Beaumont

The Last Black Man Burned at the Stake in Texas

On Saturday, December 2, 1933, a 30-year-old white woman named Nellie Williams Brockman was murdered near Kountze, Texas. Brockman had headed to town to visit a department store and run into trouble along the way. She was shot to death and her body and vehicle were found partially burned. Some folks claimed they had seen a shotgun-wielding black man in the vicinity and law enforcement officials mounted an intense search for the culprit, but turned up nothing.