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On Lynchings
Though the end of the Civil War brought legal emancipation to blacks, it is a fact of history that their social oppression continued long after. The most virulent form of this ongoing persecution was the practice of lynching carried out by mob rule, often as local law enforcement officials looked the other way. During the 1880s and 1890s, more than 100 African Americans per year were lynched, and in 1892 alone the toll of murdered men and women reached a peak of 161.
In that awful year, the twenty-three-year-old Ida B. Wells, the editor of a small newspaper for blacks in Memphis, Tennessee, raised one lone voice of protest. In her paper she charged that white businessmen had instigated three local lynchings against their black competitors. In retaliation for her outspoken courage a goon-squad of angry whites destroyed her editorial office and print shop, and she was forced to flee the South and move to New York City.
So began a crusade against lynching which became the focus of her long, active, and very courageous life. In New York she began lecturing against the abhorrent vigilante practice and published her first pamphlet on the subject called Southern Horrors . After moving to Chicago and marrying lawyer Ferdinand Barnett, she continued her campaign, publishing A Red Record in 1895 and Mob Rule in New Orleans , about the race riots in that city, in 1900.
All three of these documents are here collected in this work, a shocking testament to cruelty and the dark American legacy of racial prejudice. Anticipating possible accusations of distortion, Wells-Barnett was careful to present factually accurate evidence and she deliberately relied on southern white sources as well as statistics gathered by the Chicago Tribune . Using the words of white journalists, she created a damning indictment of unpunished crimes that was difficult to dispute since southern white men who had witnessed the appalling incidents had written the descriptions.
Along with her husband she played an active role in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Due to her efforts, the NAACP launched an intensive campaign against lynching after World War I.
Her work remains important to this day not only as a cry of protest against injustice but also as valuable historical documentation of terrible crimes that must never be forgotten. This new edition is enhanced by an introduction by Patricia Hill Collins, professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati.
In that awful year, the twenty-three-year-old Ida B. Wells, the editor of a small newspaper for blacks in Memphis, Tennessee, raised one lone voice of protest. In her paper she charged that white businessmen had instigated three local lynchings against their black competitors. In retaliation for her outspoken courage a goon-squad of angry whites destroyed her editorial office and print shop, and she was forced to flee the South and move to New York City.
So began a crusade against lynching which became the focus of her long, active, and very courageous life. In New York she began lecturing against the abhorrent vigilante practice and published her first pamphlet on the subject called Southern Horrors . After moving to Chicago and marrying lawyer Ferdinand Barnett, she continued her campaign, publishing A Red Record in 1895 and Mob Rule in New Orleans , about the race riots in that city, in 1900.
All three of these documents are here collected in this work, a shocking testament to cruelty and the dark American legacy of racial prejudice. Anticipating possible accusations of distortion, Wells-Barnett was careful to present factually accurate evidence and she deliberately relied on southern white sources as well as statistics gathered by the Chicago Tribune . Using the words of white journalists, she created a damning indictment of unpunished crimes that was difficult to dispute since southern white men who had witnessed the appalling incidents had written the descriptions.
Along with her husband she played an active role in the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Due to her efforts, the NAACP launched an intensive campaign against lynching after World War I.
Her work remains important to this day not only as a cry of protest against injustice but also as valuable historical documentation of terrible crimes that must never be forgotten. This new edition is enhanced by an introduction by Patricia Hill Collins, professor and chair of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati.
204 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
112 books225 followersIda Bell Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist and, with her husband, newspaper owner Ferdinand L. Barnett, an early leader in the civil rights movement. She documented lynching in the United States, showing how it was often a way to control or punish blacks who competed with whites, often under the guise of rape charges. She was active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. Wells was a skilled and persuasive rhetorician, and traveled internationally on lecture tours.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
June 8, 2016
Major Fields: 13/133 (10% done!)
"Men and women of America, are you proud of this record which the Anglo-Saxon race has made for itself? Your silence seems to say that you are. Your silence encourages a continuance of this sort of horror."
