Texas Monthly described Vidor as Texas’s “most hate-filled town” and the “most hate filled town in Texas” back in 1993. But even back then city officials were trying to clean up the town’s image. 90% of Vidor residents were opposed to racism and hate as they tired of the media’s portal of Vidor as a racist town. (Ref: Texas Monthly, Vidor in Black And White, Mimi Swartz, December 1993)
1983 was the year Texas Monthly called Vidor “the Texas home of the Ku Klux Klan.” Even Orange County Commissioner Raymond Gould, a constant booster, says, “Vidor’s past has haunted Vidor.” The publicity about attacks during the 1970s on black shoppers and workers and on white families who employed blacks as domestic helpers probably secured Vidor’s image as a violent Klan stronghold. (Ref: https://newspaperarchive.com/big-spring-herald-nov-07-1983-p-12/)
The Vidor of today is much different. Today black people make up 2% percent of the population and Hispanic people make up 3 percent of the population. Today Vidor is 91% percent white. Vidor’s public housing is now integrated where both blacks and whites live peacefully with each other. The new generation wants to break the cycle of racism that once stigmatized Vidor to have a bad reputation. The citizens want the image of hate that once plagued Vidor and the bad reputation to fade away quickly from history. (Ref: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/vidorcitytexas/PST120219)
This news article will explain how the town of Vidor, Texas became a sundown town.
The city of Vidor, Texas was founded as a logging mill town in 1895 by Charles Sheridan Vidor and his group of men. The area was surrounded by big thicket forest which had provided a good business incentive for Charles to start up his Miller & Vidor Lumber Company in that area of East Texas in 1905. In 1909, the first post office was established for the small town of Vidor. 1910 is when business had really gotten started. Vidor was a lumber town and a mill town during the early part of the 20th Century. (Ref: TSHA Handbook, Vidor)
In those days, Vidor was called 'Duncan's Woods' and plagued with violence. According to THE MEMOIRS OF WILLIAM O'KELLY HAIZLIP, SR., you could get shot there without even trying. Vidor had always been a place of violence and this was no exception. Violence had been a part of Vidor’s history from the very beginning. (Ref: https://www.ned.lib.tx.us/william1.htm)
WT Block Jr. reported about Duncan's Woods having a very sparse population which consisted of mostly bootleggers who lived in heavily-timbered areas surrounded by wooded forests and marshy swamps then. Bootleggers would shoot at outsiders or those thought to be law enforcement. This was before the days of the Prohibition era. WT Block Jr. reported of there also being gun violence in Duncan's Woods. (Ref: www.wtblock.com/wtblockjr/william1.htm)
Charles Sheridan Vidor was the founding father of the town of Vidor, Texas who helped plan the layout of the town to become a city with his lumber mill and company called Miller & Vidor Lumber Company from the early 1900s to the 1920s. He carried two .38's on his hips and was violent. Charles Sheridan Vidor was a racist city official who was the towns founding father and local KKK members happened to make it very clear in law and order the nobody black would live there. (Ref: The Klan, Patsy Sims)
Vidor, Texas was known as the “Bloody Vidor” during the 1920s. The reason for that is because violence and bar fights were part of the culture in Vidor, Texas. Violence was a recreational sport for the townspeople back then. Killings and fights took place in the bars right outside of town during the 1920s and 1930s.
Vidor, Texas was known as the “Bloody Vidor” because of frequent train-into-car wrecks that occurred on the railroad running parallel to US 90. Every single month a train on car collision would occur in the middle of town.
The local KKK factions of the Vidor Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (VOKKKK) and Knights of the White Camellia (KWC) aka White Camellia Knights (WCK). was no exception to that. The violent activities had ranged from shootings, hangings, cross burnings, lynchings, arson, murder, and beatings along with cross burnings. Violence and terrorism was a common factor in Vidor, Texas at that time. The surrounding thick forests and pine woods of the Vidor area proved to be good places for secret societies and secret meetings. These thick forests provided some cover for secret meetings of the Ku Klux Klan.
