In 1916, Jesse was killed by the people of Waco, Texas, after being forced to sign a confession he could not read.
Warning: This article discusses a violent lynching. To respect the memory of Jesse, pictures of the lynching are not part of this article, however, descriptions are not sanitized. All links that contain photos of the lynching will have a (*) by them.
In 1916, an angry White mob killed Jesse Washington. He was a 17-year old child whose death was a public event where men, women, and children watched his torture. It was lynching that would change America and it came at the expense of a child’s life.
The Murder of Jesse
The following is a summary of Jesse’s death according to Elisabeth Freeman’s reports, in the article titled The Waco Horror* in the NAACP’s The Crisis Magazine. Freeman went to Waco and interviewed local authorities, and witnesses to the murder, contributing to an article that horrified the people of the United States. The story describes in unforgiving detail the final days, hours, and moments of Jesse’s life. According to The Waco Horror, this is what we know:
Jesse was accused of killing and raping his employer, a White woman named Lucy Fryer. After being arrested, Jesse confessed to the crime and was quickly put on trial for his alleged crimes. The trial was short and the verdict from the all-white male jury was delivered in minutes*: guilty, sentenced to death.
That’s when the mob attacked. Jesse was dragged from the courthouse out into the street, marched about until the mob had completed the execution site: a tree where they had built a fire pit. According to Freeman, by the time he arrived at the tree, Jesse’s genitals had been cut off* and he had been stabbed multiple times. The article also notes that to prevent him from grabbing the chain and fleeing the flames, his fingers were also cut off. The murders then lowered him onto the fire, burning him to death in as onlookers watched.
In a final act of violence against Jesse, his death was photographed; not for purposes of documenting criminal activity, but to capture a moment of excitement for the city of Waco.
That was how Jesse Washington died: publicly humiliated, tortured, and in his final moments, his death was entertainment for a cruel crowd.
The Photographs of Jesse’s Murder
The photographs of the lynching are a gaze into hell. One black and white image* shows a white mob swarming around a tree where you can see a fire pit with what appears to be a man laying across it. Another image* shows the result of the lynching, with Jesse’s burnt remains hanging from the tree, a chain around what would be his neck.
These photographs are one of the most important historical records we have of lynchings. Many lynching photographs were taken after the act and are images of Black people hanging, their souls having left this Earth. All of these deaths were horrific and traumatic. However, the photographs of Jesse’s murder are crucial because they show the process of a lynching. The crowds, the glee, and the final result. It shows how this type of violence was a social event for members of White communities.
The photographs of Jesse’s murder remove any romanticization one carries of “the old south” because at the core, this is it. The photos of Jesse Washington being burned alive as a White crowd socializes is Jim Crow in all its splendor. These photos are the legacy of the antebellum south. This is Dixieland. These photos encapsulate meant different things to different groups, for White people it was a sweet memory, for Black people it was a horror story.
For White people, these photographs were souvenirs. The photographer, Fred Gildersleeve, sold the photographs. The pictures of Jesse’s murder became dark momentos; conversations starters for White people to discuss in their parlors and at the dinner table. They were tools of White power education as parents could show their children the charred body of Jesse and start a conversation about Black people knowing their place. The photographs were a glorification of White rage, soothing portraits of what White people could do to any Black person that threatened their power.
For Black people, the photographs were a warning and message. They showed Black people what would happen to them should they dare to step out of line, or raise their voice or hand to a White person. They were also reminders at how quickly the judicial system would fail them and their deaths would be spectacles for White communities. These photographs were, essentially, a public relations campaign for White supremacy.
In the end, the production of these pictures was short-lived. The photographs were so horrendous that Gildersleeve admitted to the NAACP that he had ceased selling them. In a letter, Gildersleeve explaining the reason wrote, “our ‘City dads’ objected on the grounds of ‘bad publicity’…” In the end, it was national horror at the town’s actions, not the death of a Black man, that encouraged Gildersleeve to stop selling the profitable photographs.
