The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader

by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mia Bay (Editor), Henry Louis Gates Jr. (General Editor)

The broadest and most comprehensive collection of writings available by an early civil and women’s rights pioneer

Seventy-one years before Rosa Parks’s courageous act of resistance, police dragged a young black journalist named Ida B. Wells off a train for refusing to give up her seat. The experience shaped Wells’s career, and—when hate crimes touched her life personally—she mounted what was to become her life’s work: an anti-lynching crusade that captured international attention.

This volume covers the entire scope of Wells’s remarkable career, collecting her early writings, articles exposing the horrors of lynching, essays from her travels abroad, and her later journalism. The Light of Truth is both an invaluable resource for study and a testament to Wells’s long career as a civil rights activist.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Classics, Journalism, Race, Feminism, Politics

581 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2014

About the author

Ida 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.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[April Helms · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me all summer to read this dense book, but it is worth the effort. This is a collection of work by famed journalist and writer Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Most of the writing deals with her essays, columns and pamphlets protesting the lynch laws prevalent during her time, and her writing was an eye-opener for me. I know I’m not the only one but my “knowledge” (if it could be called that) of lynching was somewhat limited. I thought, and always had the impression, that lynching meant a spur-of-the moment enraged mob hanging someone. Oh no. That is the sanitized version of what lynching meant. Wells-Barnett, through her writings which could wax poetic one moment and hurl barbs the next, provides facts, numbers, figures and many interviews to counter the common opinions of the time- that lynchings were necessary, and were always done against someone who was guilty and deserved such treatment. Wells-Barnett details several cases where, when the culprit (who may or may not have been guilty of a crime) could not be found, lynch mobs attacked the family. Wives, children, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers could be targeted. And forget the idea that a lynch mob was a spur of the moment group. There were more than a few cases where trains made special excursions to cities where a lynching was anticipated, and whole families – including small children- came out by the hundreds. And while hanging someone without the full benefit of trial would be horrible enough, it was “just” a hanging if the mob decided to be lenient. Removal of fingers, toes and ears for souvenirs was all too common, as was burning, shooting and stabbing. The victim would often be alive as these atrocities happened. What’s more appalling is the lack of action by the government (at least one governor is quoted as saying that he would have lead a lynch mob if circumstances warranted it). The number of people killed by lynchings run into the thousands. Wells-Barnett early on states that the Civil War really did not end in 1865; civil war continued for decades. I think she had a point. This is not an easy book to read, but it does contain an unvarnished look at our history. A history we need to acknowledge fully if we do not wish to repeat it.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important piece looking back at the history of lynching and all of the work she did to bring that information to the public. She did a lot of necessary work. Its just very very emotionally heavy when it comes to reading the accounts of lynching in gruesome detail. I had to pause many times and I didn't read the entirety. I will definitely come back to this

[Rouchswalwe · Rating 5 out of 5]

These words need to be read. I am fortunate to have read them.

[Mya Nearhoof]

I never tandem read but I had to with this one. It was tough to get through (not because of the writing but because of the material). I would read about one horrific story and then we would jump into another. It was unrelenting in material. So.much.lynching. So many unspeakable horrific stories. My god, so many injustices. An important read. You don’t read this book in one day.
(Btw I don’t rate books that contain traumas from real people. Feels weird and I can’t do it).

[Ruby Welsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of Ida B Wells articles combined with Mia Bay's detail of events.
I cried a lot and all for history coursework research

[Daniel L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ida B. Wells Shone the Light on the Evils of Lynching

There’s a notable group of writers who exposed hideous truths and awoke the conscience of millions. Upton Sinclair exposed the meatpacking industry. Jacob Riis publicized how “the other half lives.” Nelly Bly laid bare the bleakness of mental institutions. And a Black journalist named Ida B. Wells showed the world the horrors of lynching in America.

Born a slave in 1862, Ida B. Wells gained freedom with the ending of the Civil War. However, the end of slavery was not the end of white supremacy. Some 72 years before Rosa Parks’s refusing to give up her seat sparked the civil rights movement, Wells was arrested for doing the same on a train. She started her writing career chronicling that action. However, the racism she would report in subsequent articles was of a much more sinister, lethal nature. This anthology, The Light of Truth, brings these pieces together.

The first Chapter includes her early writings under the pseudonym Iola, which provides the context of post-Reconstruction racism. Then, in the following Chapter, Wells brings together her groundbreaking reporting on lynching. Most notable is her essay Southern Horrors, which also explains “Lynch Law in All Its Phases.” Ida B. Wells is also noteworthy for exposing the rape myth of the Black man as a sexual threat (which the lynch mobs and enabling law-enforcement officials used to justify their acts). Indeed, this racist trope is still visible in 21st-century America.

