During
the evening of March 12, 1926, as students and parents watched a play at Center
Point school in Trinity County, two brothers, Frank and Harvey Johnson, rushed
through the main door.
Harvey was waving a pistol and Frank was carrying
a knife, but his throat had been cut from ear to ear with blood dripping on the
school’s floor. Outside, another man lay in the school yard, dying from pistol
and knife wounds.
The Johnsons told the women and children to leave, saying
“we will deal with the men.” But they were finally persuaded to surrender to the
law.
The school was crowded with people who had traveled from throughout
the county to see the play. One man backed his truck up to a widow so people could
stand in the bed and see the play through the window.
The sight of Frank
and Harvey Johnson created pandemonium. People began screaming and jumping from
the windows, fearing to approach the doors guarded by the brothers.
As
they left, the people saw several men giving first aid to Homer Gibson, a school
trustee who had been shot and cut by the Johnsons only minutes earlier. Gibson
had reportedly defended a teacher who ejected one the Johnsons’ sons from classes
at Center Point school.
Two
days later, two men dressed as Ku Klux Klansmen entered Frank Johnson home’s and
killed him. A man guarding Johnson had slipped away.
Harvey Johnson was
arrested, tried and received a suspended sentence for Gibson’s murder. He was
reportedly shot by a man in Palestine
and died there, but residents of the Center Point area felt the plans to kill
Johnson originated in Trinity County.
“In those days, almost every man went armed with two six shooters,” wrote historian
Flora G. Bowles in 1966. |
