during the renovation of the 16-panel mural depicting Waco’s history. While some defended the image as a harmless reminder of what they called Waco’s “Wild West” past, Black citizens were vocal in denouncing it as a symbol of racial terror and violence. After the discovery of the painting, County Commissioner Lester Gibson, who is African American, introduced a resolution before the Commissioners Court, which condemned the history of lynching in McLennan County. Gibson indicated his desire to place the resolution on a plaque next to the mural to keep the memory of this dark chapter in Waco’s history alive and to symbolize the city’s communal condemnation of its lynching past.25 The proposition was met with silence. Since no second motion was made, the resolution did not pass that year.
Gibson continued to pursue the resolution, however, and was finally able to pass it in 2006. It took another five years, until 2011, for Gibson to receive approval to have the one-page resolution put on display next to the mural in the courthouse. Although it condemns lynching, the resolution does not mention any victims by name. Progress toward remembering Washington by name was finally made in May 2016—the centennial anniversary of his killing—when the mayor and city council issued a proclamation reiterating the 2006 resolution and explicitly denouncing the “heinous lynching of Jesse Washington.”26
Prior to the anniversary of his execution , a planning committee had also approached the McLennan County Historical Commission about submitting an application to the state to place a historical marker somewhere in Waco as a symbol “that this is our dedication as a community to acknowledge our past and commit to never letting this happen again.”27 While these plans did not materialize in time for the centennial, the Texas Historical Commission approved the application in July of 2016. However, no marker has yet appeared anywhere in Waco.
A Call to Remember
Memory matters. The narratives we tell about the past are sedimented in the present, and they affect our future. On a collective scale that is why public acts of remembrance matter. As Rigney writes, they are “as much about shaping the future as about recollecting the past.”28 But simply remembering does not suffice to fully recognize the suffering of the victim nor bring social healing. The remembering may be selective, and selective memory may be as detrimental, if not more so, than collective forgetting. In order to engage the truth in history we must be willing to engage with the whole story, which requires extending a platform to the voices of those who were victimized and silenced. In Germany, it meant hearing the stories of Jews; in the United States, it means listening to the voices and stories of African Americans and other minorities; and in Waco, it means engaging with a painful past of lynching and racial terror, including the killing of Jesse Washington. By fully remembering and deliberately memorializing the events of the past, we make possible a potential start for healing, we strengthen social bonds, and we remind ourselves of our own insidious and continued capacity for evil.
As Maya Angelou wrote in her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” which she recited at the first inauguration of President Bill Clinton:
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.29
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Julia Butler (née Wallace) was a 2018 FASPE Clergy & Religious Leaders Fellow. A former student at George W. Truett Theological Seminary and the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work at Baylor University, she now serves as the associate pastor of college and missions at First Baptist Church Waco.
25 Armando Villafranca.,Controversy Born Over Courthouse Mural, Houston Chronicle. June 30, 2002.
26 Smith, ‘Waco Horror’ at 100.
27 Kristin Hoppa, County Historical Group Supports Marker Commemorating Jesse Washington Lynching,” Waco Tribune-Herald”, February 11, 2016.
28 Rigney, Reconciliation, 251.
29 Angelou Maya, On the Pulse of Morning (New York: Random House, 1993).
30