Chapter 3 comprises Ms. Wells’s reporting in Great Britain. During her two speaking tours, she not only made the people of that country aware of the atrocities in the U.S., she also awoke that nation’s conscience to its own history of the slave trade. Yet, there here safety was not in jeopardy.

The fourth chapter includes A Red Record, a careful compilation of the actual occurrences of lynching throughout the South, as well as in some northern states. In the preface of this, Ms. Well’s longest work, Frederick Douglass said, “Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination…. There is no word equal to it in convincing power.” He continued: “Brave woman! You have done more for your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured.” This essay is still very much relevant today. The Equal Justice Initiative, the organization Bryan Stevenson founded and described in his acclaimed book, Just Mercy, has continued this critical documentation. In fact, EJI recently reported on its recent finding of an additional 2,000 Black people murdered through lynching. Although whites were also the victims of lynch mobs, Ms. Wells assembled the hard statistics to demonstrate how Blacks were murdered in this manner in much greater numbers, using this to support her claim that lynching was an act of racism, white supremacy.

The fifth and final chapter is a compilation of her writing of the 20th century. Declaring lynching “the greatest outrage of the century,” these articles are calls for action. Among them are enfranchisement, written in 1910, something that would not become law for another 55 years.

This excellent anthology includes detailed notes for historical context and a fine essay by Henry Louis Gates Jr. In May, 2020, “For her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching,” Ida B. Wells was finally honored with the Pulitzer Prize. As to why this matters, an article in the Washington Post explains, “Wells shone a light on the incongruities between American lynching narratives and the realities of mob violence.” That day, Nikole Hannah-Jones also earned a Pulitzer, for the landmark “1619 Project” in the New York Times. In her writings assembled here, Ida B. Wells, probably more than anyone else, brought the darkness of violence of Black Americans to light.

[elle ashlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Light of Truth by Ida B. Wells is a collection of her writings, based on true stories from the 1890s. Ida B. Wells is not only the author, but is also one of the main subjects of this book. She explores her own experiences and the experiences of others, what she has faced, and her journeys to the Deep South where she discusses the high effect of a hateful society under the Jim Crow laws, as she was born into slavery. She's lived a life where she could never truly connect with who she is or her history because she was told she was a second-class citizen. She also discusses the accusations against black men for crimes they did not commit, like rape against white women. Even if there was only suspicion against a black person, they were arrested immediately. She had never really lived a life where she could belong, and she expresses this really well in The Light of Truth and all her writings. She doesn't shy away from calling out injustices; she fights for her rights in the piece. She brings the truth to herself and to society in the 19th century.

She powerfully, in my opinion, contrasts the murderous and prejudiced hate and the lies, propaganda, and political and patriarchal laws being told to society at that time. When she states, "Where the land of the free and the home of the brave means a land of lawlessness, murder, and outrage." I loved how it showed that people didn't want her to belong. She was constantly excluded from society, and the quote really gives you a perspective of what she's been through. The contrasting ideas "land of the brave" versus "lawlessness, murder, and outrage" during that time in this mean civilisation, expresses the political and patriotic lies of that time. This is especially true in the Deep South, but it also represents today. It's a constant cycle of what's happening. In her journalism, she says,

"Someone needs to show that the Afro-American race has been sinned against more than they have sinned, and it has fallen upon me to do that."

The metaphorical weight in the language of what she's saying shows that someone had to fight for basic human rights.
This book was brutal, devastating and powerful.

[Sari Lott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extra relevant today, as the world justifies or denies a genocide happening right before our eyes. Ida B. Wells fought to convince America and England that obvious and preventable atrocities were being committed in the United States.

[Ian Wraga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wells went to Moody Bible College and got radicalized and went on crystalize her legacy by savagely eviscerating white southerner christians in the press. Staple for anyone wanting to live out their faith or be a part of movement building in America.

[Natalie]

It'll be hard to encapsulate everything I feel about Ida B. Wells in one review, but I'll try. This anthology follows Wells' writings from the mid-1880s into 1927. This woman did not hold back. Her rhetoric while dismantling white supremacist lies was an impressive feat of journalism. And following history through her eyes, with her speeches and articles and pamphlets, is invaluable.

In the introduction, the editor makes a point to explain that Ida B. Wells uses the same examples occasionally so that some of her work might feel repetitive. And yes, it was! There's a few main instances Ida B. Wells focuses on over and over again, but that's because it is a perfect rebuttal to some of the bullshit white newspapers were printing at the time. She wholeheartedly rejects the "lynching occurs because of black men can't stop raping white women" theory that was embraced, using statistic after statistic of the number of lynchings and their reasons for happening. Rape was never the majority of those accusations. One thing she repeats often is that there were no cases of white women being raped during the Civil War, when they were "unprotected" by their fellow white men, so how is it that black men have an innate desire to do this when there were no such public cases prior to post-Reconstruction/Jim Crow era?

