The Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington

Marker Text: The history of McLennan County, like that of Texas and the nation, clouded by racial tensions, is sometimes manifested in violence. From 1860 through 1922, 43 lynchings were documented here. Following reconstruction, laws were instituted that held African Americans back from education, jobs and participation in many forms of government.

The most notorious local act of racial violence occurred in 1916. On May 8th, in the farming community of Robinson, Mrs. Lucy Fryer was killed near her house. Jesse Washington, a teenaged African American farmhand, was arrested for her murder. Known to be illiterate and possibly having an intellectual disability, Washington changed his story from denial to admission of guilt after being questioned for days. One week later, as large crowds gathered, he was brought to Waco for trial. Following a brief trial and after four minutes of jury deliberation, Washington was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Immediately, he was seized by a horde of onlookers and dragged several blocks to city hall where he was beaten, stabbed, hanged, mutilated and burned to death as thousands cheered.

Jesse Washington’s horrific death received unparalleled nationwide public attention. Several reports, particularly from outside Texas, denounced the act as a breakdown of law and morality. The newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – now the nation’s oldest Civil Rights organization – hired Elisabeth Freeman to investigate. Famed editor W.E.B. Du Bois used her findings and commemorative photographs taken at the scene as the basis for the NAACP’s July 1916 issue of The Crisis, a widely distributed publication, referring to the event as “The Waco Horror.” Du Bois and the NAACP made the atrocity a turning point in the National Anti-Lynching Movement and a step in the long march toward the promise of Civil Rights for all.