The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP

CHAPTER 5. An “Exciting Occurrence”: The Lynching

CHAPTER 5 An “Exciting Occurrence” The Lynching Yesterday’s exciting occurrence is a closed incident. —Waco Times Herald 87 T HE story of the Waco Horror begins with the discovery of a body. Just about sundown on the evening of Monday, May 8, 1916, near the town of Robinson,1 eight miles south of Waco, twenty-one-year-old Ruby Fryer and her brother, fourteen-year-old George Fryer Jr., returned home from chopping cotton on the family’s two hundred–acre farm.2 In the heavy heat and quiet of the late afternoon, they noticed that their mother, Lucy Fryer, was not in the house as usual. Just as George was going out to look for her, Ruby peered through the window and saw Lucy lying in a pool of blood in the doorway of the seed house, about thirty steps away.3 Aneighbor,CrisSimon,hadbeenawayfromhomealldayandhadjustcome back through the big gate at the main road when he heard Ruby and George screaming and crying over their mother’s body. It was probably Simon who ran for George Fryer Sr., who had been working in a different part of the field from the children, about a mile from the house. The Waco Times Herald reported that when George Fryer Sr. learned that his wife was dead, he “was overcome.”4 According to Lucy Fryer’s granddaughter, Lucy Wollitz Kirkland, who still lives in Robinson, there was a quiet romance connected to the history of George and Lucy Fryer—a story of suffering, separation, and exile for the sake of true love, which may have made George Fryer’s grief at the loss of his wife all the more terrible. George and Lucy Fryer grew up in central England. George was said to have been a stable boy on a large estate while Lucy was the daughter of the upper-class family who employed him. Lucy’s parents did not want the young couple to marry, so George crossed the ocean, entering the United States at Galveston in 1882. He settled in Cottonwood, Texas, and worked for four years to earn enough money to send for Lucy.5 There is some evidence that this often-told tale of two lovers divided by class may not be strictly accurate. According to United Kingdom birth records, a Lucy Davis was born on July 1, 1862, the same birth date recorded for Lucy Davis Fryer in Fryer family records and on her death certificate. This Lucy Davis was born in Callaughton Wenlock, County of Salop (now part of Shropshire ), the daughter of Henry Davis and Elizabeth Pope Davis. But Henry Davis, Lucy’s father, is identified in the official birth record, not as a lord, merchant , or landowner, but as an “agricultural labourer.” Whatever the true story of their births and original circumstances, George Fryer and Lucy Davis did immigrate to the United States from England and Chapter 5 88 The young George and Lucy Fryer. By permission of Lucy Wollitz Kirkland. were married in McLennan County on April 30, 1890.6 At the time of their marriage, Lucy was twenty-seven and George was within a couple of weeks of his thirtieth birthday. The couple settled in the Lorena area in the southern part of McLennan County. Their first child, Ruby, was born in 1894. In 1898, they had another little girl named Beatrice Pearl, who died in 1907 at the age of nine and was buried in the Lorena cemetery.7 George Jr. was born in 1901. At the time of Lucy’s murder, the Fryers had been living in Robinson for six to eight years and were “among the most highly esteemed and respected residents of the Robinson community,” according to the newspapers.8 The couple had just celebrated their twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. Lucy was fifty-three. But all that was past now. Lucy Fryer lay in the doorway of the seed house “almost brained and criminally assaulted.”9 Her skull had been bashed in at several points and her clothing was disheveled. Dr. J. H. Maynard examined her and reported at the trial An “Exciting Occurrence” 89 The mature Lucy Fryer. By permission of Lucy Wollitz Kirkland. that “a quantity of brain had escaped from the cranial vault” and at least two of the six wounds on her head, made with a heavy, blunt instrument, could have killed her.10 Deputy Sheriffs Lee Jenkins...