May 23, 2016


News and Views

CHANGE OF FORMAT:
All Sanders news will be in a separate blog for each day from now on, at least until after November. See this file for the various other subjects.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/05/22/teens-daring-escape/84747148/

Teen's daring escape may help solve 2 cold cases
USA Today 3 hours ago May 22, 2016

USA TODAY -- Who was ‘Buckskin Girl?’ New evidence may hold clues
USA TODAY -- Alleged killer helped family search for missing woman
Photograph -- Jeffrey Willis, 46, of Muskegon Township, a married factory worker with no criminal history who landed behind bars after allegedly kidnapping the 16-year-old girl last month while she was walking along a rural road in the North Muskegon area. (Photo: Muskegon County Jail)
Muskegon map (Photo: Martha Thierry Detroit Free Press)
Photograph -- Dawn Schmitt, who took in kidnapped teen
Photograph -- Rebekah (Becky) Bletsch is shown in a Facebook photo. (Photo: WZZM13.com)
Photograph -- On April 26, 2013, Jessica Heeringa was working the night shift at the Exxon Mobil gas station on Sternberg Road in Norton Shores. That was the last time anyone saw her. The case gained national attention (Photo: Missing flyer)

MUSKEGON, Mich. — Jeffrey Willis often played Frisbee with his dog in the mornings outside his western Michigan home, where a sign reading: “WELCOME TO OUR PORCH” hung next to the brightly painted yellow front door.

But behind the cheery door were dark images of child porn and videos of women bound, taped and gagged, which investigators say they discovered last week.

On Tuesday, Willis was arrested as he returned from his job working overnights at a furniture manufacturer. He's accused of kidnapping a 16-year-old girl on April 16 in rural Muskegon County. She had escaped, telling police she jumped from a minivan.

Detectives scoured the area looking for clues that would help them find the minivan and driver. Their sleuthing led to Willis and officials say evidence from their investigation and searches of property has made him a suspect in two other unsolved crimes.

Last month, the 16-year-old victim, who has not been identified by the Detroit Free Press, was abducted while she was walking from a party. She jumped from the moving van and and ran bloody and barefoot yelling for help.

“Based on the efforts of this brave girl, and the efforts of law enforcement, we were able to put together a case and put a very, very dangerous man behind bars,” said Muskegon County Prosecutor DJ Hilson. “Not only is she about the greatest girl that I know. But she could turn out to be a hero.”

The teen's grandmother told the Free Press the incident has been “like a horror movie. ... Thank God she jumped out and ran.”

Officials say they're investigating potential links between Willis and the disappearance three years ago of Jessica Heeringa, a 25-year-old gas station clerk who mysteriously vanished from her job late at night, and the killing of 36-year-old Rebekah Bletsch, who was shot in the head as she jogged about two years ago during daylight hours.

Grainy surveillance footage of a silver minivan seen in the area when Heeringa disappeared is a major clue in the young mother’s 2013 disappearance.

And investigators are now testing a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol found during their search last week to see whether it matches the gun used to kill Bletsch.

Willis hasn’t talked to authorities since he was taken into custody, and his home, van and another property, once owned by his grandfather on Bailey Street in Norton Shores, were searched for evidence.

Muskegon County Undersheriff Daniel Stout said the evidence seized makes Willis a suspect in Heeringa’s disappearance and Bletsch’s homicide, but he would not reveal specifically what investigators found that led them to that conclusion.

“The weapon is a similar model that would have shot the bullets in the Bletsch case,” Stout said. “Similar … but similar is a big word.”

Hundreds of items, including computers, multiple phones, clothes and documents, are being analyzed along with evidence recovered from the van, including the pistol.

Investigators say they found locked boxes when they searched Willis' 2006 silver Dodge Grand Caravan. Officials said one had handcuffs, chains, rope, five syringes — including one with liquid, possibly a sedative — photographs of females chained and bound, a mask and rubber gloves and another had a gun with the serial number destroyed.

As police continue to investigate, Willis is behind bars and charged with kidnapping, felonious assault and felony firearm possession. He is being held on a $1-million bond. The county's public defender’s office, representing Willis, did not return messages left by the Free Press.