The facsimiles of "Southern Horrors" (1892), "A Red Record" (1895), and "Mob Rule in New Orleans" (1900) act as an alternative archive to reframe the predominance of Lynch Law and the unlawful murder of black men, women, and children in the American South. Wells primarily uses the Chicago Tribune to source her facts in order to use white publications and news outlets so as not to be accused of exaggeration or fabrication. By placing the statistics of lynchings next to the more narrative accounts of many different lynchings, Wells intends to dismantle the myths and justifications given for lynchings, notably the rape of white women by black men. She proves through repetition and an journalistic objectivity that the majority of black citizens killed by lynch mobs were innocent and that their murders are left unpunished. These documents prove that "objectivity" it itself subjective, and that how facts and events are framed and presented results in drastically different conclusions.
"Men and women of America, are you proud of this record which the Anglo-Saxon race has made for itself? Your silence seems to say that you are. Your silence encourages a continuance of this sort of horror."
The facsimiles of "Southern Horrors" (1892), "A Red Record" (1895), and "Mob Rule in New Orleans" (1900) act as an alternative archive to reframe the predominance of Lynch Law and the unlawful murder of black men, women, and children in the American South. Wells primarily uses the Chicago Tribune to source her facts in order to use white publications and news outlets so as not to be accused of exaggeration or fabrication. By placing the statistics of lynchings next to the more narrative accounts of many different lynchings, Wells intends to dismantle the myths and justifications given for lynchings, notably the rape of white women by black men. She proves through repetition and an journalistic objectivity that the majority of black citizens killed by lynch mobs were innocent and that their murders are left unpunished. These documents prove that "objectivity" it itself subjective, and that how facts and events are framed and presented results in drastically different conclusions.
February 16, 2019
This edition includes two lesser known works by the author around the same subject. As a woman born and raised in Mississippi, I am well aware of the southern lynching history, and this is a very powerful work written by a dedicated woman.
August 6, 2015
Every high school child should read this book. In places it might be glossed over because it is redundant. Lynching was a way of life in America at the turn of the Twentieth Century. As Wells-Barnett points out, although most whites tried to say that they didn't want to discuss lynching because it would drag the reputations of outraged white women through the mire, the large majority of lynchings were done, well they were done because white people felt like lynching or shooting or burning some black people just to teach them their place. I won't ruin the book or the lively language for the reader. For the first time in years, I wanted to write a screenplay that starred one of the men described in the section Mob Rule in New Orleans, Robert Charles. Ida B. allows the white press to describe him as a desperado and cur and then in a few, clear, sharp pages she shows a man of quiet, solid courage who just wanted to be left alone before he was attacked by police for sitting while being black. Oddly enough, he does not respond with cowering fear but with solid determination to take a lot of white people with him. The ensuing pages is ripped for an adventure novel. That alone is worth the read. However, it is the character of Wells-Barnett, who was born to slaves in 1862, and rose to chafe WEB Dubois with her radicalism, that made me amazed and proud to be an American. Her charming assertion that many black men were lynched because Southern women liked their "charms" was enough for the South to guarantee that she would be lynched if she returned home. It made me love her.
October 26, 2017
One of the best (political theory) books I've read. Ever. Wells is very purposeful in her writing style and explains how the guise of lynchings to protect white women is merely a pretext for maintaining the patriarchy of the white man.
April 13, 2020
Ida Wells was the editor of a small newspaper when she wrote this excellent history of lynchings in the United States after the Civil War. HIGHLY recommend!
February 25, 2022
This is a compilation of three pamphlets, and some of the information in the first two overlap, but the writing is so good, in terms of the investigation, the examples found, the references to other accounts for balance and self-incrimination... it is really well done.
And, it is also still far too relevant. If lynchings as such do not happen so much anymore, attacks on protesters strike many of the same notes, with many of the same hallmarks.
And, it is also still far too relevant. If lynchings as such do not happen so much anymore, attacks on protesters strike many of the same notes, with many of the same hallmarks.
April 27, 2014
the Robert Charles story is one of the most incredible things I've ever read anywhere.
March 28, 2016
Boring. Read for class.
February 7, 2019
Powerful & well informative.
January 13, 2020
Brutal and necessary.
February 9, 2021
Another one those books that rings as true today as it did when it was written.
