They tore his clothes off and dragged him down to the town square. Just about every man in waco tried to take a pot shot at him. They hit him with ricks and clubs and two by fours. Some people had knives and by the time they got to the town square, he was already covered with blood. One paper said he became the plaything of the mob. At first, people said lets dont hang him over the bridge like they did the last fella who is lynched in 1905. Others said thats not had enough. He deserves something worse than that. The truth was that it was all planned. The mayor and the chief of police watch the whole thing from the mayors secondfloor office at city hall and they even informed the most prominent photographer in town to come set of his equipment ahead of time. Kindling and other flammable material had been stashed near the center of the town square, so everyone knew what was going to happen. When he was finally drag to the center of the square, they put a chain around his neck and through the through the chain over the tree, and when he tried to pull the chain loose, they cut his fingers off. He was mutilated in many theyrent ways and then doused him and coal oil and started a fire and they would put him down in the fire and pull the chain and raise him up out of the fire so more people could see what was happening. Every time they did that, a big cheer went up as if the crowd had just come from a Football Game where they had won a huge victory. Unfortunately, he was a very strong man and it took him a while to die. He even kicked himself off the funeral pirate and they had to drag him back on. Finally all that was left was a charred torso and ahead and some bits of limbs. Someone came along on a white worse afterwards and dragged the remains around the street and the head fell off and was put on the doorstep of a prostitute and little boys pulled out the teeth and sold them for five dollars apiece. Links were fighting for of the chain, for twigs from the tree which was completely destroyed in the process. And the mayor was heard to express great concern for what happened to the tree, but no concern at all for what happened to a 17yearold boy. The day after this particular lynching, one of the big papers excitingof said the incident is a closed incident. Thats the purpose of the naacp to make sure the stories are not forgotten and to shame the town and publicize in every way possible. Whiteent in a young womens suffrage activist who is not an educated woman, but she had a lot of streetsmarts. She is very attractive and charming and used a british accent that she of pain from her time in the Suffrage Movement in england where she had been arrested several times. Was attending a statewide womens Suffrage Convention when the lynching to place. A century telegram and asked her to go to waco and get the true story of what had happened and get photographs if she could. Storyd and she made up that she knew people in waco, which was true. She wanted to write a story for a new york paper telling people that waco is not all bad. Nothing could have been further from the truth that she got in to see the mayor, the chief of police and the leading citizens of the black community. Almost anybody who could give her valuable information. The commercialce photographer to give her the pictures even though he had been ordered not to sell any more of them. She was afraid to put any of this material in the mail because it was so inflammatory, so she took a train to galveston, to the ship back to new york and carried the material personally to give to w e b do boys face to face w eb dubois. W eb he published the first ever special supplement to the monthly crisis magazine about this lynching and use the pictures. They did not just send it to members of the naacp. They sent it to every member of Woodrow Wilsons cabinet, to newspaper editors all over the country and then elizabeth herself went on a speaking tour, mostly to black churches around the country. Id own thing she ever came back to texas. Probably would have been unwise. And wase story blew up featured in the newspaper and on tv in waco twice while i was doing my research before my book came out. I have to give waco credit for this. Unlike many other communities that have never confronted or dealt with or act knowledged their horrible racial past, the Waco City Council and county commissioners did issue some sort of resolution of regret, if not apology, and a group of citizens from all walks of life came and stood on the steps of the courthouse on the 90th anniversary and read a resolution of apology. That youry strongly cannot understand the present if you dont know what happened in the past. These things cannot be forgotten. You need to acknowledge it and understand it and no what happened. While the see center while the cspan city tour was in texas, we spoke with an author with a book that focuses on how the dead live on to social media profiles, memorial websites and saved voicemails. And what this means for the ourning. Ce of m i think the grieving process is important because it is the way we resituated ourselves in the realm of the living without the dead. Bereavement does is it allows us to live in a world in which the dead are no longer present. What more elevation does is it allows us to resituated ourselves with the dead and have a continuing relationship with the deceased in such a way that we bring meaning into our lives and we can go about our daily tasks as a new person without our mother, without our brother or best friend or spouse. My book is called virtual after lives, grieving the dead in the 20th century. Its about the rise of spontaneous memorials