Flames Arising: Oil and Fire, the Lynching of John Henderson and the Transformation of a Texas Community

Although racial violence took place across the state of Texas and the South, throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the situation that developed in Corsicana was unique in itself. In no other Texas city did so many volatile situations coexist simultaneously. Not only did Navarro County represent the old antebellum South, through its agricultural community, it also represented the new Progressive Era with its advancements and modernizations. Adding to this volatile mix was the prosperous new Texas petroleum industry. It was in this unstable condition that the young African American man John Henderson met a horrible death at the hands of an enraged lynch mob.