Fort Worth Weekly Critical Race History in Texas There’s no memorial to one of East Texas’ biggest civil rights champions, and we should all know why. By E.R. BILLS In late December 2015, Constance Hollie-Jawaid and I were still working on the final plans for the dedication ceremony for a Texas state historical marker commemorating the Slocum Massacre. The fight to get the marker approved had been grueling, and, on that particular day, we had traveled to Palestine, Texas, to meet with the marker effort’s chief antagonist, Anderson County Historical Chairman Jimmy Ray Odom. Jimmy’s beliefs about the Slocum Massacre were almost completely contradictory to ours, but — in conversation, anyway — he was a straight shooter. Our historical and cultural disagreements notwithstanding, I respected him for that.