(May 16, 2006)—Waco City Council members decided to continue discussions Tuesday on a resolution condemning the once prevalent “culture of lynching” after reviewing an 800-word draft resolution of apology from the Community Race Relations Coalition.

Council members said they will likely draft their own resolution and may approach McLennan County Commissioners about working on the draft jointly.

Earlier Tuesday McLennan County Judge Jim Lewis and Commissioner Ray Meadows said they could not accept the wording of the resolution drafted by the Race Relations Coalition, which apologizes for the "failure of past leadership to uphold and defend lynching victims' most basic rights to life, liberty, and due process under the laws of our cherished democracy."

They said they would work with Commissioner Lester Gibson, who is black, to draft another version.

Members of the coalition held a news conference Monday on the steps of the McLennan County Courthouse to urge the council and commissioners to approve the resolution.

The news conference came on the 90th anniversary of the May 15, 1916 lynching of Jesse Washington, a 17-year-old black resident who was dragged from the county courthouse, beaten, stoned, castrated, hanged and burned in front of City Hall.

Click Here To Read The Full Resolution

The community appears to be divided over the call for an apology. Some officials are reportedly uncomfortable with apologizing for the violent incidents that happened nine decades or more ago, and would rather condemn the practice than apologize for specific incidents.

Other residents say the lynchings are history and should be left in the past.

Click Here For Race Relations Coalition Web Site

By some accounts as many as 15,000 residents watched as Washington was lynched, which was about half of Waco’s population at that time.

Click Here For More On The Lynching From The Handbook Of Texas

The size of the crowd and the failure of most of the city’s political, civic, religious and academic leaders to respond in the aftermath made the lynching a symbol of mob violence.

It happened eight days after Washington was arrested and charged in the bludgeoning death of Lucy Fryer, 53, the wife of a white farmer in Robinson.

Washington was transferred to the Dallas County Jail after he confessed to raping and murdering the woman, but was returned to Waco for a one-day trial in which a jury of twelve white men deliberated for just minutes before returning a guilty verdict.

As officers moved to remove Washington from the courtroom, a group of white spectators seized the teenager and rushed him down stairs to the alley behind the courthouse where several hundred more people were waiting to drag him toward City Hall.

A book published last year, “The First Waco Horror,” focused the national media spotlight on Washington’s lynching and gave the coalition additional impetus to act.

“Dealing with the problem head-on will be treating this open wound instead of ignoring it, and will allow us to bind it up so that it, and we, can heal and thus move forward past the divisions this wound causes, to unity,” the coalition said on its Web site.

Not everyone agrees that an apology is necessary or even appropriate, however.

The murder victim’s great granddaughter still lives in Robinson.

In a letter to the editor, Charlotte Morris wrote, “Our family isn't asking the community for an apology for what Jesse Washington to our great grandmother, nor do we think the community owes anyone an apology for what happened to Mr. Washington,”

“A written resolution is not going to change the past.”

Click Here To Read The Full Letter

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