Waco to Brownwood: Denial, Acknowledgement & Rose Colored Glasses

Editorial: Time for Waco to own up to tragic lynching 89 years ago
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Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Eighty-nine years ago this month nearly half of Waco's population gathered on the town square to watch and cheer the mutilation, lynching and burning of a 17-year-old black youth named Jesse Washington.
Because the event was captured for posterity in a series of shocking photographs taken by Waco photographer Fred Gildersleeve from the second floor of City Hall, Waco will forever be associated with the the nation's sordid history of lynching.
That's a fact.
It's also a fact that the city of Waco has never acknowledged this historic event.
Rather than fading from memory, the May 15, 1916, lynching has again made Waco the center of attention as historians revive that particularly shameful part of America's past.
Two well-researched books have recently been published that feature the 1916 lynching, which was described in the international press at the time as the “Waco horror.”
A third book on the same incident is being written by a Washington Post reporter.
As a means of healing and bringing people together, Waco City Council members should acknowledge the city's historic failure to recognize the event. It should erect a plaque, marker or some other suitable memorial in a public place.
Public recognition of the event was sought when the Freedom Fountain was constructed behind City Hall, when a courthouse mural was being restored a few years ago and when former Councilman Lawrence Johnson requested recognition of the event after he saw Gildersleeve's lynching photos during a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, where they continue to draw interest.
In recent weeks, the congregations of the Seventh and James Baptist Church, which is predominantly white, and Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, which is predominantly black, gathered in a joint meeting to hear Houston author Patricia Bernstein discuss her book about the lynching, The First Waco Horror.
The Gildersleeve photograph of Washington's smoldering corpse surrounded by thousands of on-lookers was passed around the sanctuary.
The crowd in the town square that Monday 89 years ago was estimated at 15,000. The youth was mutilated with knives before he was strung up with a chain over a fire. He was tortured for more than a hour before being decapitated and dragged through Waco.
The event became a centerpiece for a nationwide antilynching campaign.
In an effort to finally heal past wounds and express a sign of unity for the future, Waco officials should gather suggestions from the community, such as the congregations of local churches, and finally take some action to officially acknowledge the event that clearly refuses to be ignored.
source: http://www.wacotrib.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2005/05/24/20050524wacedit1.html