Dawn Schmitt was drinking coffee on her deck around 9:15 a.m. on April 16 when she heard the teen screaming.

“Help! Help! He’s got a gun!" the girl yelled. "He’s got a gun!”

Schmitt, 53, opened her door just enough to get the 16-year-old inside, took her into a bedroom, locked the door and called 911. She tried to calm down the hysterical girl, who had left her shoes behind where she jumped out of the van near the intersection of West River Road and North Weber Road.

Muskegon map

“She ran down the road barefoot and up my driveway barefoot,” Schmitt said.

Deputies said the teen left a party, got lost in a rural area of Muskegon County and a man in a silver minivan rolled up and said she could use his cellphone. The teen got in the vehicle, and then the driver locked the doors, rolled up the windows and pulled out a handgun.

She was able to escape from the moving van. The driver stopped the van and also got out, pointing the handgun at her, a court document said.

The girl’s memory of her attacker’s face and vehicle would eventually lead investigators to Willis.

“'Help! Help! He’s got a gun!' the girl yelled. 'He’s got a gun!'”

Detectives with the Muskegon County Sheriff’s Office canvassed the area near the kidnapping and discovered surveillance video from a parking lot. They believed it showed the van in question.

Deputies worked with state and federal officials to identify the owners of similar looking vans, narrowing down the list from thousands.

The teen also picked Willis from a photo lineup. “As they were setting them down, the victim went, that’s him ... immediately,” Stout, the Muskegon County undersheriff, said.

As evidence is tested, a process that could take weeks, a team of more than two dozen people are following up on leads in western Michigan.

“Hopefully, from the interviews, the follow-up and the forensic evidence, we can tie him to these other two cases,” Stout said.

Bletsch was killed on June 29, 2014, in Muskegon County. Investigators had no leads or motive.

Heeringa vanished from her job at the Exxon Mobil gas station on East Sternberg Road in Norton Shores on April 26, 2013. A witness saw a silver minivan pulling up to the gas station near closing time.

Initially, the only connection that made Willis a potential suspect in the teen’s abduction was the van he drove.

Besides about a dozen traffic cases dating back decades for speeding and other violations, several of which were dismissed, and a dog at large case, his criminal record is clean.

But he has had contact with police over the years and was fired from his job as a custodian with Fruitport Community schools in 1999 for accessing pornography on a school computer and exposing a student to the material, records obtained by the Free Press show.

Willis was once questioned by police in 2007 for allegedly videotaping people in a Sam’s Club parking lot, records show, though he was never arrested.

And police had been to his home three times for domestic incidents and twice for animal complaints over the last seven years.

His next-door neighbor, a day care operator, said she had a strained relationship with Willis, but noticed his demeanor change in the last month.

“He wouldn’t wave anymore,” Michelle Macomber said. “We’d pull in. He’d put his head down or look the other way.”

Kasey Davis, 24, lives a few doors down from Willis with her young children and said she was “shocked” to learn of his arrest. She has been following Heeringa’s case closely and said she met the gas station clerk with her husband, just days before the woman went missing.

“She made our day,” Davis said of Heeringa, recalling how she gave them free donuts on their one-year anniversary.

The Norton Shores Police Department is leading the investigation on Heeringa’s disappearance. Officials with the department did not return a message Friday.

The Muskegon County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the teen’s abduction and Bletsch’s death. Stout said they haven’t found any ties to those two and Willis.

Meanwhile, the family of the 16-year-old teen said what happened is the type of thing that "happens to somebody else."

“This doesn’t seem real,” the girl’s grandmother said of what her granddaughter went through. “She’s very smart and thank God … she’s still alive.”