EVEN in 1920 when Vidor had a population of 50 people that was roughly male and all white. So despite local historians and citizens stating that black people had lived in Vidor prior to Charles Sheridan Vidor and his men moving there is false. The United States Census books show Vidor had an all white population back then. Vidor had been white by default. (Ref: 1920 US Census data)
White flight found a haven in Vidor as well as Rose City and Lumberton in 1920. However there had been black people living on the outskirts of town in a small town called Rose City. Although the number of black people there was only 20. There were black people living in cities and towns around Vidor prior to be driven out by white people who wanted their land throughout the 1920s and 1930s. (Ref: The Least of My Brothers Documentary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quahraYKjIQ)
It was prior to 1925 that Vidor was only by ferry across the Neches River. US 90 (Highway 90) had not been constructed until 1925. The ferry was accessible to the residents of Beaumont who worked for the Miller & Vidor Lumber Company. Vidor just had one road call Main Street running through the city back then.There were malaria epidemics that swept people away. The mosquitoes were so thick that they had smothered cattle. Vidor was known as a swamp back then. Many of the roads had huge potholes. There has always seemed to have been an atmosphere of poverty and isolation in Vidor that has continued to thrive. (Ref: Texas Monthly, Growing Up In Hate City, Norma McLemore, December 1, 1993, https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/growing-up-in-hate-city/)
1926 is when the Miller-Vidor Lumber Company had moved to the small town of Lakeview, Texas in search of more virgin timber for their business. Vidor had lost a lot of jobs a result from that particular business decision. Many of the employees were out of a job and had to seek employment elsewhere. The town of Vidor had faced poverty, violence, fire, and isolation because of this even though things were already this with or without Miller-Vidor Lumber Company. (Ref: https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1295&context=etds)
However there was one violent gruesome incident that made Vidor to become an all white sundown town permanently. The details of this incident are unsettling to many and shocking. Here is how Vidor became known as an all white sundown town.
A lynching of 3 black men took place in Vidor’s Ward 6 neighborhood on the north side at Smiths Lake in 1930. What happened is that a black man had raped a white woman in the middle of the night during midnight. The women had screamed loudly and had gotten the local Ku Klux Klan's attention. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) went on to search for the rapist.
These two black men were taken to a local fishing hole called Smiths Lake on the north side of town in Vidor’s Ward 6 neighborhood during the day. Three ropes dangled from a set of trees near Smiths Lake. Vidor’s Ku Klux Klan members had captured and lynched (hung) two black men “before they got the right one.” (Ref: Texas Monthly, Vidor in Black And White, Mimi Swartz, December 1993, https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/vidor-in-black-and-white/)
Eventually Klan members did find the third black male who had raped the white woman. Klan members castrated that man’s privates parts and had a sign placed around his neck which read “Nigger, don’t let the sun set on you in Vidor.” Klan members mutilated him by cutting off his penis and testicles. This is what drove lead black people to avoid Vidor for many years. (Ref: https://www.genealogy.com/ftm/k/n/o/Jarrell-J-Knowles/BOOK-0001/0006-0001.html)
Vidor’s Ku Klux Klan members were members of the Vidor Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (VOKKKK) and Knights of the White Camellia (KWC) aka White Camellia Knights (WCK). They were the ones responsible for the lynching of those three black men.
That is what happened to the black people who lived in or around Vidor and how black people were driven out of Vidor completely. Vidor was known as a sundown town for good by 1930.
In the 1930s, the Ku Klux Klan groups that had a stranglehold in local politics that had ruled Vidor with an iron fist were known as Knights of the White Camellia (KWC), White Camellia Knights (WCK) and Vidor Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The surrounding thick forests provided some cover for secret meetings of the Ku Klux Klan. It was an idealistic environment for the local Ku Klux Klan groups.
Vidor was national headquarters and state headquarters for the Ku Klux Klan along with Dallas, Texas, Pulanski, Tennessee, Beaumont, Texas, Mena, Arkansas, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Harrison, Arkansas, and Hammond, Indiana along with several other klan klaverns in cities and town across the Untied States.
The Ku Klux Klan groups that had a stranglehold in local politics that had ruled Vidor with an iron fist were known as Knights of the White Camellia (KWC), White Camellia Knights (WCK), Traditional Knights, and Vidor Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (VOKKKK). The Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama once reported of 7 Ku Klux Klan factions of being active in Vidor at least since the 1950s.
The surrounding thick forests and pine woods of the Vidor area proved to be good places for secret societies and secret meetings. These thick forests provided some cover for secret meetings of the Ku Klux Klan.
As for the sundown town signs… There were several sundown signs and not just one. Vidor was known for these prominent hand-painted signs on the outskirts of town. One sign was posted on west of Vidor and another sign was posted on the east of Vidor. Both of which were located on the outskirts of the city limits. Another sign was posted in the middle town.
A large hand-painted sign warning black people to get out of town after sundown was erected and constructed by the Vidor Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1930 west of town on I 10 & Church Street and another on I 10 & Main Street in all directions. One read, "Niggers read this and run. If you can't read, run anyway." and another that simply said, "Nigger don't let the sun set on you in Vidor." The sundown sign located on I 10 & Main Street remained for many years until 1988 when the US government took the signs down. This was the sundown sign that read, "Nigger don't let the sun set on you in Vidor."
Detroit Free Press wrote a news article about Vidor’s attempt of changing their image and had reported the sundown sign was taken down a few years prior to 1993. So this meant that the very last sundown sign was removed sometime during the 1980s. (Ref: DETROIT FREE PRESS, Changing times run Klan out of town, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/97547964/)
There also used to be a black doll hanging by its neck from a tree and from the Vidor City Limits sign. This doll also could be found by the railroad by a wooden sign that was painted all white and had sported the caption of “KEEP VIDOR WHITE” .
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