W. E. B. Du Bois had been incensed by news of the brutal attack, saying "any talk of the triumph of Christianity, or the spread of human culture, is idle twaddle as long as the Waco lynching is possible in the United States". After receiving Freeman's report, he placed a photograph of Washington's body on the cover of "The Crisis", the NAACP's newsletter, in a special issue that discussed the event. The issue was titled "The Waco Horror" and was published as an eight-page supplement to the July edition. Du Bois popularized "Waco Horror" as a name for Washington's lynching; the "Houston Chronicle" and the "New York Times" had previously used the word "horror" to describe the event. In 1916, "The Crisis" had a circulation of about 30,000, three times the size of the NAACP's membership.