September 25, 2022
must read
February 16, 2017
I picked this up after reading The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America because Ida B. Wells-Barnett's writings and her activism were cited throughout, and I wanted to get a more in-depth look at her work. After three of her acquaintances were lynched for standing up to an attack on their store, Wells-Barnett became very active in her anti-lynching campaign. She took on the then-popular notion that lynching was only done to protect the honor of women who had been "outraged," the term that Wells-Barnett uses throughout her writings--I'm not sure if this meant rape or if it was meant to cover physical assaults in general, but the implication often seemed to be of rape. Of course, it wasn't women's honor, but white women's honor that everyone was hell-bent on protecting, as very few white men ever went to trial or were sentenced for outraging black women or children. Wells-Barnett cites many cases illustrating this fact, like the lynching of Eph. Grizzard, a black man charged with raping a white woman. "He was taken from the jail, with Governor Buchanan and the police and militia standing by, dragged through the streets in broad daylight, knives plunged into him at every step, and with every fiendish cruelty that a frenzied mob could devise, he was at last swung out on the bridge with hands cut to pieces as he tried to climb up the stanchions." As Wells-Barnett points out, "At the very moment when these civilized whites were announcing their determination 'to protect their wives and daughters,' by murdering Grizzard, a white man was in the same jail for raping eight-year-old Maggie Reese, a colored girl. He was not harmed." (118) And why would he have been? As "[a] leading journal in South Carolina" pointed out, "'it is not the same thing for a white man to assault a colored woman as for a colored man to assault a white woman, because the colored woman had no finer feelings nor virtue to be outraged.'" (117).
The prevailing mentality at the time insisted that no consensual relation could exist between a white woman and a black man. One case cited from 1892 reads "If Lillie Bailey, a rather pretty white girl, seventeen years of age, who is now at the city hospital, would be somewhat less reserved about her disgrace there would be some very nauseating details in the story of her life. She is the mother of a little coon. The truth might reveal fearful depravity or the evidence of a rank outrage. She will not divulge the name of the man who has left such black evidence of her disgrace, and in fact says it is a matter in which there can be no interest to the outside world." (111). So those were the only options when a mixed-race baby was born, mental illness on the part of the mother or rape. Ida B. Wells-Barnett called bullshit on that and put forth the theory that some white women might willingly be with black men. This got her paper, The Memphis Free Speech, burned to the ground and probably would have gotten her killed as well had she not been out of town at the time of publication.
She then proceeded to lay out her case, often using newspaper reports from white writers in white publications (in other words, reports that other white people couldn't refute), that not only were there cases of white women willingly engaging in relations with black men, but that rape was not the only accustion that could get someone lynched (only about a third of lynchings reported were rape-related). Lynchings were also linked to other serious crimes like murder and arson, but were also carried out for things like "enticing servant away," "writing letter to a white woman," "conjuring," or for "no offense." So...that excuse about the honor of women and children...a little shaky. Wells-Barnett goes on to excoriate the hypocrisy of this excuse with the following (on which my notes just say, "Daaaaaaaamn!"): "To justify their own barbarism they assume a chivalry which they do not possess. True chivalry respects all womanhood, and no one who reads the record, as it is written in the faces of the million mulattoes in the South, will for a minute conceive that the soutern white man had a very chivalrous regard for the honor due the women of his own race or respect for the womanhood which circumstances placed in his power. That chivalry which is 'most sensitive concerning the honor of women' can hope for but little respect from the civilized world, when it confines itself entirely to the women who happen to be white." (62). It is striking to me that "protecting our women and children" is still the refrain that gets trotted out whenever people want to pass laws which blame targeted groups for criminal activity while ignoring that same activity amongst its own.
While lynching itself was not legal, many people were willing to look the other way when they thought that it was only being done to the most heinous criminals, but Wells-Barnett's reporting forced people to admit that perhaps vigilante justice was getting a bit out of control. She addressed the subject of vigilante justice itself as well. She was not arguing that white people should not be able to exact justice for wrongs done to them by black people, but she did insist that it be done within the scope of the law. Not only did many lynchings take place based on the mere charge of a crime having been committed, before any sort of legal trial had taken place, but they were often advertised in the local papers (so they were not surprise attacks that nobody knew to guard against); and in the case of Henry Smith, "[e]xcursions were run by all the railroads, and the mayor of the town gave the children a holiday so that they might see the sight." (199). "The sight" was a man who had been deemed an imbecile being burned alive after the father, brother, and uncle of his victim spent nearly an hour using red-hot irons to burn out his eyes and cook his toungue. You know, good old-fashioned, wholesome family fun.
