[1] An African-American man accused of rape and who was tried in court died on May 9 when the Grayson County Courthouse was set on fire by a White mob, who subsequently burned and looted local Black-owned businesses.
A large crowd had gathered outside and began filling the corridors; officers cleared part of the courthouse during jury selection and the start of the trial.
People in the courtroom were evacuated with ladders, but the district judge could not decide on a change of venue; Hamer said he thought the trial would end violently if it was held in Sherman.
[1][6][7] Two youths set the building on fire by throwing gasoline into an office, around 2:30 pm; it quickly spread and the officials were evacuated with ladders.
Hughes was dead, and the mob pulled his body from the vault and, behind a car, they dragged him to the Black business section of Sherman, where they hung him from a tree in front of a drugstore, and lit a fire under him, using material looted from the store.
[1] A White man saved a block of Black-owned buildings by claiming they were his; a number of Black citizens defended their property, including a local doctor armed with no more than a shotgun.
[9] The following morning, May 10, the majority of the Black-owned businesses in Sherman (including the office of Civil Rights lawyer William J. Durham),[10] and one residential building, had been burned.
[9] Black citizens of Sherman had fled the town, seeking shelter in the brush, in sewers, or among sympathetic White people.
When they returned, they found that Black properties destroyed included a hotel, a movie house, a restaurant, and a barbershop, besides the drugstore and the two undertaker parlors.
They were a total loss, and the small print on insurance policies stated that no damage that resulted from a riot would be compensated: "it marked the end of Black business in Sherman", according to Edward Hake Phillips, a local historian.
Governor Moody finally declared martial law that evening, after local community leaders urged him to do so, and more arrests were made.
"[18][3] Ninety-four years, nine months later – as of February 13, 2025 – there is no civic marker in Sherman that refers to the lynching and ensuing attack by Whites on the Black community.
[3] Hollie A. Teague, in 2018, published a treatise criticizing Texas law enforcement's long history of (paraphrasing) "brutality and wanton dereliction of duty" towards Blacks.
In the article, Teague summarized the lynching of George Hughes as follows: " ... accusations by Pearl Farlow, the niece of a powerful law enforcement officer in Sherman[b] ... resulted in a power display that included the death of the accused man, the total destruction of Sherman’s Black business district, the obliteration of a large courthouse, mobilization of the National Guard, and the eventual declaration of martial law.
On the other hand, his failure to act while the mob destroyed the Black neighborhood was no more defensible than Sherman police directing traffic while the lynchers blew open the vault.