The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 86, July 1982 - April, 1983 Page: 535
616 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The "Waco Horror"
sade to include a federal law prohibiting the crime of lynching. In late
July, Joel E. Spingarn, chairman of the NAACP's board of directors,
and Oswald Garrison Villard, the organization's treasurer, issued a
joint appeal for contributions to an antilynching fund to finance "the
first nation-wide campaign against the ancient American institution of
lynching that ever gave promise of wiping the blot once [and] for all
from our escutcheon." The following month, Spingarn informed Phil-
ip G. Peabody, a prominent Boston attorney who had expressed inter-
est in financing an antilynching campaign, that "The publicity we
gave Waco has roused a fighting spirit we must not let die." Mean-
while, Villard, in an appeal for financial assistance for the NAACP's
Anti-Lynching Fund, proclaimed: "The crime at Waco is a challenge
to our American civilization, yes, to every American .. ."35
Invigorated by the national attention devoted to the lynching of
Jesse Washington, the NAACP's antilynching crusade proceeded at
such a furious pace during the remainder of 1916 that Joel Spingarn
optimistically declared the campaign "the most striking achievement"
of the year. By early 1917, however, international events dominated
the nation's attention to such an extent that little interest could be
generated for reforms in the realm of race relations. With the entrance
of the United States into World War I in April, NAACP leaders prob-
ably realized that they had little hope of winning support for such a
politically divisive issue as a federal antilynching law. Consequently,
while NAACP antilynching efforts continued on several fronts during
the war, the "Waco horror" was relegated to an anonymous position
among thousands of instances of mob violence inflicted upon black
Americans in the pre-World War I era.3G
In many respects the events surrounding the lynching of Jesse Wash-
ington differed little from other episodes of mob violence in the
United States. The incident occurred in the South, and the victim was
a black male who had confessed to crimes that in the eyes of some
3aCleveland Advocate, July 22, 1916 (first quotation); Joel E. Spingarn to Philip G. Pea-
body, Aug. 4, 1916 (second quotation), NAACP Archives; Crisis, XII (Aug., 1916), 168
(third quotation).
SGCrisis, XIII (Feb., 1917), 166 (quotation); Kellogg, NAACP, 220, 227-231. The "Waco
horror," however, was not completely forgotten following America's entrance into World
War I. Among the literature distributed for the NAACP-sponsored "Negro Silent Protest
Parade" in New York City on July 28, 1917-a demonstration against mob violence held
in the wake of the East St. Louis race riot-was the following statement: "We march be-
cause we want to make impossible a repetition of Waco, Memphis, and East St. Louis, by
arousing the conscience of the country and bringing the murders of our brothers, sisters,
and innocent children to justice." Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 37,
38 (quotation).535
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 86, July 1982 - April, 1983, periodical, 1982/1983; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101209/m1/595/: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.