On March 3, 1910, a Dallas mob of 5,000 hanged 60-year-old Black laborer Allen Brooks from a telephone pole at Main and Akard. The site went unmarked for 111 years; a historical marker was placed at Pegasus Plaza in 2021.
Akard St & Main St, Dallas, TX 75201
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public plaza; no admission fee. The historical marker is on city sidewalk at Pegasus Plaza.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Downtown Dallas public plaza; fully paved and accessible.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1910 · 1910 Public Lynching of Allen Brooks · Equal Justice Initiative Documented Racial Terror Lynching · 2021 Historical Marker — Remembering Black Dallas · 111 years without public commemoration
Allen Brooks was a 60-year-old Black laborer on trial in the Dallas County Courthouse on March 3, 1910. According to Wikipedia's documented account of the event, a mob broke into the courtroom during proceedings, threw a rope around Brooks's neck, and dragged him from the building. The crowd outside the courthouse had grown to an estimated 5,000 people.
The mob moved through downtown Dallas to the Elks Arch at the intersection of Main and Akard Streets — a prominent public landmark at the time — and hanged Brooks from a telephone pole. Photographs of the event were taken and subsequently sold as postcards, a common practice in this period. The Dallas Morning News covered the lynching as a news event.
No one was arrested or prosecuted for Allen Brooks's murder. Dallas County authorities did not conduct a meaningful investigation. The Equal Justice Initiative's documentation of the case notes it as one of the documented racial terror lynchings in Texas during the post-Reconstruction era.
For 111 years, the intersection at Main and Akard — now the location of Pegasus Plaza, a downtown public space — had no public marker acknowledging what happened there. In 2021, the Equal Justice Initiative and the local organization Remembering Black Dallas placed a historical marker at Pegasus Plaza. The marker documents the March 3, 1910 lynching, the mob size, the location, and the fact that no prosecution followed.
The site is included in Sinister Strolls' Dallas true crime walking tour.
Sources
There is no established paranormal narrative at the Allen Brooks lynching site at Main and Akard Streets. The site's dark-tourism character comes from the documented history itself: a public lynching by a mob of 5,000 people in the middle of downtown Dallas, photographed for commercial postcards, reported in the Dallas Morning News, and left uncommemorated for 111 years.
The 2021 historical marker placed by the Equal Justice Initiative and Remembering Black Dallas is the first formal public acknowledgment of what occurred at this corner. For over a century, people walked past the Elks Arch location without any indication that a man had been murdered there in broad daylight by a mob that constituted roughly one-tenth of Dallas's total population at the time.
Sinister Strolls includes the site in its Dallas true crime walking tour, which provides additional documented context for visitors. The absence of prosecution, the postcard photographs, and the 111-year gap in commemoration are the elements that define the site's significance — not claims about haunting or paranormal phenomena.
Notable Entities
The Equal Justice Initiative and Remembering Black Dallas placed a historical marker at Pegasus Plaza in 2021, 111 years after Allen Brooks was lynched at this corner. The marker is the primary reason to visit and documents the event's history, the mob size, and the absence of any prosecution. Sinister Strolls true crime walking tours include this site as a stop.
Dallas true crime walking tour operated by Sinister Strolls that includes the Allen Brooks lynching site at Main and Akard as a documented stop, alongside other dark history locations in the downtown core.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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