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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 window
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.
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