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| The lynching of teenage Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas |
A crowd of over 10,000 people gathered at city hall in Waco, Texas; the court had just sentenced a teenage boy to death. However, this was not your average sentencing. The defendant was a teenage African-American farmhand by the name of Jesse Washington and he was accused of raping and killing Lucy Fryer, the wife of his employer. After the guilty verdict, he was dragged throughout the town, kicking and screaming, and eventually found himself at the base of a tree in front of city hall. A chain was placed around his neck; he was doused in gasoline, and then raised and lowered over a prepared fire pit to burn him to death. It was at this precise moment that the photograph was taken and subsequently printed on postcards for all to see.
This
horrifying image most clearly demonstrates the monstrosity of human nature in
this area of the United States at the time. Thousands of white onlookers gazed
intently at the spectacle before them as if they were at some type of circus or
baseball game. The aspect that I found most interesting was general uniformity
of the spectators so intentionally captured by the photographer. It seems that almost every single male in the photograph is wearing a white top hat with some
dark ribbon, and the women appear to be wearing darker, wider hats. This representation establishes the amalgamation of the white race at the time; there were
thousands of people who could have stepped in and said that this process was not
all right but the status quo at the time seemingly was some sort of fascination
over the mutilation of another human being.
This
image, like many of the postcards from James Allen’s collection, was the
demonstration of a gruesome atrocity now known as the “Waco Horror” (as
popularized by W.E.B. Dubois after the incident). Almost every single person is
intently watching the horror manifest itself in front of them… and this image
was captured and then printed to be seen by thousands more. Throughout our history,
it seems as if we look to push out these types of images in our minds due to
the gravity of the situation. These photographs plague our history and they
will never, and should never, be forgotten.