because of the disappearance of the corpse and the disappearance of grieving rituals. I was working on my dissertation, comparing two different martyrs and their intentional process of helping people become martyrs. One of the things i noticed working on that subject was a lot of times, the families are very much a process of memorializing their murder. Part of that is the way they give meaning to the death of the person that has died. While i was working on it subject, i noticed theres an increase in popular memorialization, so i started seeing car decals on the back of cars remembering people who had died. Internet seeing memorials, facebook memorials, social network memorial. Nowink we got to this point because essentially, people became uncomfortable with death and the professionalization of the funeral industry all were dying in hospitals, no longer dying in the homes, so people were not encountering the dying process. After people died, rather than washing the body and taking care of the body and preparing it for burial, people were sending the corpses straight from the hospital to the funeral home. So you see this professionalization of the death industry from the dying process to the actual disposal of the corpse itself. Led to ahat disappearance of the dead which peopled to more and more not talking about death, people becoming afraid of death and the dying process, so this is partly where this disappearance of death emerges from. People use tos grieve their dad was by wearing mourning clothing or a black armband. So theres a more communal remembrance and people recognized in society as being in bereavement because they were wearing these black morning ninge and lack mour clothes. Writingwhere people are on a Facebook Page of a friend who has just died and i think part of this is the same thing wheezed to see before when we would go to the tombstone, one would speak to the deceased at the site where they are buried. They would go to the tombstone and talk to them and have a conversation, so as not a change in making private public. Only takinged to be place at the tombstone is now taking place in a public forum and with an audience. I think this is what is different about modern practices. I dont think the practices themselves are that unusual, but the fact that we have a public audience for these conversations. A couple of examples i discuss in my book is one of them is cap twos. I was able to interview different tattoo artists and talk with them about the process. This is a really interesting tattoo. At the picture of a scorpion the unmanned who has a tattoo on his leg purchased a scorpion when he was a little boy in the pet store told him they took the venom out of the scorpion and in the scorpion bit his father and killed him. So he has all of this grief and what is interesting is he has the scorpion, the instrument killed his father tattooed on his leg in the same place where his father was bitten. So its an interesting reenactment of the death. Its a way in which the sun can identify with his father, that he remembers his dad always, and hes carrying this symbol of his mothers death and remembers his dad and is allowed to grieve him. Hes allowed to start a conversation and talk about his father with his friends through the tattoo, so i loved doing the research on the tattoos because i got to meet the tattoo artists who function as a way as a kind of shaman or priest. Etchinghe process of the tattoos, they ask the person why they are getting the tattoo, what it means to them and the person is allowed to have that space, whether its two hours or three hours to talk about the person they are remembering the the act of doing a tattoo. One of the things is on a Facebook Page to put picture of yourself up with the deceased. Thatlets everyone know yes, this person died, but i was a good friend. I am in mourning. Is actually need letting people know you are in bereavement. So it is like wearing the black armband that you used to wear 50 years ago. The practice i think a lot of people find it strange. I think where people really find it strange is in this new era of yearold selfies, posting a picture with the deceased or taking a picture at the funeral. But i dont inc. These things are that different. Use is an euro in which we visual rhetoric to self document experiences. Take pictures of every experience we have and posted on facebook. When my daughter had surgery, she went into surgery and the first thing she said when she woke up his mom, take a picture. And i realize, thats not that different from someone going to their grandmothers funeral taking a picture of themselves crying at the funeral were with the grandmother in the casket. I think what has changed is the public nature that we are all part of this audience taking place and partaking in these previously private experience. We are seeing it whether we want to see it or not, so death interrupts us and that is what is disturbing to people today. They can no longer choose whether they want to see pictures of the deceased or interact with the deceased or be an audience to someone speaking with the deceased. I hope people can have a conversation about the dead. I hope people can talk about death and become comfortable because for me, the most important thing about death is that it helps us to love better. If we recognize every Single Person born on this earth will one day die, i think we will live better lives. We will live more intentional lives and we will be kinder and just. Hopefully we will do the things we always wanted to do. We never know when we are going to die. For me, allowing death to enter the conversation allows us to live better. W