The last section of the book focuses mainly on an event in New Orleans where a black man was sitting on a stoop when a police officer approached him and became abusive. He shot the officer in what was claimed to be self-defense. He ran away from the scene, the cop later died, and a manhunt was on. The town went insane and numerous black citizens were brutally murdered; some were just unfortunate enough to be present when a vindictive mob rolled through and some were actively sought out for abuse. The man was eventually found and gunned down after having shot many others in pursuit, and while many people would say, "Why didn't he just cooperate with the cop?" or "If he hadn't run in the first place, none of this would have happened," this case exemplifies the worst of what can happen when citizens don't think they will receive a fair trial and when vigilante justice is allowed to run amok. This man knew that as a black man who had shot a white cop in 1900 New Orleans there was NO WAY he was going to receive a fair trial if he even got a trial at all. From that point on, he was running for his life.
When Wells-Barnett tried to bring attention to lynching in America, it fell on many deaf ears. Thinking that international pressure would help, she began to plead her case abroad. While she did gain some support, she also ran up against "criticism of the movement appealing to the English people for sympathy and support in our crusade against Lynch Law that our action was unpatriotic, vindictive and useless." (121). It seems to me that when pointing out atrocities being done to your people gets you labled as unpatriotic and vindictive, it's a fairly good indication that you're on the right path.
This book is a compilation of three of Wells-Barnett's writings that were published between 1892 and 1900, so there was a lot of overlap--one case might be listed in one writing as an example of mob rule and in another as a case of a human being being burned alive. By the way, there's an entire section called "Burning Human Beings Alive" because that was a thing that happened often enough to earn its own category. There also seem to be some discrepacies in numbers. For example, the Chicago Tribune's lynching records from 1882-1899 show 2,533 lynchings (201-2). Near the beginning of the book, Wells-Barnett claims there were about 10,000 lynchings between 1864-1894 (58). In another section she breaks out 1894's lynchings by offense (134 total) and by month (197 total), neither number of which agrees with the Chicago Tribune's number of 190. So, I wish there had been some more explanation to how she came up with these figures, but given the time and manner of this publication and the importance of its subject, I'm willing to allow some leeway here.
This is one of those points in history that I know about...generally. I know lynchings happened, I know they were brutal, I know they were outside the law, but anytime I read about the specifics of these cases, it is shocking, not because I don't think that people are capable of this kind of thing or because I am surprised that it happened, but because I think that people are still capable of this kind of thing, because I can't imagine telling somebody who comes from this type of history to "get over it already." White people did this shit. While none of us today can be held personally accountable for any of the things that happened 100 years ago...or 50 years ago for that matter--well, OK, maybe some of us COULD be held personally responsible--we also need to be much better about acknowledging that it happened, acknowedging that it was awful, understanding that while your history might consist of stories of your great-great-grandfather who was a decorated general in the Civil War, other people's history is that their ancestors, the people of whom they are a part, were brutally beaten, burned alive, and had pieces of their bodies cut off and taken away as souvenirs because of the color of their skin and that the attitudes that allowed it to happen then are not that far below the surface in a lot of places now.
The prevailing mentality at the time insisted that no consensual relation could exist between a white woman and a black man. One case cited from 1892 reads "If Lillie Bailey, a rather pretty white girl, seventeen years of age, who is now at the city hospital, would be somewhat less reserved about her disgrace there would be some very nauseating details in the story of her life. She is the mother of a little coon. The truth might reveal fearful depravity or the evidence of a rank outrage. She will not divulge the name of the man who has left such black evidence of her disgrace, and in fact says it is a matter in which there can be no interest to the outside world." (111). So those were the only options when a mixed-race baby was born, mental illness on the part of the mother or rape. Ida B. Wells-Barnett called bullshit on that and put forth the theory that some white women might willingly be with black men. This got her paper, The Memphis Free Speech, burned to the ground and probably would have gotten her killed as well had she not been out of town at the time of publication.
She then proceeded to lay out her case, often using newspaper reports from white writers in white publications (in other words, reports that other white people couldn't refute), that not only were there cases of white women willingly engaging in relations with black men, but that rape was not the only accustion that could get someone lynched (only about a third of lynchings reported were rape-related). Lynchings were also linked to other serious crimes like murder and arson, but were also carried out for things like "enticing servant away," "writing letter to a white woman," "conjuring," or for "no offense." So...that excuse about the honor of women and children...a little shaky. Wells-Barnett goes on to excoriate the hypocrisy of this excuse with the following (on which my notes just say, "Daaaaaaaamn!"): "To justify their own barbarism they assume a chivalry which they do not possess. True chivalry respects all womanhood, and no one who reads the record, as it is written in the faces of the million mulattoes in the South, will for a minute conceive that the soutern white man had a very chivalrous regard for the honor due the women of his own race or respect for the womanhood which circumstances placed in his power. That chivalry which is 'most sensitive concerning the honor of women' can hope for but little respect from the civilized world, when it confines itself entirely to the women who happen to be white." (62). It is striking to me that "protecting our women and children" is still the refrain that gets trotted out whenever people want to pass laws which blame targeted groups for criminal activity while ignoring that same activity amongst its own.
