S11, E3B: The B-Side/"We Didn't Start the Fire"
S11, E3B: The B-Side/"We Didn't Start the Fire"
Series 11: The Collateral Damage of Revenge in Science
This is the counterpart of S11, E3: Breaking Radio Silence where I rebooted Series 11: The Collateral Damage of Revenge in Science.
Welcome to the B-Side
This ‘B-Side’ is a free example of how I plan to put out paid content in the near future. The idea is that these will be mainly counterparts to free articles, where I go into more depth, talk about the background work or share digressions that perhaps have value to some. See The B-Side Explainer for more information.
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
“We Didn’t Start the Fire”, Billy Joel
In S11, E1: In the Eye of the Swarm I spoke about a particular atrocity committed in Waco Texas just over a century ago; the torture and lynching of teenager Jesse Washington.
I was pointing to some common features of mob behaviour that still exist in the form of ‘cancellations’ today. Specifically, I was talking about the Geoffrey Marcy case, and the activist-led campaign that pressured him into relinquishing his professorship at Berkeley.
You might well ask if it’s decent to draw a parallel between something so obscene and what happened to Marcy. Of course, it wouldn’t be were I suggesting that Marcy’s forced resignation was equivalent to what Jesse Washington endured, but I’m not.
The B-Sides of this series are focused on the Jesse Washington case and that will follow directly. First, I briefly outline the elements common to both cases in list form, because these are the themes to be explored in the remainder of this series.
Questionable evidence and methods of evidence-gathering
Flawed investigation: focused on outcomes rather than justice
Adjudication failures: allowed the mob to subvert the process
Political motivations: objectives that were not aligned to finding the truth
The exploitation of anger to secure power
Mob characteristics:
Manipulated by a carefully curated narrative
Persuaded that becoming vigilantes was the only route to justice
Fooled into thinking they were empowering themselves
These similarities should become clear as this series progresses.
The Waco Horror
By the time the mob snatched Jesse Washington from the courthouse in Waco, thirty other Black men had already been lynched in the United States that year - it was 1916 but only May.
A lynching is an illegal killing by a mob, but a hundred years ago it was often enabled by politicians, elected judges and law enforcement. In those cases what did ‘legality’ mean?
Washington’s case was brought to the public attention in unprecedented detail, thanks to Elisabeth Freeman, a British suffragette who went undercover at Waco to find out what happened.
Working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), her report, edited by W.E.B. Du Bois appeared as a supplement to the publication Crisis, in July 1916.
It’s chilling to see the photographs of his mutilated and burnt corpse hanging from a tree, while gleeful faces look to camera, apparently with pride in what they had done. I mention it because these were the people that Elisabeth Freeman went out to meet after the fact.
What made this more sinister (if you can credit the possibility) are the number of people who participated. According to some reports there were up to 15,000 people in attendance which was half the population of the town at the time.
I am not going to borrow much detail of what Jesse Washington suffered, firstly, because I don’t want to ambush you with that here and secondly, because I firmly believe that if you want to know about it you should read it in Elisabeth Freeman’s words. I do provide a link to the report in the first attribution, but please be warned there are pictures, and they are horrific.
Freeman wrote about the political instigation, the failures of the justice system, delinquent law enforcement and the willingness to give an angry crowd what they wanted for votes. Although it was a familiar example of racial injustice, what she reported appalled and shamed many Americans, and the piece has been credited with catalysing a change in public opinion.
Although the town were suspicious of Freeman (people were advised not to speak to her) she was able to gain the confidence of the townsfolk by pretending to be sympathetic to the lynching. She even interviewed Judge McCullum and Sherriff Fleming, who as you will see in later episodes, were central figures.
Washington had been accused of the murder of a white woman and there was a suggestion of rape, but the question of guilt or innocence was moot point for Freeman, as he was dead. The story Freeman was there to investigate was the rough justice served to Black people.
Her approach was to state that she assumed Washington to be guilty, while expressing uncertainty in the subtext, turning it into an almost subliminal question. His guilt has been doubted since then by some historians but the seeds of this were sown in Freeman/Du Bois report.
Her mission in Waco was not to exonerate Washington because it would have been impossible to obtain the information to make that case. To be openly sceptical of Washington’s guilt would have blown her cover in Waco and even to have expressed it in a report would have (in lieu of a credible alternative theory) discredited her efforts. The story would have pivoted away from racial injustice to the fact that Washington was the only suspect.
Instead she exposed the truth that could not be denied:
The people of Robinson threatened to lynch Washington if he did not waive his legal rights
The sheriff officers forced a confession
The politicians who ensured the lynching would happen in Waco as part of their election campaign
The law enforcement who allowed a mob to torture Washington to death
By putting the treatment of Washington upfront she tacitly challenged the racist attitudes that would feel normal to most readers and made them look at the consequences.
The people of Waco were defensive and Freeman was surely aware that asking certain questions could be dangerous. Remember that she was alone in Waco, Texas; a place where at least 2,000 people played some part in the atrocity and another 13,000 came to watch at different points. The entire town was complicit. It was a place where some of the children looked on. It was also a place where some of the children were involved in dismantling the corpse for souvenirs.
That would suggest that to leave Waco with any story at all, she must have been a pragmatist, with the common sense to know when to keep quiet. Yet when you read her interviews what comes across is her sheer audacity.
Contemporary Reporting
The report subtly shows the reader that guilt was not assured just because there was a lynching:
Our investigator [Elisabeth Freeman although she is never named in the report] continues: "I went to the newspaper offices. They were all of the opinion that the best thing to do was to hush it up. They used it as a news item, and that finished it. The Dallas News did not cite anything editorially because not long ago they had done something quite as bad and the boy was not guilty."
“The Waco Horror”, Supplement to the Crisis, July 1916
It seems that all the contemporary newspapers had considered the possibility that Washington might be innocent and also perhaps that what happened in Waco would be an appalling thing to celebrate in an editorial.
Well nearly all of them:
With the exception of the Tribune, all the papers had simply used it as a news item and let it drop. The Tribune is owned by Judge McCullum, who says anything he pleases.
ibid.
Judge McCullum was able to use the story to political advantage. Freeman says of her interview of him.
He is nearly blind. When I read the article to him I said, 'I would like to ask you, if that had been a colored woman and a white boy, would you have protected that woman? '
He answered, 'No. '
'If it had been a colored boy and a colored woman?’
‘No. We would not have stopped the ******s doing anything they wanted to.'
'Do you think they would?'
'No.'
'Then, they prove their superior civilization.'
ibid.
I think it would be difficult to read that exchange without feeling something.
Unlike many modern journalists she had a keen sense of where the real story was. Her example also shows that it is not incompatible with journalism to have an agenda, provided the truth is not tailored to the cause.
I drew much more from Elisabeth Freeman’s insight than I had expected when I was merely looking for an extreme example of mob behaviour.
Next: In S11, E4B: The B-Side/"Strange Fruit" I deconstruct Freeman’s chronology of events to help us understand where the trip wires were and also, how mobs are formed to be manipulated.