob’s Texas and Hotel Drover.

The festival will end one week before the biggest independent music festival in the world, SXSW, starts in Austin, allowing performers, speakers, and fans to attend both.

Live Nation’s Anthony Nicolaidis said the festival will offer up-and-coming country acts the opportunity to learn about the industry from veteran artists.

“Texas is a real hotbed for music, and now we are seeing more and more artists from our state on the national stage,” he said. “This conference will be an opportunity for many who want to learn more or establish themselves in the live music industry. Fort Worth and the Stockyards are the perfect backdrops for the conference that will give attendees a campus feel while also featuring so many great performance venues.” l

Newly opened Tannahill’s Tavern & Music Hall will host several concerts and events as part of the inaugural Fort Worth Music Festival & Conference in early March.

Edward Brown

Fort Worth Music Festival & Conference

Runs Wed, Mar 1, thru Sat at the Stockyards. $34-549. FortWorth.com/FWMF.

EMPLOYMENT

The Crossroads Group. Inc. seeks Survey Researchers Keller, TX

1. Design and maintain survey projects.

2. Review, classify, and record survey data in preparation for computer analysis.

3. Determine and specify details of survey projects, including sources of information, procedures to be used, and the design of survey instruments and materials.

4. Prepare and present summaries and analyses of survey data, including tables, graphs, and fact sheets that describe survey techniques and results.

5. Conduct research to gather information about survey topics.

6. Analyze data from surveys, old records, or case studies, using statistical method.

7. Produce documentation of the questionnaire development process, data collection methods, sampling designs, and decisions related to sample statistical weighting.

8. Write training manuals to be used by data collection specialists.

9. Collaborate with other researchers in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of surveys.

10. Consult with clients to identify survey needs and specific requirements, such as special samples.

11. Oversee and review the work of data collection specialists.

12. Direct updates and changes in survey implementation and methods.

13. Monitor and evaluate survey progress and performance, using sample disposition reports and response rate calculations.

Master’s degree in Economics required.

Send resume to: kbramwell@crossroadsgrp.com

The owners or lien holders are hereby notified that the vehicles listed below are being stored at AA Wrecker Service: 5709-B Denton Hwy. Haltom City, TX 76148 (817)656-3100

ADVERTISE HERE!

If you need to hire staff or promote your business, let us help you online and/or in print. For more info, call 817987-7689 or email stacey@fwweekly.com today.

EMPLOYMENT

Now Hiring CDL Drivers with Tanker & Hazmat preferred. Health Insurance and other benefits. Per Diem

Paid. 1-830-833-4547 EOE

CATTLE BARN FLEA MARKET

4443 River Oaks Blvd

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Your dealers Dean, Billy, Jim, Glen, Robert and Earl!

COUPLES MASSAGE CLASS

Want to learn massage with your partner in your own home? You will be skillfully guided by a very experienced, licensed instructor. Table and supplies provided.

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COWTOWN ROVER for YOUR RIDE!

Inspection Almost Due? Are You Road-Trip Ready? With our handy pick-up and drop-off services, having your car checked out could not be easier. Get ready for the holidays. Call today!

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EMPLOYMENT

American Airlines, Inc. has openings in Ft. Worth, TX for: Analyst/Sr. Analyst, Commercial Planning and Analysis (Ref. 1582): Resp for utiliz’g statistical analysis, simulations, predictive model’g, or othr analytical methods to analyze data & develop practical solutions to biz probs; Identify, implement, & eval revenue growth programs, & develop practical revenue management solutions. To learn more or to apply send inquiries &/or resume to Gene Womack via email: Gene.Womack@aa.com. Please include Ref # in subject line.

EMPLOYMENT

SENIOR ANALYST – ECONOMIST

GM Financial currently has the following opening in Fort Worth, TX: Senior Analyst – Economist: Design, develop, deploy, and maintain data driven stress testing models and perform research/analysis to quantify the impact of economic, legal, and industry factors that affect portfolio performance. Master’s degree and 5 years of related experience required.

Ref SAE-YH1. Send resume to recruitment@gmfinancial.com or by mail to Y. Castillo Valdivia, HR, 801 Cherry Street, Suite 3500, Fort Worth, TX 76102.

EXPERIENCED CNA SEEKS

Position Sitting With Homebound Patient

Arlington ONLY Please

Call Mitchell 817-471-0174

Hannah in Hurst, LMT

Pro massage, private office. No outcalls. Serving the MidCities for over 25 years. (MT#4797)

Call 817.590.2257 (no texts, please)

HISTORIC RIDGLEA THEATER

THE RIDGLEA is three great venues within one historic Fort Worth landmark. RIDGLEA THEATER has been restored to its authentic allure, recovering unique SpanishMediterranean elements. It is ideal for large audiences and special events. RIDGLEA ROOM and RIDGLEA LOUNGE have been making some of their own history, as connected adjuncts to RIDGLEA THEATER, or hosting their own smaller shows and gatherings. More at theRidglea.com