“Jeffrey Willis often played Frisbee with his dog in the mornings outside his western Michigan home, where a sign reading: “WELCOME TO OUR PORCH” hung next to the brightly painted yellow front door. But behind the cheery door were dark images of child porn and videos of women bound, taped and gagged, which investigators say they discovered last week. On Tuesday, Willis was arrested as he returned from his job working overnights at a furniture manufacturer. He's accused of kidnapping a 16-year-old girl on April 16 in rural Muskegon County. She had escaped, telling police she jumped from a minivan. …. The teen also picked Willis from a photo lineup. “As they were setting them down, the victim went, that’s him ... immediately,” Stout, the Muskegon County undersheriff, said. As evidence is tested, a process that could take weeks, a team of more than two dozen people are following up on leads in western Michigan. “Hopefully, from the interviews, the follow-up and the forensic evidence, we can tie him to these other two cases,” Stout said. …. Investigators say they found locked boxes when they searched Willis' 2006 silver Dodge Grand Caravan. Officials said one had handcuffs, chains, rope, five syringes — including one with liquid, possibly a sedative — photographs of females chained and bound, a mask and rubber gloves and another had a gun with the serial number destroyed. As police continue to investigate, Willis is behind bars and charged with kidnapping, felonious assault and felony firearm possession. He is being held on a $1-million bond. The county's public defender’s office, representing Willis, did not return messages left by the Free Press.”


It's good that this man was caught. There are people who pass for normal, while their mind is dark and twisted. Something had changed recently in his life according to his neighbor, who said he wouldn’t return her greeting anymore. Thank Goodness the teenager managed to jump from the van, though she had to run away without her shoes. Her ordeal was terrible. This is the kind of story that would make a great true crime book. It has more quirks and mystery than the average book of fiction. His bail is $1,000,000, which is a good idea. Sometimes people are able to make bail and manage to do a disappearing act, to continue their crime spree. The list of murder equipment of all kinds that was in his van is impressive in a very creepy sort of way. People like that apparently think about murder all the time. His house also had appropriately gruesome videos for his nightly entertainment. When I hear a story like this I can’t help wondering how many people like this are walking down the street beside me every day.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/shark-feeding-frenzy-drone-video/

Drone video captures shark feeding frenzy from above
By BRIAN MASTROIANNI CBS NEWS
May 23, 2016, 1:47 PM

Photograph -- A drone from Eco Abrolhos Cruises captured a shark feeding frenzy in the perfectly named Shark Bay in Australia. ECO ABROLHOS CRUISES


A drone hovering over the waters of Western Australia caught sight of a literal blood bath.

The drone was operated by Eco Abrolhos Curises to follow two boatloads of tourists on an island cruise. It ended up capturing a feeding frenzy involving about 70 tiger sharks chomping on a dead humpback whale, the AFP reports.

The cruise company posted the video on its Facebook page, showing the pristine blue Australian waters turn a dark crimson.

"Passengers on our 14 day Geraldton to Broome and everywhere in between were treated to an unexpected phenomena [sic] whilst cruising inside Dirk Hartog Island. Something to show and tell the Grandchildren," the company wrote in a Facebook post.

Several tourists wrote about their experience viewing the violent scene on the social media site.

"This was truly amazing to witness this act of nature. The drone and GoPro footage far exceeded my videos and pictures. Thank you Jay and crew for taking us here to view this incredible feeding frenzy," Neil Edwards wrote.

Shark Bay, recognized as a World Heritage site, is known for being home to a diverse range of marine life from whales to dolphins to turtles.



Sharks are among the oldest life forms on earth. Due to their extremely good survival ability, they still look a great deal like the oldest ones. The writer of the “Evolution…” piece here said that the shark is a “perfect predator.” A very similar comment was made in an encyclopedia article long ago of the cockroach, which is one of the first land creatures that crawled up out of the water. See this excellent article on the subject of sharks. http://www.sharksavers.org/en/education/biology/450-million-years-of-sharks1/.

450 MILLION YEARS OF SHARKS
Evolution_timeframe.jpg

Drawing -- hybodus.gif
Hybodus

Sharks predate insects, mammals and dinosaurs

Sharks have swum in the oceans for almost 450 million years. But longevity is only part of the story. That extra few million years of evolution have enabled many shark species to develop some extraordinary abilities as perfect predators.

Is 450 million years a long time in evolution? Life is thought to have begun on earth about 3.8 billion years ago. Life on earth began as bacteria and did not advance beyond the one-celled format until around 580 million years ago. The first fish appeared around 510 million years ago. These were armored jawless fishes known as ostracoderms. And then came the sharks either 455 or 425 million years ago—there is some disagreement among paleontologists as to when.

