Paris, Texas - Wikipedia

Present-day Lamar County was part of Red River County during the Republic of Texas. By 1840, population growth necessitated the organization of a new county. George Washington Wright, who had served in the Third Congress of the Republic of Texas as a representative from Red River County, was a major proponent of the new county. The Fifth Congress established the new county on December 17, 1840, and named it after Mirabeau B. Lamar,[5] who was the first vice president and the second president of the Republic of Texas.

Lamar County was one of the 18 Texas counties that voted against secession on February 23, 1861.[6]

In 1877, 1896, and 1916, major fires in the city forced considerable rebuilding. The 1916 fire destroyed almost half the town and caused an estimated $11 million in property damage. The fire ruined most of the central business district and swept through a residential area. The burned structures included the Federal Building and Post Office, the Lamar County Courthouse and Jail, City Hall, most commercial buildings, and several churches.[7]

In 1893, black teenager Henry Smith was accused of murder, tortured, and then burned to death on a scaffold in front of thousands of spectators in Paris.[8] In 1920, two black brothers from the Arthur family were tied to a flagpole and burned to death at the Paris fairgrounds. The city has prominent memorials to the Confederacy.[8]

In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court in Largent v. Texas struck down a Paris ordinance that prohibited a person from selling or distributing religious publications without first obtaining a city-issued permit. The court ruled that the ordinance abridged freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[9]

Paris is a former railroad center. The Texas and Pacific reached town in 1876; the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway (later merged into the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway) and the Frisco in 1887; the Texas Midland Railroad (later Southern Pacific) in 1894; and the Paris and Mount Pleasant (Pa-Ma Line) in 1910. Paris Union Station, built 1912, served Frisco, Santa Fe, and Texas Midland passenger trains until 1956. Today, the station is used by the Lamar County Chamber of Commerce and serves as the research library for the Lamar County Genealogical Society.[10]

Following a tradition of American cities named "Paris" (named after France's capital), the city commissioned a 65-foot-tall (20 m) replica of the Eiffel Tower in 1993 and installed it on site of the Love Civic Center, southeast of the town square. In 1998, presumably as a response to the 1993 construction of a 60-foot-tall (18 m) tower in Paris, Tennessee, the city placed a giant red cowboy hat atop its tower. The current Eiffel Tower replica is at least the second one; an earlier replica constructed of wood was destroyed by a tornado.

Race relations

Paris has had a White majority with a significant black minority for most of its history.[citation needed] The city is deeply segregated[11] and race relations in Paris have a bloody history[12] and are deeply polarized,[12] turbulent,[13] and sometimes explosive.[13]

In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, several lynchings were staged at the Paris Fairgrounds as public spectacles, with crowds of White spectators cheering as the African-American victims were tortured and murdered.[11][12] A black teenager named Henry Smith was lynched in 1893. His murder was the first lynching in US history that was captured in photographs sold as postcards and other trinkets commemorating the killing.[14] Journalist Ida B. Wells said of the incident, "Never in the history of civilization has any Christian people stooped to such shocking brutality and indescribable barbarism as that which characterized the people of Paris, Texas."[14]

On July 7, 1920 Irving and Herman Arthur were burned alive at the fairgrounds before a crowd of 3,000,[15] their charred corpses then being dragged by a convoy of White people through Paris's African-American neighborhood as a warning to the black community.[16]

In 2008, an African-American man, Brandon McClelland, was run over and dragged to death under a vehicle. Two White men were arrested, but the prosecutor cited lack of evidence and declined to press charges, and no serious subsequent attempt to find other perpetrators was made. This caused unrest in the Paris African-American community. Following this incident, an attempt by the United States Department of Justice Community Relations Service to initiate a dialogue between the races in the town[17] ended in failure when African-American complaints were mostly met by silent glares from white community members.[12]

A 2009 protest rally over the case led to Texas State Police intervention to prevent groups shouting "white power!" and "black power!" from coming to blows.[18] In response to the incident, civil rights activist Brenda Cherry said "I think we are probably stuck in 1930 right about now".[19] In 2007, a 14-year-old African-American girl was sentenced by a local judge to up to seven years in a youth prison for shoving a hall monitor at Paris High School. Three months earlier, the same judge had sentenced a 14-year-old White girl to probation for arson. This sentencing disparity occasioned nationwide controversy[20] and the African-American girl was released after serving one year on orders of a special conservator appointed by the State of Texas to investigate problems with the state's juvenile-justice practices.[20]

In 2009, some African-American workers at the Turner Industries Group facility in the city claimed that hangman's nooses, Confederate flags, and racist graffiti were common occurrences due to a select group of employees on the site.[21] At the same time, the United States Department of Education was conducting an investigation into allegations that African-American students in Paris's schools are disciplined more harshly than White students for similar offenses.[20]

In 2015, the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled after an investigation that African-American workers at the Sara Lee Corporation plant in Paris (closed in 2011)[22] were deliberately exposed disproportionately to asbestos, black mold, and other toxins, and also were targets of racial slurs and racist graffiti.[23]

Some Paris residents downplay the extent to which the town has a race-relations problem.[11][18] Judge M. C. Superville commented, "I do not believe there is systematic racial discrimination in Lamar County. I do believe there is a misperception that that is going on".[19]