In 1916, 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 officials 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 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 anti-lynching legislation.

    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 anti-lynching 
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.

_________________________________________________________

PATRICIA BERNSTEIN, who holds a degree in American studies 
from Smith College, has managed her own public relations firm in 
Houston for the past twenty years. Her articles have been published 
in Smithsonian Magazine, Texas Monthly, Cosmopolitan, and other 
magazines.


Number 101: Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students,
Texas A&M University


What people are saying about this book

"Bernstein's well-crafted narrative will help ensure that future 
generations remember this tragic event and recognize the role of 
local officials in allowing it to take place . . . Bernstein's skill in 
recounting the Washington lynching makes her book a valuable 
resource for scholars and general readers."—The Journal of Southern 
History, August 2006

". . . the topic is compelling and important. . . . a page-turner, indeed 
an often horrifying one . . . it has great potential to greatly expanding 
our understanding of race, racial violence, and racial politics in the 
early twentieth century."—Cary D. Wintz, Texas Southern University

"Historians and general readers alike should be indebted to Patricia 
Bernstein whose dogged research provides us with the most detailed 
narrative that we are ever likely to have of this unfortunate but all too 
common event that scarred the soul of a community and a nation in 
the early twentieth century."—James M. SoRelle, Baylor University

"Personalizing this tragedy puts a face and a name on an historic 
and horrific event that must not be forgotten. An important piece of 
historical research, well written and powerful."—Morris Dees, 
co-founder, Southern Poverty Law Center

"Patricia Bernstein tells a tale that is long overdue, and tells it 
extremely well. This story is riveting, tragic, and an altogether 
indispensable part of American history."—Kweisi Mfume, president 
and CEO, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

". . . Bernstein's exceptionally well told account of the lynching and 
of the activists who exposed and denounced it ranks as one of the 
best accounts of a lynching ever published."—W. Fitzhugh Brundage, 
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill