WACO, Texas — The City of Waco will hold a dedication ceremony in February to commemorate a new historical marker marking an infamous lynching that took place in 1916.
The marker, titled "The Waco Horror: The lynching of Jesse Washington," was commissioned in 2021 and will be dedicated at a ceremony at City Hall on Feb. 12.
The Texas Historical Commission has recognized the event as a significant part of Texas history, and the designation is intended to commemorate lynching culture as an important and significant part of local history.
Jesse Washington was a Black teen who was accused of raping and killing Lucy Fryer, a Robinson woman, in 1916. On May 15 of that year, he stood trial and was sentenced to death by a jury that deliberated for four minutes, according to the Community Race Relations Coalition.
Onlookers grabbed Washington and dragged him to City Hall where they beat, stabbed and hung him while some 15,000 people watched as his body burned, according to the coalition.
Images of the lynching were shared around the world, denouncing the act "as a breakdown of law and morality," the coalition wrote.
The dedication event will be held at City Hall at 300 Austin Ave. at 3 p.m.
Representatives of the City of Waco, McLennan County Historical Commission, Community Race Relations Coalition and the Waco chapter of the NAACP will speak at the ceremony. The public is invited to attend.
“Awareness and education are among the best ways to guarantee the preservation of our state’s history. This designation is a tool that will increase public awareness of important cultural resources,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the Texas Historical Commission.
“This lynching culture that existed in central Texas has had a profound and ongoing effect on our community. It devastated Waco’s reputation, ruined and impaired families even to present generations, and impeded our city’s growth. Our knowledge and acknowledgement of this history and facing the fact that a lynching culture existed in our seemingly civilized community is necessary
to commit to and be vigilant about eliminating any type of tactics to “keep people in their place,” said Jo Welter, chair of the board of the Community Race Relations Coalition.
The Texas Historical Commission is the state agency for historical preservation, and has multiple programs to meant to "preserve the archeological, historical and cultural resources of Texas".
Historical Markers are intended to raise public awareness and educate the public on historically significant places or events. There are approximately 15,000 historical markers in Texas, the most in the United States.