Twenty-five of these killings were committed in little more than a one-month period in Carrollton, the county seat, in the late winter of 1886. One local man was lynched in February, taken from jail where he was serving a sentence. Twenty-four deaths are associated with what has been known as the "Carrollton Courthouse Massacre", called a "riot" at the time and blamed on African Americans by the grand jury. But 60 armed, masked white men entered the courthouse, fatally shooting brothers Ed and Charley Brown, the black plaintiffs who had filed an assault case against a white man, and 18 other blacks, who died that day. Another three black men died of their wounds soon after. The father of the two Brown brothers was also fatally shot days later. No one was prosecuted for these killings.