The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACPIn 1916, in front of a crowd of ten to fifteen thousand cheering spectators watched as seventeen-year-old Jesse Washington, a retarded black boy, was publicly tortured, lynched, and burned on the town square of Waco, Texas. He had been accused and convicted in a kangaroo court for the rape and murder of a white woman. The city’s mayor and police chief watched Washington’s torture and murder and did nothing. Nearby, a professional photographer took pictures to sell as mementos of that day. The stark story and gory pictures were soon printed in The Crisis, the monthly magazine of the fledgling NAACP, as part of that organization’s campaign for antilynching legislation. Even in the vast bloodbath of lynchings that washed across the South and Midwest during the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Waco lynching stood out. The NAACP assigned a young white woman, Elisabeth Freeman, to travel to Waco to investigate, and report back. The evidence she gathered and gave to W. E. B. Du Bois provided grist for the efforts of the NAACP to raise national consciousness of the atrocities being committed and to raise funds to lobby antilynching legislation as well. In the summer of 1916, three disparate forces - a vibrant, growing city bursting with optimism on the blackland prairie of Central Texas, a young woman already tempered in the frontline battles for woman’s suffrage, and a very small organization of grimly determined “progressives” in New York City - collided with each other, with consequences no one could have foreseen. They were brought together irrevocably by the prolonged torture and public murder of Jesse Washington - the atrocity that became known as the Waco Horror. Drawing on extensive research in the national files of the NAACP, local newspapers and archives, and interviews with the descendants of participants in the events of that day, Patricia Bernstein has reconstructed the details of not only the crime but also its aftermath. She has charted the ways the story affected the development of the NAACP and especially the eventual success of its antilynching campaign. She searches for answers to the questions of how participating in such violence affected the lives of the mob leaders, the city officials who stood by passively, and the community that found itself capable of such abject behavior. |
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American Anti-Lynching Campaign April arrested attorney Austin Baylor University Bob Buchanan Bois's Brann burned confession court crime Crisis crowd Dallas death editorial Elisabeth Freeman fact Frazier George Fryer Gildersleeve hanging Henry Herald August Ibid interview J. E. Spingarn jail Jenkins Jesse Washington John Johnson June jury Kesler killed letter Lucy Fryer lynch mob lynchers lynching of Jesse March Mary White Ovington mayor McLennan County McNamara Moorfield Storey murder NAACP Nation newspaper Oswald Garrison Villard Ovington Peabody photographs rape reports Robinson Rosika Schwimmer Roy Mitchell Royal Freeman Nash Sank Majors says seems Sironia Smith South southern Stegall story Street suffragist Swift Vengeance Wreaked told town trial vote W. E. B. Du Bois Waco Horror Waco Lynching Waco Morning Waco Semi-Weekly Tribune Waco Times Herald Waco Tribune Herald Waco's Wacoans Walling Washington lynching William William English Walling woman women women's suffrage Wreaked on Negro York young Zadie
References to this book
Twentieth-century Texas: A Social and Cultural History John Woodrow Storey,Mary L. Kelley Limited preview - 2008 |