{"product_id":"the-first-waco-horror-the-lynching-of-jesse-washington-and-the-rise-of-the-naacp-9781585444168","title":"The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1916  a crowd of ten to fifteen thousand cheering spectators watched as seventeen-year-old Jesse Washington  a retarded black boy  was publicly tortured  lynched  and burned on the town square of Waco  Texas. He had been accused and convicted in a kangaroo court for the rape and murder of a white woman. The citys officials watched Washingtons torture and murder and did nothing. Nearby  a professional photographer took pictures to sell as mementos of that day. The stark story and gory pictures were soon printed in The Crisis  the monthly magazine of the fledgling NAACP  as part of that organizations campaign for antilynching legislation. Even in the vast bloodbath of lynchings that washed across the South and Midwest during the late 1800s and early 1900s  the Waco lynching stood out. The NAACP assigned a young white woman  Elisabeth Freeman  to travel to Waco to investigate  and the evidence she gathered and gave to W. E. B. Du Bois provided grist for the efforts of the NAACP to raise national consciousness of the atrocities being committed and to raise funds to lobby anti-lynching legislation. Drawing on extensive research in the national files of the NAACP  local newspapers and archives  and interviews with the descendants of participants in the events of that day  Patricia Bernstein has reconstructed the details of not only the crime but also its aftermath. She has charted the ways the story affected the development of the NAACP and especially the eventual success of its anti-lynching campaign. She searches for answers to the questions of how participating in such violence affected the lives of the mob leaders  the city officials who stood by passively  and the community that found itself capable of such abject behavior.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45648218128437,"sku":"ByrdShop_1585444162","price":148.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781585444168.jpg?v=1781713107","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-first-waco-horror-the-lynching-of-jesse-washington-and-the-rise-of-the-naacp-9781585444168","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}