In Paris, Sixth Judicial District Court Judge Ben H. Denton (né Benjamin Harrison Denton; 1854–1940) ordered a special grand jury to investigate the burning of the Arthur brothers. On July 26, 1920, the jury returned five bills of indictment, all for first degree murder. Those indicted were: On October 30, 1920, Judge Denton ordered the cases of the five defendants to be transferred to Fifty-Ninth District Court at Sherman, under Judge Silas Hare (1862—1931), son of late State Representative Silas Hare (1827–1908). All were acquitted. In the case of the State v. Tom Dobbs, Judge Hare, on January 14, 1922, instructed a jury to acquit Dobbs on the grounds that the State failed to connect the defendant to the crime. In the case of the State v. Ernest Coggins, the case was "passed" January 11, 1922, when called by the Fifty-Ninth District Court in Sherman—Judge Frank Edward Wilcox (1865–1938), presiding—due to defense counsel's claim that Coggins was ill at home in Paris. "Passed" meant that the case was called and nothing A passed case is not a dismissal. Rather, it leaves the court an option to schedule a court hearing, later. Coggins was a World War I veteran—a U.S. Navy —and a fireman for Paris. "After the bodies had been burned to a crisp" , Wilbur Clough, dressed in khakis, identified himself as being in charge of the U.S. Government Recruiting Office in Paris and climbed halfway up a telephone pole near the one to which the Arthurs had been bound and announced, "We have done what we came here to do. The negroes have been burned to death and we can go to our Scott and Violet Arthur family photo The family photo was arranged by the Chicago Defender, who originally published it September 4, 1920, with the following caption: Rev. Dr. Lucas (né William W. Lucas; 1865–1926) posed with the family in the photo, but was cropped out (see his arm at the far left). The photo has endured for years—having been published in government reports, history books, and online; but the Arthur family has rarely been identified. Red Summer of 1919 The year before the lynching of Irving and Herman Arthur saw several incidents of civil unrest that spiked during the so-called American Red Summer of 1919, with terrorist attacks on black communities and white oppression in over three dozen cities and counties. In most cases, white