WACO, Texas — Colin Browen wants to bring awareness to a dark chapter in Texas history and promote community healing. The filmmaker and paranormal investigator is on a mission to get a historical marker erected acknowledging the lynching of Jesse Washington that happened in Waco in 1916.
“Murder victims were buried in here," said Browen, standing in a cemetery in Austin, Texas."There are children that died only days apart from the same family. And it's known across the city as one of the most haunted places.
Browen began sharing his ghost hunting videos on his YouTube channel "The Paranormal Files" about six years ago. The YouTuber uses paranormal investigation to expose people to dark history he says some often want to forget.
“At least in a cemetery all these people have markers and monuments, but other massacres and different things that happened, these events don't have markers,” Browen said. “They don't have permanent reminders that these things happened…. I think it's easy to teach history while keeping people interested in the findings that I've capture through using these devices that we have here."
A visit to a small town in Texas a few years ago inspired Browen to use his platform for social justice.
“They had lynched people and buried them in a well in this small town, and instead of memorializing them, they actually just destroyed the well and built a road over it,” Browen shared.
Back at his apartment, Browen pulls up a video he put together following a visit to George Floyd Square in Minneapolis.
"I posted that video online and the intense backlash from a lot of people was eye opening to me and it made me want to jump even deeper into telling these stories that oftentimes get forgotten or these stories from peoples whose voice could never be heard in the first place,” Browen said.
Now Browen is using TikTok to lobby for a historical marker to be erected recognizing the 1916 lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco.
“Jesse Washington was tried by an all white jury and found guilty of murder in four minutes,” said Browen in the Tok Tok video. “He was then dragged out of the Waco, Texas, courthouse he was found guilty in by a chain. While he was being dragged, people were hitting him with shovels and stabbing him and he was brought to this tree."
He goes on to address the historical marker.
“In 2016 the Texas Historical Commission announced that they were going to erect a marker commemorating Jesse Washington's death but it was never built,” Browen said in the TikTok video.
Browen's petition to get the historical marker built has garnered thousands of signatures.
“To move forward in society, we have to acknowledge the dark history, learn from it and then strive as hard as we can to not repeat it,” Browen said.
Representatives from the Texas Historical Commission say they received McLennan county’s authorized inscription for the marker in April, and commissioners will consider it at their next quarterly meeting in late July.
We received this statement from the McLennan County Historical Commission Vice Chair Clint Lynch:
The McLennan County Historical Commission submitted the historical marker inscription for the Jesse Washington Historical Marker to the Texas Historical Commission for its approval. After approval of a historical marker inscription by the Commission, the marker is fabricated at a foundry and is delivered to the marker’s sponsor.