Many of us tend to think of dinosaurs as dominating the prehistoric world. But dinosaurs didn’t appear until about 230 million years ago. Mammals first appeared around that same time. The first human-like animal, or hominid, dates to about 4.5 million years ago, but modern humans only date back perhaps 60,000 years. And recorded civilization has lasted only about 5,000 years. That means sharks have existed 100 times longer than hominids and 3 times longer than dinosaurs (or twice as long as dinosaurs if we include birds).

. . . . Sharks have survived all five mass extinctions

Throughout history there is evidence of catastrophic events that dramatically changed the environment and resulted in the mass extinction of a significant percentage of species. In the worse such event, 251 million years ago, as many as 95% of species were killed, perhaps due to either a comet impact or volcanic activity. Five major mass extinction events have occurred during the past 439 million years.

For surviving species, these mass extinctions can provide an opportunity to flourish if previous predators disappeared or new, inviting habitats opened up. These, in turn, have sometimes given rise to ‘adaptive radiations’, or a dramatic increase in new diverse species. Sharks have survived all five of these mass extinctions, a testament to their versatile design. They have also benefited from a few adaptive radiations, giving rise to many interesting sharks. The first major shark radiation occurred 360 to 286 million years ago.

. . . . The origin of modern sharks


Sharks enjoyed another period of adaptive radiation throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, beginning about 200 million years ago. Modern families of sharks have their roots in this radiation, although no clear lineage has been established. Among the groups of sharks that thrived during this time are the Hybodonts, one of which was an 8 foot shark named Hybodus, that lived in shallow seas 180 million years ago. Hybodonts have been considered a candidate for from which modern sharks are derived, but this is often discounted, now.

Another early shark that may have given rise to modern sharks is Mcmurdodus, which had an even earlier start of 390 million years ago. Most of the early sharks of this period were near-shore predators. By the mid-Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago, many sharks had evolved into fast-swimming, off-shore predators. It is during this period that modern shark families originated. At the end of the Cretaceous, about 65 million years ago, another global catastrophe destroyed a mass number of species, including the dinosaurs. The sharks who survived that extinction include the modern sharks of today.

. . . . Sharks evolutionary challenge: Perfection vs. Man

We began this article by describing sharks as perfect predators. Sharks have certainly developed remarkable capabilities to find and catch its prey. But these capabilities, as well as the ability to reproduce and flourish, work best in a stable environment with no highly effective natural predators. Enter man. Man’s recent rapacious slaughter of sharks does not mesh well with shark reproductive capacity. Most sharks take years to reach sexual maturity and raise few pups in a lifetime. This makes them ill equipped to respond to man. Thus, the 450 million year legacy of sharks may well be meeting its greatest challenge.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/guess-who-obama-just-dined-with-in-vietnam/

Guess who Obama just dined with in Vietnam?
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS
May 23, 2016, 11:27 AM


President Obama dined on Monday night with Anthony Bourdain in Hanoi, Vietnam during the president's week-long trip to Asia.

The star shared a photo of them eating dinner at Bún chả Hương Liên, a small restaurant that's just north of the "old quarter" of Hanoi, according to the White House travel pool.

They're both seen sitting at a table with with [sic] lettuce and bowls of soup and Mr. Obama is holding up a beer.

Their conversation will be featured in an episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, which will air on CNN in September.

Earlier in the day, the president lifted a half-century-old ban on selling arms to Vietnam on his first trip to the Southeast Asian country. He's the third sitting U.S. president to visit Vietnam since the end of the war. He'll head next to Japan where he'll make a historic visit to Hiroshima. The White House has said Mr. Obama won't apologize, however, for the U.S. decision to use a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city in 1945.

In Japan, he's scheduled to participate in the G-7 Summit in Ise-Shima and Mr. Obama will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Abe to advance the alliance between their two countries.



