A notorious crime over fifty years ago in Texas changed the way Americans view courtroom drama—not just as fictional entertainment but as reality programming. In December of 1955, the murder trial of Harry Leonard Washburn of Houston in a McLennan County courtroom brought not only scores of observers from around the country but also the eyes of local viewers who were mesmerized by the proceedings.

On January 19, 1955, San Angelo police arrived at the scene of a car-bombing, a rare crime virtually unheard of in Texas. The victim—Helen Harris Weaver, 51, a rancher and well-known architect’s wife—was killed instantly by a bomb wired to the ignition of her husband’s car. Police presumed he was the intended target.

It wasn’t long before newspapers named Washburn, the Weavers’ former son-in-law, as a suspect. Most accounts described him as “a down-and-out contractor.” Further investigation found that Washburn apparently had been unsuccessfully trying to hire a hit man for the job but ultimately decided to do it himself. Police described his motive as anger over being cut out of the family fortune. A colorful parade of witnesses—barmaids, strippers, female wrestlers, and assorted thugs—testified that Washburn planned to kill his father-in-law and then extort protection money from the widow to keep the rest of the family from harm.

Because of the amount of pretrial publicity in and around San Angelo, the Tom Green County district attorney and defense attorneys sought a change of venue. Judge Drummond W. Bartlett of McLennan County offered to move the trial to Waco. Bartlett also agreed to allow a KWTX-TV camera to broadcast the proceedings from the balcony of his 54th State District Court. The previous summer, he had allowed John Bennett of the Waco Tribune-Herald staff to experiment with unobtrusive courtroom photography. Advocates of cameras in the courtroom argued that television equipment could be unobtrusive, thereby not damaging to the decorum of the process.

Critics argued that however inconspicuous, the mere presence of cameras turned the judicial process into show business—jeopardizing the defendant’s right to a fair trial. Asked if he minded live television coverage of his trial, Washburn said: “Naw, let it go all over the world.” He was later found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

There was coverage from the opening gavel to the conclusion of each day—unedited and commercial-free, according to station general manager M. N. “Buddy” Bostick. All other programming was nixed, resulting in a $10,000 revenue loss to the young station—an almost $80,000 impact in today’s dollars.

The only special accommodations made for the broadcasters was boosting the lighting from 50-watt bulbs to 100-watt bulbs and hiding three microphones among the furnishings: the witness’s stand, judge’s bench, and prosecutor’s table.

From December 6 through December 9 in 1955, as the story goes, one could have “shot a cannon down Austin Avenue . . . and not hurt a soul” because the normally frenzied Christmas shoppers were all inside watching the trial. After a four-day trial, Washburn was convicted of murder, and Waco television had made history. 

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Society in the South evolved ensuing the emancipation of slaves after the Civil War. The Reconstruction of the South ended in 1877 and only added to the bad racial tensions in the region. Whites instituted laws that held blacks back from education, jobs, and participating in many forms of government. Lynching of blacks became rather prevalent and reached fever pitch in the 1890s all across the United States, but mostly in the South. Lynching escalated during the 1920s and Texas ranked third among states between the years 1885 and 1942 with approximately 468, including 339 blacks. The only states that had more lynching incidents were Mississippi and Georgia.

In May 1916, Jesse Washington, a seventeen year old black teenager, was arrested for the killing of Lucy Fryer, a fifty-three year old white woman. Washington would later confess to raping and killing Fryer. Wanting to avoid an attack on Washington while in custody in Waco, authorities in McLennan County sent Washington to a Dallas jail to await his trial. When his trial took place on May 15, 1916, Washington arrived back in Waco to a packed court room. Twelve white men formed his jury, and they found him guilty of murder after only four minutes of deliberation.

A mob had gathered around the courthouse prior to the trial and waited for their chance to capture Washington. After his conviction, the jailers took Washington down the back stairs of the courthouse, where the mob had been waiting. The mob of white citizens wrapped a chain around Washington’s neck and dragged him to city hall grounds, brutally stabbing and beating him as they went along.

A separate mob prepared a pile of dry-good boxes, which they ignited after they poured coal oil over Washington’s body. A crowd estimated to be between 15,000 to 20,000 people watched as the belligerents hung Washington from a tree and slowly lowered him up and down over the burning boxes.

After two hours of monstrously lynching Washington, the mob took his body and placed it in a bag and dragged it to Robinson, Texas, which was the hometown of Fryer and a large African-American population. The charred and mangled body of Washington hung from a utility pole in front of a blacksmith’s shop until a McLennan County Constable took his remains down and buried them. Washington’s unclaimed remains were later buried in a local potters field. The news of Jesse Washington’s lynching received national and international coverage. Horrific pictures capturing the violence and mob were taken by local photographer Fred Gildersleeve. He profited from selling these images as postcards and prints of the lynching were distributed globally.

Waco had seen another lynching previous to that of Washington. A mob had lynched an African American man by the name of Sank Majors in 1905. After a jury deliberated only three minutes in his trial, Majors was found guilty and two hundred men seized and dragged him to the town square, where they hung him from the Washington Street Bridge.

The lynchings took place during the time of the Jim Crow Laws in the South. These laws legally separated blacks and whites in numerous institutions such as schools, restrooms, and various types of transportation. “Separate but equal” had been affirmed by a 7-1 margin in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 by the Supreme Court of the United States.

The aftermath of the “Waco Horror” included a push to end lynching around the country. People began to see lynching as a barbaric act and started condemning those who participated in them. The NAACP led the charge in getting anti-lynching laws passed in light of the Washington lynching, which led to the decline of lynching after the 1920s and into the early 1960s. Lynching also had an effect on the arts. Billie Holiday released her song "Strange Fruit," and in 1935, two art exhibitions were displayed in New York City, one of which the NAACP sponsored.

In 2001, the lynching of Jesse Washington became national and local news again when ABC News Nightline aired an eighty-fifth anniversary special. Four years later, Patricia Bernstein released her book, "The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP," and it inspired the Waco community to call for local governments to apologize for the lynching. The Community Race Relations Coalition framed a resolution of apology, read it on the McLennan County Courthouse steps, and encouraged both the McLennan County Commissioners and Waco City Council to pass the resolution. After much debate over the word "apology," and the word's eventual removal, the McLennan County Commissioners passed a resolution condemning the lynching culture and mob violence of the past on May 23, 2006. The Waco City Council passed a similar resolution a little over a month later. Neither resolution included Jesse Washington by name.

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