Customer Reviews

The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students Texas A & M University)

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With The First Waco Horror, Patricia Bernstein delivers a fascinating and mortifying slice of Texas - and American - history with a meticulously researched look at the 1916 lynching, in Waco, Texas, of Jesse Washington, a retarded seventeen-year-old black boy. While lynchings were not uncommon at the time, this one was particularly galling - as many as 15,000 people, including the mayor and chief of police - stood by and watched as Washington was beaten, burnt and hung in Waco's town square. Due to the efforts of the fledgling NAACP and, in particular, a brave woman by the name of Elisabeth Freeman, the details of the lynching made headlines around the world, tarnished the image of Waco as an enlightened, cosmopolitan city (which, as Bernstein shows, was somewhat illusory from the start), and helped generate increasing support for anti-lynching sentiment and legislation. The First Waco Horror is an engaging, well-written book filled with complex characters that run the gamut from inspirational to repellent, as well as personal recollections and anecdotes that inject an extra element of emotional resonance. Like a modern Elisabeth Freeman, Bernstein excavates the details of a truly horrifying incident in our recent past and demonstrates that a small group of principled, dedicated people can stand up to the ignorance and passivity of mob mentality to foster change and evolution.

It has been many years since i've written a review on Amazon, but after reading this book, I feel compelled to do so. This is the most haunting book I have ever read. I read it over this past week, and it has stained my thoughts ever since I began the first page. I am amazed this story is not taught in U.S. History, or at the very least, Texas History. I found myself feeling deeply ashamed, disturbed, and immensely heavy as I traveled through these pages.

The book is well-written, well-researched, and gripping from beginning to end. The author does a wonderful job of painting a portrait of each character who plays a role in the actual lynching of May 1916, providing backdrop of locale, backstory of life journeys, and a clear insight into each personality. I highly recommend this book to everyone, and I hope it finds it way into many History classes throughout the country, or, at the very least, in the state of Texas.

In my opinion, the most horrifying scenes in American History are: the Salem Witch Trials, the American Genocide of the Native Americans, and the history of slavery and lynching. This book gives a piercing insight into the macrocosmic epidemic of racism and the "mob" by showing us the microcosmic horror which took place in Waco nearly 100 years ago. I never will be the same after reading this book.

"The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP" is an important addition to the books already published on the history of lynching in America. The author also describes another lynching in nearby Valdosta, Georgia, the torture and burning alive of a pregnant woman in 1918.

The only dull part of the book was the inordinate amount of detail and pages the author devoted to the history of the women's suffrage movement (the right to vote) in both England and the United States. The role of feminist Elisabeth Freeman in documenting and reporting the lynching of Jesse Washington for the NAACP was important, but the details of the women's suffrage movement, and the personal experiences that brought Freeman to Waco weren't really vital to the telling of the Jesse Washington story. Still, this is an extremely important book - the history of lynching in America has been completely left out of high school history textbooks and glossed over minimally in college-level history textbooks. This book would be an excellent addition to a required reading list for high school and college history courses.