By Blake Hollingsworth | Staff Writer
On May 15, 1916, Jesse Washington, a Black 17-year old, was lynched in Waco after being convicted of murdering 53-year-old Lucy Fryer. The atrocity, infamously known as the “Waco Horror,” occurred in broad daylight in front of at least 15,000 people according to retired Baylor history professor Dr. James SoRelle.
The mob’s actions sparked a national outcry to outlaw lynching, with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People leading the charge. The organization condemned the execution in its monthly publication.
“Any talk of the triumph of Christianity, or the spread of human culture, is idle twaddle so long as the Waco lynching is possible in the United States of America,” W.E.B. Du Bois, founder and chief editor, wrote in The Crisis, Vol. 12 (No. 3).
The magazine’s July 1916 edition also featured an eight-page supplement detailing the events, as recounted by suffrage activist Elisabeth Freeman. The piece included gruesome photographs of Washington’s charred body and the tightly packed crowd, many smiling as they watched. These momentous pictures were captured by American photographer Fred Gildersleeve, at then-Waco mayor John Dollins’ request.
The uncensored nature of the story opened Americans’ eyes to the horrors of lynching. This was especially impactful since Waco was considered a “progressive Southern city” at the time, according to Kurt Terry, author of the thesis, “Forgetting the Lynching of Jesse Washington: Manifestations of Memory and the ‘Waco Horror.’”
“His point was, ‘Look at all this going on in Waco,'” Terry said. “If it’s happening in Waco, what’s going to happen in the backwoods of Mississippi or Alabama, where it’s less progressive?”
Despite public outrage, Waco remained silent about the lynching for decades and quickly removed evidence, including the tree used to hang Washington, to conceal it, according to Terry.
But in 2005, Patricia Bernstein’s book, “The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP,” exposed citizens to their city’s dark time period, leading to calls for apologies from the City Council and McLennan County Commissioners. Terry said this push was led by the Community Race Relations Coalition, a Wacoan group advocating for racial and cultural awareness.
As a result, the MCC passed a resolution condemning Waco’s past mob violence on May 23, 2006. About a month later, the Waco City Council passed one as well.
The Waco Tribune-Herald continually praised the CRRC for demanding these apologies, but one of many who disagreed was Fryer’s great-granddaughter, Charlotte Morris. According to Terry’s thesis, she wrote a letter to the news outlet voicing her displeasure.
“An apology for long-ago acts is not going to bring lynching victims back, or undo the crimes that may have led to them [being] lynched,” Morris said. “Our family isn’t asking the community for an apology for what Washington did to our great-grandmother, nor do we think the community owes anyone an apology for what happened to him.”
While SoRelle doesn’t believe the evidence pointed to Washington being innocent, he brought up a conflicting argument and said his trial was unfair.
“His interrogation would not have held up to the standards that we have today,” SoRelle said. “The signature for a confession –– he couldn’t write his name … He didn’t have sufficient counsel … The defense attorneys were called in and told they had to [represent him]. I don’t think they were excited about the prospect –– I don’t think they set up any kind of significant defense.”
SoRelle clarified that this injustice does not diminish Fryer’s death but stressed the community’s duty to uphold the judicial process.
“There were those who said, ‘Well, let’s not spend the time and the money to keep him in jail for a month and the trial and the expense of an execution; let’s just do it now,’” SoRelle said. “But that’s extralegal, and nobody seemed prepared to stop that. So you have, certainly, a situation where the Fryer family wants recognition of the life that was lost. The Washington family would want the same thing for an extralegal act taken by a mob with the support of law enforcement and the city government.”
A historical marker for Washington now stands outside Waco City Hall, following a seven-year effort by the CCRC and the City of Waco, completed on Feb. 12, 2023. This commemoration serves as both a memorial and acknowledgment of Waco’s history of lynching and racial violence.