While lynching itself was not legal, many people were willing to look the other way when they thought that it was only being done to the most heinous criminals, but Wells-Barnett's reporting forced people to admit that perhaps vigilante justice was getting a bit out of control. She addressed the subject of vigilante justice itself as well. She was not arguing that white people should not be able to exact justice for wrongs done to them by black people, but she did insist that it be done within the scope of the law. Not only did many lynchings take place based on the mere charge of a crime having been committed, before any sort of legal trial had taken place, but they were often advertised in the local papers (so they were not surprise attacks that nobody knew to guard against); and in the case of Henry Smith, "[e]xcursions were run by all the railroads, and the mayor of the town gave the children a holiday so that they might see the sight." (199). "The sight" was a man who had been deemed an imbecile being burned alive after the father, brother, and uncle of his victim spent nearly an hour using red-hot irons to burn out his eyes and cook his toungue. You know, good old-fashioned, wholesome family fun.
The last section of the book focuses mainly on an event in New Orleans where a black man was sitting on a stoop when a police officer approached him and became abusive. He shot the officer in what was claimed to be self-defense. He ran away from the scene, the cop later died, and a manhunt was on. The town went insane and numerous black citizens were brutally murdered; some were just unfortunate enough to be present when a vindictive mob rolled through and some were actively sought out for abuse. The man was eventually found and gunned down after having shot many others in pursuit, and while many people would say, "Why didn't he just cooperate with the cop?" or "If he hadn't run in the first place, none of this would have happened," this case exemplifies the worst of what can happen when citizens don't think they will receive a fair trial and when vigilante justice is allowed to run amok. This man knew that as a black man who had shot a white cop in 1900 New Orleans there was NO WAY he was going to receive a fair trial if he even got a trial at all. From that point on, he was running for his life.
When Wells-Barnett tried to bring attention to lynching in America, it fell on many deaf ears. Thinking that international pressure would help, she began to plead her case abroad. While she did gain some support, she also ran up against "criticism of the movement appealing to the English people for sympathy and support in our crusade against Lynch Law that our action was unpatriotic, vindictive and useless." (121). It seems to me that when pointing out atrocities being done to your people gets you labled as unpatriotic and vindictive, it's a fairly good indication that you're on the right path.
This book is a compilation of three of Wells-Barnett's writings that were published between 1892 and 1900, so there was a lot of overlap--one case might be listed in one writing as an example of mob rule and in another as a case of a human being being burned alive. By the way, there's an entire section called "Burning Human Beings Alive" because that was a thing that happened often enough to earn its own category. There also seem to be some discrepacies in numbers. For example, the Chicago Tribune's lynching records from 1882-1899 show 2,533 lynchings (201-2). Near the beginning of the book, Wells-Barnett claims there were about 10,000 lynchings between 1864-1894 (58). In another section she breaks out 1894's lynchings by offense (134 total) and by month (197 total), neither number of which agrees with the Chicago Tribune's number of 190. So, I wish there had been some more explanation to how she came up with these figures, but given the time and manner of this publication and the importance of its subject, I'm willing to allow some leeway here.
This is one of those points in history that I know about...generally. I know lynchings happened, I know they were brutal, I know they were outside the law, but anytime I read about the specifics of these cases, it is shocking, not because I don't think that people are capable of this kind of thing or because I am surprised that it happened, but because I think that people are still capable of this kind of thing, because I can't imagine telling somebody who comes from this type of history to "get over it already." White people did this shit. While none of us today can be held personally accountable for any of the things that happened 100 years ago...or 50 years ago for that matter--well, OK, maybe some of us COULD be held personally responsible--we also need to be much better about acknowledging that it happened, acknowedging that it was awful, understanding that while your history might consist of stories of your great-great-grandfather who was a decorated general in the Civil War, other people's history is that their ancestors, the people of whom they are a part, were brutally beaten, burned alive, and had pieces of their bodies cut off and taken away as souvenirs because of the color of their skin and that the attitudes that allowed it to happen then are not that far below the surface in a lot of places now.