I am so glad that Obama has tried in numerous cases to rekindle cooperative relationships around the world. It’s a shame that the “conservative” thinkers in this country can’t see the value of that. That’s odd because one of their great leaders Richard Nixon led in that direction by opening relations with China. I didn’t think in my young days that I would have anything good to say about Nixon. The old style Republicans were, frequently at any rate, much more sensible than this new Tea Party crew. I’m glad that I’ve had the pleasure of observing Obama in various ways. He’s not only a good president, but a good human being.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/waco-horror-still-reverberates-100-years-later/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=24793207

The "Waco Horror" still reverberates, 100 years later
AP May 23, 2016, 8:54 AM

Photograph -- In this May 15, 1916, image provided by the Texas Collection at Baylor University, thousands gather for the torture, mutilation, and burning of field hand Jesse Washington in front of Waco City Hall, shortly after his murder conviction days after the slaying of Lucy Fryer, the white wife of a nearby farmer. FRED GILDERSLEEVE/TEXAS COLLECTION AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY VIA AP
33 PHOTOS -- Thousands march against police violence
24 PHOTOS -- Freddie Gray solidarity protests



WACO, Texas - Mary Pearson doesn't need to be reminded of Jesse Washington's lynching.

The Robinson resident grew up hearing the stories from her grandmother, a relative of the 17-year-old farmhand who was tortured to death on Waco's town square a century ago last Sunday. The moral was never precisely stated, but the horror has stuck with Pearson all her 67 years.

Just after the boy received a death sentence for murdering his white employer, a mob seized him and dragged him to City Hall, where they doused him with coal oil and hanged him over a pile of burning wooden crates. They carved his charred body into souvenirs and dragged it around town.

But even more troubling for Pearson was what didn't happen: Law enforcement didn't intervene in the lynching, nor did anyone in a crowd of 15,000 spectators.

"All the folks were standing around, most of them were white, and nobody said anything, nobody stood up to try to do anything," Pearson said in an interview with the Waco Tribune-Herald after a recent proclamation by Waco's mayor condemning the lynching. "It's a hurt and frustration even to think about it. ... It can cause me a heavy depression.

"Every time I think about it, I get really angry and I have to ask the Lord to help me."

White Waco spent most of the 20th century trying to forget the atrocity, dubbed the "Waco Horror" by the national press. The incident stood as a turning point in national anti-lynching efforts and helped bring to prominence the NAACP, the nation's oldest civil rights organization. But the atrocity received no mention in local history books until the late 1960s and was largely ignored or downplayed locally until 1998, when Councilman Lawrence Johnson publicly called for a memorial to "atone" for the lynching.

Meanwhile, the story survived on the frequency of a whisper in corners of the black community, in the form of legends and admonitions to sons and daughters.

Forgetting became impossible in the mid-2000s, when a series of books, exhibits and news articles brought the incident again to national attention. In 2006, the Waco City Council and McLennan County commissioners passed a general condemnation of the area's lynching past.

The Community Race Relations Coalition and the NAACP have headed an effort to commemorate the centennial this spring with a lecture series, a march and a push to get a state historical marker for the lynching. The observances culminated with a "town hall" meeting at the Bledsoe-Miller Community Center.

The centennial is not meant to reopen old racial wounds or cast blame on anyone now living, said Peaches Henry, a McLennan Community College assistant English professor and president of the Waco NAACP. Rather, it's an opportunity to bring whites and blacks together to reflect on a difficult shared history.

"Here's the importance of history: It allows us to remind ourselves of both the good and the bad, and then to correct our course," she said.

Henry said the city and county resolution against lynching a decade ago was a good start. The question of Washington's innocence or guilt aside, Henry said city and county leaders failed to uphold the rule of law and were complicit in a heinous crime of torture.

The recent proclamation by Mayor Malcolm Duncan Jr. went further and specifically referred to the "heinous lynching of Jesse Washington."

"It's important to call the names of those who were wronged," Henry said. "The same was true of the woman (Lucy Fryer) who was murdered. She was someone's mother, sister and cousin. She was also important. For the council to offer a proclamation naming Jesse Washington is very significant. It means that in the public record he is no longer invisible."

Those involved in the commemorations say burying the past doesn't keep it from haunting the present.

Scheherazade Perkins, 64, a member of the race relations board, grew up in Waco and graduated from the black A.J. Moore High School in 1969. She never heard of the lynching until she was an adult, but it helped explain anxieties she heard when she was growing up.

"Obviously there is much that has been done, much progress that has been made," Perkins said. "But there are processes that still go on, an unspoken terror that still exists, that makes people want to stay under the radar. It makes them hesitant to come forward with concerns for fear that they will be not only labeled but mistreated.

