Dallas Morning News
October 12, 1897

HE SHOT HIMSELF TO DEATH
George Johnson, the Colored Politician, Takes His Own Life at Sherman
Cause of the Act is a Mystery

Sherman, Tex., Oct. 11 - George Johnson, colored, shot himself to death with a British bulldor, 44 caliber pistol at his home 754 South Walnut street, shortly before 11 a.m.  The bullet struck the heart squarely and death was practically instantaneous.

For years he has been a leading colored politician and has represented the Republican party as a delegate in county, congressional, state and national conventions repeatedly.  For several years prior to last September, he has been janitor of the Washington public school building, but was removed when white janitors were decided upon.  There is nothing definite to be learned, but upon authoritative statements of those who know it is safe to say his death by his own hands is due to a sense of pride.

His wife stated at the inquest that some days since he had said he desired when dead to be buried by the Odd Fellows.  He is noble grand of the local colored lodge and past worshipful master in the colored Masonic lodge.  She stated she had apprehensions but did not think it would be suicide.

This morning he read a letter no one can find and walked down the street.  He came back and walked into the house.  His wife and Fannie Lindsay were standing. In a short time they heard a shot and rushing into the house found him prostrate on the sitting room floor, gasping convulsively.  The light coat he had worn had been removed, the shirt was unbuttoned and wide open.  In the center of a powder blackened place on the left breast, the blood bubbled spasmodically with each breath. Near his right hand lay the pistol.  It was premeditated and well executed.

Medical aid came but he was dead long before the physician arrived.

In his left pants pocket there was a crumpled letter from a business house in the city dated Sept. 15, urging the settlement of some business matter.  There were other letters and papers, none of which bore even indirectly upon the affair.

Willie Simms, a colored girl, whose parents live near the Johnson home, said that shortly before 11 o'clock the deceased came to their house and asked for her father's pistol. She had not given it to him at first because her father had told her never to let it go out of the house without a written order.  This she told Johnson, who told her that he had just left her father and that he had told him to get it.  She let him have the pistol and he had told her he would return it in the afternoon just as soon as he came back from a trip into the country.

Recently Johnson was arrested by mistake on a warrant charging a colored man by the same name with running a gaming house, but that is not supposed to have in any way influenced him.  There are a great many colored men who knew him well who advance the theory that recent reverses in local political influence made him desperately despondent.

Dallas Morning News
October 13, 1897

JOHNSON'S FUNERAL

Sherman, Tex., Oct. 12 - The burial of George Johnson, the well-known colored politician, who suicided at his home in this city yesterday, took place this afternoon and was one of the most imposing events of the kind ever seen in colored circles in north Texas.  The colored Odd Fellows and Masons participated.

The deceased held an insurance policy for $2000 on his life.

There are still a great many theories advanced why he took his own life, but none of them have a satisfactory verification.

SUICIDE
Susan Hawkins
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