Jesse Washington was an African American farmhan from Waco, Texas. On May 15, 1916, after being convicted of the murder of a local woman, he was lynched and burned alive by a White American mob, an incident known as the Waco Horror. The mutilation and burning of 17-year-old Washington received perhaps the greatest notoriety of the 492 lynchings that occurred in Texas between 1882 and 1930.