McLennan County's history, like that of Texas and the nation, was clouded by racial tensions that at times erupted into violence. From 1860 through 1922, forty-three lynchings were documented there. After Reconstruction, laws were instituted that held African Americans back from education, jobs, and participation in many forms of government. The most notorious local act of racial violence occurred in 1916 after Mrs. Lucy Fryer was found bludgeoned to death near her house in the farming community of Robinson on May 8. Jesse Washington, a teenaged African American farmhand known to be illiterate and possibly to have had an intellectual disability, was arrested for her murder and changed his story from denial to admission of guilt after being questioned for days. One week later, as large crowds gathered, he was brought to Waco for trial, and following a brief trial and four minutes of jury deliberation, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Immediately, a horde of onlookers seized him and dragged him several blocks to city hall, where he was beaten, stabbed, hanged, mutilated, and burned to death as thousands cheered. His horrific death received unparalleled nationwide public attention. Several reports, particularly from outside Texas, denounced the act as a breakdown of law and morality. The newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, now the nation's oldest civil rights organization, hired Elisabeth Freeman to investigate. W.E.B. Du Bois used her findings and commemorative photographs taken at the scene as the basis for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's July 1916 issue of The Crisis, a widely distributed publication that referred to the event as "The Waco Horror." Du Bois and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People made the atrocity a turning point in the National Anti-Lynching Movement and a step in the long march toward the promise of civil rights for all.