Some of you may be wondering why certain documents are included or excluded from this site. Much of this has to do with permissions and also a desire to not overwhelm the reader with content.
Newspapers are one of the most abundant sources for material on the Slocum Massacre. Much of the early reporting reflects false reports, such as the Abilene Daily Reporter article posted on this site titled: "Race Riot at Slocum Results in Death of 23 Negroes, 4 Whites." Later newspaper accounts tended to be more accurate, but nonetheless present a wide array of biases. One of the best sites for studying Texas history, and digitized newspapers in general, is the Portal to Texas History where you can do a wide variety of searches and also search within specific editions thanks to optical character resolution (ocr). Though sources like the Portal to Texas History are cited on this website, there are no copyright restrictions on newspapers from 1910. Thus when you search on sites like the New York Times archives and see the nyt copyright symbol at the bottom of the article that is in fact illegal. If you're interested you can read more here.
Government documents and archives were another fruitful source of information for this website. They are cited with enough details so that you will know where to look if you want to find the original documents at places like the Texas State Archives or Sam Houston State University's archives. With other sources, such as those from the Houston County Historical Commission, permission was required and granted via email. And many other documents and images presented here were granted by the family members who held them.
There are a few first person accounts that are either copyrighted or protected that will eventually (I hope) be included on this site. This includes Judge Gardner's memoirs where he discusses his role in trying to bring the perpetrators to justice. Another memoir comes from Jerry Sadler, one of Texas' most storied politicians, who grew up a short distance away from Slocum. Seeing the terrible effect of the massacre when he was a boy, stayed with Sadler throughout his life and he discusses this in his memoir, still under copyright, hence the delay in posting it here.
Finally, the most important source will be from the individuals who lived through the Slocum Massacre and their descendants. Eventually this website will feature their voices and stories about what life was like before, during, and after the Slocum Massacre. These oral histories will be presented as audio recordings and transcripts, with the copyright remaining with the interviewees themselves. Thanks to creative commons licensing we should be able to post these interviews on this site by attribution rather than ownership.
Hopefully this has clarified some questions you may have had about sources. Let the users of this site know what you discover!
-Scot McFarlane