"Some of that lingers, not only with the older people who were right on the fringes of the atrocity, but with those who pass the same sentiment down: 'Boy, you need to watch your mouth, because you never know.' "

The centennial comes at a time of national debate and unrest over police killings of unarmed black males, such as Freddie Gray in Baltimore; Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland. A Washington Post investigation found that 40 percent of unarmed men shot and killed by police in 2015 were black, even though black men make up only 6 percent of the population.

Henry, the local NAACP president, said she has high regard for Waco police leadership, but she still has anxieties for her own son, an Eagle Scout and college junior, wherever he goes.

"There's the talk that every young African-American man receives: When you get pulled over, keep your hands on the steering wheel," she said. "You never make a move without letting the officer know.

"There's nothing about my son when he is walking or driving down the street that can protect him."

It's a more subtle version of the same fear that African-Americans had a century ago, Henry said.

"What the lynching proved about our community was that African-American men and women were not viewed as humans or equal citizens," Henry said. "While they no longer hang people upon trees, we do see situations where African-American lives are not valued."

The dark trajectory from the murder of Lucy Fryer to the murder of Jesse Washington took only seven days.

Around dinnertime on May 8, Fryer's grown daughter returned from the fields to discover her mother in the seed shed of the family's farm in Robinson, with her head bashed in with a blacksmith's hammer. A physician also said there was evidence she was raped, though he did not testify in the trial.

According to newspaper accounts from the time, law officers found Washington a few hours later, sitting in his yard, whittling a piece of wood. Washington was part of a family that had moved in earlier that year to work for the Fryers.

Deputy Sheriff Lee Jenkins would later testify that he found blood all over Washington's clothes and put him and other family members under arrest. Once in the police car, Washington fell asleep in the back seat. In Waco, he was interrogated, first denying then confessing to the rape and murder, giving officers information leading them to the blacksmith hammer hidden in hackberry brush.

In a 2005 book about the case, "The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP," Patricia Bernstein leaves open the question of Washington's guilt. She notes questions from the time about his intellectual capacity to understand the proceedings, as well as a legal system that had stacked the deck against black defendants.

As a mob of Robinson and Waco vigilantes grew, vowing to avenge the crime, Sheriff Samuel Fleming had Washington sent for safekeeping to jails in Hillsboro and Dallas, according to Bernstein's book. He allowed a crowd of 500 people to search McLennan County Jail to ensure that Washington was not there.

By the time the trial started Monday morning, crowds were thronging around the courthouse. Newspapers at the time estimated that 2,500 people were allowed to squeeze into the courtroom of 54th District Judge Richard Irby Munroe. Many were carrying guns and threatening to lynch Washington.

As jury foreman W.B. Brazelton read the guilty verdict on the murder charge at 11:22 a.m., Judge Munroe began to record the guilty plea in his docket, but he left the sentence unfinished. A man yelled, "Get the nigger," and a crowd grabbed Washington. The crowd carried him down the back stairs of the courthouse, put a chain around his neck and attacked him with bricks and knives on the way to the makeshift gallows in front of City Hall.

As Washington's self-appointed executioners dangled him over the fire, photographer Fred Gildersleeve sat in the mayor's office in City Hall, taking photos that he would later sell as postcards. Standing beside him were Mayor John Dollins and Police Chief Guy McNamara, according to "The First Waco Horror."

Mid-afternoon, the corpse was cut down and dragged, first by a horseman, then by a car, to Robinson.

Local newspapers at first covered the lynching in graphic detail, then abruptly dropped the subject. The Times-Herald proclaimed that "yesterday's exciting occurrence is a closed incident."

Another newspaper, the Waco Semiweekly Tribune, lamented the ascendancy of mob violence but favorably compared Waco to other towns where blacks were lynched.

"There is no evidence of hostility to the negro simply because of his race, and we should feel regret if it were otherwise."

The Jesse Washington lynching could not have come as a surprise to anyone living in Waco, white or black. More than anything, Waco leaders seemed shocked at the international censure that followed from newspapers, and the scathing report from the NAACP's journal, which sent investigative journalist Elizabeth Freeman to Waco.

