This piece was originally published on NewsOne, June 11, 2026.
In May 1916, in Waco, Texas, 17-year-old Jesse Washington was convicted of murder and rape during a one-hour trial in which his feckless attorney offered no defense. The courtroom had already done its work and named him guilty after deliberating for only four minutes. But Washington’s conviction and death sentence were not enough.
A mob of white men and boys dragged him out of the courthouse, stripped him naked, spat on him, kicked, stabbed, and castrated him, passed his genitals around in a handkerchief, and hauled him before a waiting crowd of 15,000 spectators, where they burned him alive under a tree in front of the mayor’s office.
The pyre where the teenager was chained and cooked for hours was constructed by small boys who were paid to gather scraps of wood and kindling. Another small child, sitting at the top of the same tree above the barbaric spectacle, had to be rescued when the smoke overwhelmed him. Waco’s mayor later complained about the destruction of “a good tree.”
One hundred and ten years later, still in the State of Texas, another Black teenager, Karmelo Anthony, has been made to stand before a racist public hungry to see his body destroyed beyond any ordinary measure of justice. No, there was no tree, chain, fire, or white children perched in trees or on adult shoulders after Anthony’s conviction and sentencing. But I am seeing that same old mob’s bloodlust moving through the comment sections across social media pages, including my own.
Continue reading the rest of the piece here on NewsOne.
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