Common Sense

Waco has another dirty little secret, albeit an open one: The lynching of Jesse Washington.

Exactly 90 years ago Monday, Washington was found guilty of raping and murdering the wife of the farmer he worked for, a white woman. He was dragged from the courthouse while he was butchered. His fingers were cut off as souvenirs. He was stabbed repeatedly until a chain was wrapped around his neck and he was strung up the “hanging tree” in the town square. While he was being hanged, a crowd of about 15,000, half of Waco’s population, assembled to watch the spectacle. A fire was lit and Washington was burned alive.

The violence only ended when his corpse was brought down, decapitated and dragged through the city streets.

Not an uncommon occurence in that day in age. What was uncommon was that a prominent photographer was there to capture it all on film. He was going to turn them into postcards to boost the image of Waco. Those photographs sent shockwaves throughout the world and the whole incident was dubbed “The Waco Horror.”

And they still excite people’s passions to this day. Several books have been written, the latest being The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the rise of the NAACP by Houston writer Patricia Bernstein. I’ve mentioned it before.

That book sparked a very public debate here in Waco. So much so that this week, on the anniversary of the lynching, the city council was asked to consider a resolution apologizing for the sins of the past.

The council is split over whether or not to support that resolution. It is also before the McLennan County Commissioners.

“One thing I am positive of is my precinct doesn’t feel like they need to make an apology for something that happened 90 years ago,” [Commissioner Wendall] Crunk said. “One of the things that comes out is that if Jesse Washington hadn’t murdered Lucy Fryer, this horrible, terrible lynching would not have occurred.”

We are a community divided over whether we should apologize for an atrocity or not. The more it is argued, the more divided we become. The sins of our fathers still weigh heavily on us.

An apology should mean something. If our local politicians can only be politically pressured or guilted into passing this resolution, then it really is meaningless. Still, I would like our officials to consider it.

Commissioner Crunk points out that we (those of us alive today) did not do this horrible thing, therefore we have nothing to apologize for. That argument leads only to the fact that we also have no one to apologize to, since Washington is dead.

But as long as we don’t apologize, this will be a festering wound in our community’s heart. This isn’t just about apologizing to a convicted murderer for something we didn’t even carry out ourselves. This is about us as a community acknowledging that we aren’t perfect and that mistakes have been made. If we’re willing to apologize for this and heal our heart, maybe we can begin to apologize and rectify current misdeeds and shortcomings.

It’s the big ones we have to take care of first.