It wasn't like this had never happened before. Racial lynchings had been a Texas tradition for decades but became increasingly ghastly and public in the early 20th century.

In Dallas in 1910, a black man charged with attempted rape was seized from the courtroom and hanged on a downtown archway in front of a crowd of 5,000. That same year, a murder and rape suspect, Henry Gentry, was burned on the Square in Belton. In 1915, Will Stanley was burned and hanged by a mob of 5,000 in Temple.

Rowan University historian William Carrigan has documented the lynching of 21 black people in McLennan County between Reconstruction and the Great Depression. Carrigan, a Waco native, studied Central Texas lynchings exhaustively for his 2004 book, "The Making of a Lynching Culture."

Carrigan says the lynching of accused rapist Sank Majors in Waco on Aug. 7, 1905, ended an 8-year hiatus of lynchings in Central Texas.

A judge had granted Majors an interracial legal team and a black juror and finally a retrial, which never came. A mob smashed through the McLennan County jailhouse with sledgehammers and fought jailers hand-to-hand, then dragged Majors to the square to be burned.

At the last-minute request of the victim, the mob moved the execution site to the new Washington Avenue bridge, where Majors was hanged. None of the mob was brought to justice, and the result was a new era of lynching, Carrigan said.

"No one did anything about Sank Majors," he said. "The lynching of Jesse Washington is the outcome of the Sank Majors case."

These lynchings can't be explained simply by the racism or inflamed passion of individuals, Carrigan says. In their ritualistic excess, they were meant to sent a message of terror to blacks and enforce white supremacy.

Even speaking out against violence could be dangerous: One black man who decried the Sank Majors lynching was visited by a night-riding mob that gave him 150 lashes, Carrigan writes.

His book details how Jim Crow laws, residential segregation and black voter disenfranchisement had actually worsened in the early 20th century. The "convict lease" system allowed governments to profit by rounding up black men for minor infractions and leasing them as laborers to private farms.

The return of lynchings may have been "the last straw" for many blacks, who started leaving the area in such numbers that some whites worried about labor shortages in the cotton fields.

Racial terrorism in this area didn't end with Jesse Washington. Six more black people in Central Texas died from white mob violence between 1916 and 1922, when Jesse Thomas, a Waco man mistakenly accused of rape, was killed and then dragged around Waco's square. Meanwhile, Waco in the early 1920s became a haven for the Ku Klux Klan, which publicly disavowed mobs but was known for extralegal violence.

But the extreme nature of the Jesse Washington lynching, and the resulting negative publicity for Waco, caused local officials to take stronger measures against mobs, Carrigan argues, pointing to the arrest and trial of Riesel men accused of beating a black man to death in 1917.

"I think Jesse Washington was a critical turning point in the legal system saying, 'We're no longer going to condone extralegal violence,' " he said.

Jim SoRelle, a Baylor historian who grew up in white schools in Waco in the 1960s, said he never heard about the Jesse Washington lynching until he was in college. He wrote the first full-length scholarly article about the incident in 1983.

"I went K through 12 and never heard a word about such an incident happening," SoRelle said. "We would spend all our time talking about the tornado but never a word about Jesse Washington."

SoRelle said the omission was a matter of "selective forgetting."

"To the extent anyone remembers what happened, it had a much deeper impact within the African-American community," he said. "From the perspective of white citizens, the idea was that 'justice has been served; now we'll get on with our business.' "

SoRelle said he's glad to see a public discussion and commemoration of the lynching centennial.

"It may not be comfortable, but I think it's healthy," he said.

The Baylor Institute for Oral History is doing its part with an online presentation on the event at WacoHistory.org.

"I hope we can look at our past honestly, not just for what we want from it," said Stephen Sloan, the institute's director. "I hope we can have an honest conversation about inequity and injustice in a way that is not detached from the present. ... I would love for Waco to be at the forefront of having these kinds of conversations. I think we can show the way a community can handle this and deal with it."

Scheherazade Perkins, the Community Race Relations Coalition member, said Waco's history of racial violence is like "a wound that has not healed."

"It has a scab on it, but every time something similar happens, that scab is broken," she said.