February 4, 2018
To better understand America's culture, a culture based in large part on the idea of White superiority, one must learn the history of our nation. Ida B. Wells-Barnett provides a look into the harsh realities faced by Communities of Color, in the former Confederate States. On top of the numerous policies/laws/regulations that were implemented to prevent full inclusion, African Americans constantly had to worry about being caught up in the mob justice that controlled most rural areas. The mere act of being accused of a crime, if Black, was often enough to warrant a lynching. The 1000's of Black Americans who were killed in this way, with no legal representation, not even a kangaroo type court, testifies to a cultural legacy that has yet to answer for the crimes they've committed against all of humanity.
February 20, 2021
Important and necessary stepping stone in the history of Black Transformative Justice. This is not one continuous book, but three (sometimes repetitive) pamphlets orig. published approx. 1892-1900. I had trouble with: Wells-Barnett's appeals to American/ Christian exceptionalism; her trust that "law and order" world be fair to Black people; and her adherence to patriarchal gender roles. In short, it's worth reading Wells-Barnett since she was the leading anti-lynching activist of her time... but she was still very much of her time in her view of the larger context of lynching.
May 24, 2019
Bone-chilling sickening details of lynching. She documents 100-200 cases for every year from 1882-1899. She also documents the alleged reasons from "no reason" to "being saucy" to "alleged rape".
I like the way she matter-of-factly confronts the lies and the contradictions of the accusers' claims. This book should be required reading for all citizens.
I assume that most or all of the victims mentioned in the book are honored in the recently opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. This book may have served as a way to identify some of the victims.... I'm glad there is a monument to these people who were just trying to live in peace and were so unjustly and cruelly murdered.
I like the way she matter-of-factly confronts the lies and the contradictions of the accusers' claims. This book should be required reading for all citizens.
I assume that most or all of the victims mentioned in the book are honored in the recently opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. This book may have served as a way to identify some of the victims.... I'm glad there is a monument to these people who were just trying to live in peace and were so unjustly and cruelly murdered.
September 15, 2021
I read this for class as well and wow, the stories it told were terrible (we only read "Mob Rule in New Orleans"). I had no idea it would be about racist mobs before I read it, and I didn't know of the terrible cruelty of those people. It was terrible, and even worse, it's still relevant today.
Read
May 7, 2025This was a hard read not only because the content she covered was harrowing and devastating but because you could feel Wells’ desperation and frustration in her pleas for justice and simply human decency.
June 30, 2020
For America in World Civ III
Interesting take on racial double standards during the early 1900s from the voice of a prominent African-American figure in journalism and civil rights.
Interesting take on racial double standards during the early 1900s from the voice of a prominent African-American figure in journalism and civil rights.
December 7, 2025
read for class. interesting
Read
February 24, 2018Horrifying!
This is a true accounting of "Lynch Law" in the South after the freeing of the slaves by President Lincoln via the Emancipation Proclamation. There was no "due process of law" for Negroes in the South. Many innocent people were murdered by mobs. The reality of "Lynch Law" was absolutely horrendous! Although this book was written well over 100 years ago, it is a testament to the horrors that took place in the lives of free men who just happened to be Negro. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has the courage to face the realities of Negro life in the last part of 19th century America.
This is a true accounting of "Lynch Law" in the South after the freeing of the slaves by President Lincoln via the Emancipation Proclamation. There was no "due process of law" for Negroes in the South. Many innocent people were murdered by mobs. The reality of "Lynch Law" was absolutely horrendous! Although this book was written well over 100 years ago, it is a testament to the horrors that took place in the lives of free men who just happened to be Negro. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has the courage to face the realities of Negro life in the last part of 19th century America.
January 27, 2010
Ida B. seriously ROCKS. Like Jonathan Swift, but tougher and fiercer.
March 29, 2018
The seer horrors and injustice uncovered by this book is beyond infuriating. To think that this is only the scrap of the surface.
April 17, 2024
This book is detailed and filled with comments that are so poignant even today. It's a testament to the work that Ida B. Wells-Barnett undertook in order to tell the truth to the world.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews