Returning South: A family revisits a lynching that forced them to flee to Chicago 100 years ago

A century has passed since Scott and Violet Arthur fled Paris, Texas, with their family and headed to Chicago.Far away from the cotton fields of Northeast Texas, generations of the Arthur descendants were allowed to prosper in the Midwest, free of the burden of a lynching that ripped the family apart and threatened its survival.The photograph of the Arthurs’ arrival at Chicago’s Polk Street Depot on Aug. 30, 1920, eight weeks after their sons, Irving and Herman, were burned alive became an iconic symbol of the Great Migration. The finely dressed family, with their tattered suitcases, personifi...

Read More