But she hopes this community dialogue will bring healing.

"I see promise in the future and a great possibility for a united community," Perkins said. "I see a city that can become what it started to become more than a century ago, when it was an up-and-coming, progressive, leading-edge city. ... If I were not hopeful, I would not be part of it."



“White Waco spent most of the 20th century trying to forget the atrocity, dubbed the "Waco Horror" by the national press. The incident stood as a turning point in national anti-lynching efforts and helped bring to prominence the NAACP, the nation's oldest civil rights organization. But the atrocity received no mention in local history books until the late 1960s and was largely ignored or downplayed locally until 1998, when Councilman Lawrence Johnson publicly called for a memorial to "atone" for the lynching. Meanwhile, the story survived on the frequency of a whisper in corners of the black community, in the form of legends and admonitions to sons and daughters. Forgetting became impossible in the mid-2000s, when a series of books, exhibits and news articles brought the incident again to national attention. In 2006, the Waco City Council and McLennan County commissioners passed a general condemnation of the area's lynching past. …. The Community Race Relations Coalition and the NAACP have headed an effort to commemorate the centennial this spring with a lecture series, a march and a push to get a state historical marker for the lynching. The observances culminated with a "town hall" meeting at the Bledsoe-Miller Community Center. The centennial is not meant to reopen old racial wounds or cast blame on anyone now living, said Peaches Henry, a McLennan Community College assistant English professor and president of the Waco NAACP. Rather, it's an opportunity to bring whites and blacks together to reflect on a difficult shared history. "Here's the importance of history: It allows us to remind ourselves of both the good and the bad, and then to correct our course," she said.”


It's good for white and black to come together on this, because it does NOT have to happen again. It is particularly important at this time of rising racial/religious hatred again as we have had several times in my life. There were KKK activities in the 1950s in North Carolina, and I remember seeing something that made my skin crawl. The local Lions Club performed a blackface show that was made for the purpose of raising funds. These things were not thought to be “disrespectful,” because blacks were not to be “respected” in those days.

The truth is that in the burst of social consciousness of the late 60s, 70s and 80s we didn’t make enough progress, and that occurred among too small a segment of our population. The result is a resurgence now, that reminds me of the phenomenon of swamp fires continuing to burn over again even after they have been put out on the surface. The leafy top soil burns down sometimes several feet deep. The rich black soil has so much carbon in it that it is combustible, and it pops back up in flames again after some hours. There is a wonderful piece of music portraying that very thing, a tone poem, called “Swamp Fire.” Duke Ellington’s Big Band production of Swamp Fire was on a 78 rpm record we had at home. The composer is Harold Mooney, according to http://www.allmusic.com/song/swamp-fire-mt0009080110 and a great recording of it is on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJfzNf1eznU.

Just like a swamp fire, our society is sick again with our same old illness, and those who are most infected are unwilling to give it up. I’m afraid the KKK will be overtly active again. A few police officers within the last several years have been in the news for emailing disgustingly racial things, and even being members of the KKK. It would be so nice if Sanders would be drafted as Vice President as one article today said, or better still if he were to win. Probably not, though. Still the DNC has offered to give his supporters some more seats on the DNC Platforms Committee. He has demanded a 50/50 split between the Clinton and Sanders camps and one neutral chosen by Wasserman Schulz (she claims to be neutral). We need to keep the pressure on them so that Clinton and the others will see the wisdom of opening up the philosophy and policy of the party again. Quite a few of us are talking about just staying home that day or writing Sanders’ name in on the Ballot.

Go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre for an eye-opening experience. The Rosewood story is another eerily similar case to the 1916 Waco event. It is stamped onto my memory like a hot brand. Read this from Wikipedia and then go to the library or video shop for the movie of the same title or the book. There also has been a TV production of it. The almost all black town in Florida called Rosewood was prosperous. A white woman, as in Waco, claimed to have been raped by a black resident. Apparently the whites couldn’t stand the thought of that and made and all-out assault on the buildings. A white man who was a storekeeper there was decent enough to warn the residents of what was about to occur so that some of them could escape through the swampy woodlands to a train track, where they boarded the first one to come by. There were under twenty of them and they all made it safely to Gainesville.