102 years ago, a Waco mob abused, burned, & lynched a 17 year old youth

army judge

Super Moderator
Jurisdiction
Texas
On May 15, 1916 —

102 years ago today

Jesse Washington, 17, was tortured, lynched and burned in front of Waco City Hall while as many as 15,000 residents, about half of the city's population at the time, watched. A mob dragged the illiterate black farmhand from the county courthouse eight days after he was arrested and charged in the bludgeoning death of the wife of a white farmer in Robinson. He was convicted in a one-day trial in which a jury of 12 white men deliberated for just minutes before returning a guilty verdict and then was grabbed as officers tried to remove him from the courtroom. The book "The First Waco Horror" focused the national media spotlight on Washington's lynching.





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