Jesse Washington Lynching Essay

Long before the tragedy of the lynching of Jesse Washington occurred, Waco had a long history of violence. Native Americans and Anglo Settlers fought in the 1860s, South Waco was once known as the “Dead Line” because there were so many outlaws in the area and the area would be avoided if they had money because they would get robbed. From 1880-1930 almost 5,000 lynchings happened in the United States, and most of those people were black. About 500 of them happened in Texas. Waco, Texas was clearly no stranger to violence, but the lynching of Jesse Washington was one of the most horrific incidents to happen there. There were many stereotypes about black people, many thought they were born criminals, and stereotypes and assumptions like these

The newspaper was fueling everyone’s anger by spreading truths, lies, and rumors. There were mobs of people wanting to get their hands on Jesse, but they couldn’t risk him getting attacked before the trial so he had to be sent to Dallas for holding. That didn’t last long because he was sent back to Waco to appease the mob. That didn’t seem like a safe or smart decision to me. About a week later, Jesse was found guilty of the rape and murder of Lucy Fryer. So many people attended the trial. I didn’t go, but I heard just about every detail about it. Jesse was questioned by county attorney John B. McNamara and Lee Jenkins, the Deputy that found evidence linking the crime to Jesse at the crime scene. At first, Jesse adamantly denied the crime but later admitted to it according to McNamara. A lady with the NAACP, Elisabeth Freeman, said that Jesse didn’t even try to cover the crime and she thought that that was the best evidence that supports Jesse’s mental challenges. It’s weird because people told me that there was no mention of the rape in the trial even though there were a ton of details about it in the published confession. I heard that the jury reached their verdict very quickly. Some said as quick as four minutes, and they found him guilty. It’s not that surprising that they found him guilty, he apparently admitted in his confession where he had hidden the hammer he used to attack Lucy Fryer, and he signed

I always thought of my town, Waco to be fairly calm but my mom did tell me that there was one other person that this happened to here in 1905 before Jesse that I was too young to know about. His name was Sank Majors, he was a little older than Jesse and also black. My mom told me he was accused of beating and raping a woman, Clinne Roberts. Her husband thought he saw Sank and he was found guilty in his trial. Although he was able to get granted a re-trial before it was able to happen a couple of hundred people took him, tied him to some post in the square and they hung him. Some say he confessed but I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but just like with Jesse nobody tried to intervene and help Sank. I just don’t understand how the mayor or someone official doesn’t do anything to stop this, isn’t their job to protect the city and the people in it? It’s also strange how not as many people know about what happened to Sank, but with Jesse’s story, I know a lot of people across the nation are hearing about it. I heard that newspapers from the New York Times, The Republic, and The Nation wrote about it. A few other Texas newspapers wrote about it too including Austin American and the Houston Post. Our local paper, the Waco Morning News said very little about it compared to the other papers. The papers also mentioned something about the NAACP investigating the whole thing and wanting to create an antilynching bill. It was already