In Houston, the past is frequently bulldozed to make way for the future.

But in Columbus, Texas, west of Houston, a part of its past is still standing tall.

A tree that’s historical, yet controversial.

Should it stay or should it go?

A small Texas town where history runs deep, where some stories, no matter how old, never die.

“We can’t bury it we can’t hide it. It happened,” said resident Marvin Reichle, “It’s not a very pleasant event in the history of Columbus.”   

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Some say the tree should come down, others say the tree didn't do anything, it was the people.

On the outskirts of Columbus is an oak tree that is a window into a dark place in time.

It seems just about everyone born and raised in Columbus and parts of Colorado County are familiar with the tree, they have heard the stories of what happened here 71 years ago, in November, 1935.

“We don’t bring these out very often for obvious reasons,” said town historian Bill Stein.

Stein pulled out the newspapers that tell the story. The headline reads,      “Columbus Girl Brutally Murdered”.

The victim was white, 19-year-old Geraldine Kollmann. The suspects were two black teenagers.

These are the confessions of Benny Mitchell, Jr. and Ernest Collins.

The two never made it to trial. On the night of November 12, 1935, a mob snatched them from the sheriff’s car.

An original photo shows what happened next.  They were taken to that big oak tree and, with headlights from cars illuminating the two ghostly figures, Mitchell and Collins were hung from ropes.

To this day, it remains the most widely known event in the county and to this day you will get different opinions about the hanging tree.

Reichle, 80, was nine when his older cousin Geraldine Kollmannn was killed.

“If it were my choice, I would take it down. I think it’s an unpleasant memory for Columbus, or what Columbus stands for,” he said.

Ivory Collins was born after his cousins Ernest Collins and Benny Mitchell were lynched.

He too, thinks the tree should come down.

“My lifetime of 57 years, I have never stood at that tree and read nothing there. And you don’t want to go there, no,” he said.

But others here believe keeping the tree keeps the story alive, so that history doesn’t repeat itself.

“There’s a lot of things people say about the tree, it needs to be torn down, it needs to be poisoned, but I think the history behind that tree needs to be told,” said Collins.

In fact the towering oak is one of the stops on the town’s guided tour of historical places.

“My mother took it very hard. In fact it probably affected her all of her life. It didn’t do anything wrong. The tree was just there. It’s the people who did this, not the tree,” said Calvin Kollmann, 78. He is Geraldine’s younger brother.

He lives right down the road from the giant oak.

The pictures of that awful day have faded 71 years later.

The story has slowly receded into the background.

The tree still stands as if nothing ever changed, when in reality, everything around it has.