"The Waco Horror": The Lynching of Jesse Washington
Waco, McLennan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The history of McLennan County, like that of Texas and the nation, is marred by institutional racism sometimes manifested in violence. From 1860 through 1922, 43 lynchings were documented here. Following reconstruction, most victims were black. Jim Crow Laws and acts of violence were used to disenfranchise, segregate and impede the advancement of African Americans. 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 brief proceedings with novice lawyers, Washington was convicted of murder and sentenced to death after four minutes of jury deliberation. 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. (2016)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In May 1916, a teenaged African American farmhand named Jesse Washington was accused of murdering a white woman in the farming community of Robinson, near Waco. After a four-minute jury deliberation, a mob seized him from the courthouse and, before a cheering crowd of thousands, beat, mutilated, hanged, and burned him to death in one of the most notorious lynchings in American history. The NAACP sent investigator Elisabeth Freeman, and W.E.B. Du Bois published her findings and the crowd's own photographs in The Crisis, branding the atrocity "The Waco Horror."
Why it matters
The case became a national turning point in the anti-lynching movement and helped galvanize the NAACP's long struggle for civil rights and equal justice under law.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Jesse Washington
- · W.E.B. Du Bois
- · Elisabeth Freeman
Related events
- · The Waco Horror (1916)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sheppard "Shep" Mullens
Waco, TX
Born into slavery in Alabama around 1829 and brought to Texas in 1854, Sheppard "Shep" Mullens emerged after Emancipation as a Waco community leader — acquiring land, registering voters, and serving as a delegate to the 1868-69 Constitutional Convention. In 1870 he won a seat in the 12th Texas Legislature, among the first African Americans ever to serve there, representing McLennan, Limestone, and Falls counties. He died in office in 1871 and was buried in Waco's First Street Cemetery; the state placed this marker in his honor in 2023.
Doris Miller
Waco, TX
Doris "Dorie" Miller grew up on a McLennan County farm and enlisted in a segregated U.S. Navy, serving aboard the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. When the attack came, the mess attendant carried his wounded captain to safety, then manned an anti-aircraft gun he had never been trained to use. Admiral Chester Nimitz awarded him the Navy Cross, the first ever given to an African American; Miller was later killed in action in 1943, and a warship was named in his honor.
G. W. Carver High School
Waco, TX
Opened in 1956, G. W. Carver High School educated some 500 African American children of the La Vega district and honored the famed scientist and educator George Washington Carver. Its students excelled, and in 1967 its award-winning marching band traveled to Montreal's Expo '67 and carried home the grand prize as champion American high school band. The school closed in 1970 when federal courts ordered integration, then lived on as a community center, special-education site, and finally a neighborhood school.
St. James United Methodist Church
Waco, TX
St. James Methodist Church was organized in 1874 by Father Anderson Brack, its first worship held in a riverside house that doubled as a school for Waco's Black community. Over the following half-century the congregation built a succession of sanctuaries, completing this modified Gothic Revival building — with decorative brickwork, pointed-arch windows, and octagonal towers — in 1924. For more than a century it has anchored missionary work, service, and Christian education in the city.