Another jarring idea that Ida B. Wells resists is that these lynch-mobs are random acts of emotion, unstoppable once they begin. In most cases, if not all, they were planned lynchings, where people would take trains in to watch/participate. Newspapers published the suspicion that a lynching would occur, public officials would be made aware, there would be hundreds if not THOUSANDS in attendance, and not a single person would be arrested. Wells completely debunks the helplessness that white authorities tried to claim.

There's so much more I could write about. But I think what is striking is that we watch as these lynchings progress. They go from brutal lynchings of one black man or another for suspected "outrage" on white women, to entire massacres in East St. Louis, Memphis, and Arkansas for suspected "uprisings". What starts out as a white mob turns into a white police force. Slavery turns into the prison system. We see how issues of labor and education are completely wrapped up in the inherent racism the South cultivated. And this collection ends with her cry for aid in the Mississippi flood of 1927, which felt all too similar to what this country allowed to happen to people after Hurricane Katrina.

I can't say Wells was perfect. But some of her opinions are due to her coping with the injustices she saw, and her desperate attempt to make it end. She describes the lynchings for pages on end, the exact dismemberment, flaying, burning alive, etc. And the true tragedy is this did not stop in her lifetime. It still happens, but once again, under different lenses. But the excuses stay the same.

(Also worth noting that the anti-lynching act did not get passed in the U.S. until... 2022!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ida B. Wells was one of the most passionate, intelligent, and courageous social activists in American history. The racism she fought tooth and nail against in the post-Civil War era -- let's call it instead the post-Emancipation Proclamation era, to emphasize the irony* of it all -- this racism was a horrific, blood-lusting beast that raged primarily through the South. Wells was often the only voice that the oppressed African-Americans had, because the North, including the U.S. government, turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the rampant persecution.

By nature a sociologist, by profession a journalist, Wells frequently at considerable personal risk dug out the facts and held them up for the world to see. She was Rosa Parks seven decades before Rosa, dragged off a train for refusing to leave the ladies' car. In all things she was MLK, Jr. before Dr. King, including having her own destructive moment in Memphis when the newspaper she had founded was destroyed by a mob angry over an editorial she had written. She was warned that should she return to the city she would be tied to a stake on Main Street and branded and mutilated.

Frederick Douglass once wrote to her: "There has been no word equal to [the paper you wrote] in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison... Brave woman! You have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured."

Ida B. Wells' life-long struggle against racial injustice should never be forgotten. To that end, this Penguin Classics edition of her work does an exemplary job at keeping alive her vast contributions to the civil rights movement.


* There's nothing defensible about slavery, of any race at any time, but the 'freedom' that Lincoln's address granted did not materialize until more than a century later (and it's still trying to grow to fullness). Yet what immediately followed slavery was worse: wholesale (and unpunished!) murder of innocent men, women, and children solely because of their color. As Wells rightly comments, the pre-war Southern plantation owner rarely killed his slaves -- why destroy your own property, especially that which makes the money for you? But when the former slaves began carving out lives for themselves and making their way in the world, well...that was too much to be tolerated.

[TheCalloftheLibrary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable primary sources; it's kind of unbelievable how Wells-Barnett's analysis is still the primary lens used to understand lynching as an anti-black method of terror, explicitly designed to maintain status-quo in the face of Reconstruction.

Of interest though is the configuring a reader can do of Wells-Barnett in the milieu of turn of the century reform movements- her fascinating location as simultaneously a tireless advocate and, of course, still a byproduct of the time. Compared to others, like leaders in the Temperance movement (who she offered rebuttals against their exclusion of Black women or their justifications for lynchings), Wells-Barnett was much more attuned to the specific systematic issues which resulted in poverty. But just the same you see the echoes of language of "savagery" affixed to the lower class and an appreciation for education which reaffirms an innate hierarchy of people or ideals of class, womanhood, Christianity, etc. I've always found the adoption of missionary work by Black Americans during this period very interesting- it comes up every once in a while in Wells-Barnett's belief in the necessity of teaching the Bible, here early advocation of Black Americans traveling to Africa as missionaries like white christians, and her overeager praise for white women who, post-civil war, taught freed slaves the ways of religion and piety which they were supposedly missing.

Also - lots of connections to be made to Black women's intellectual histories and the ways writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker echoed or utilized or even challenged some of Wells-Barnett's work (thinking of Hurston's employment of natural disaster mimicking the realities of Ida's Mississippi Flood reporting or Walker's evocation of missionary work in order to directly show its failure etc etc)

[Tony Britt · Rating 4 out of 5]

If any indication of a good book includes the additional exploration it inspires, count this book among those for me. Admittedly, this is the first book in my 15-month journey reading about Black America that I didn't read word-for-word; I read some & scanned some, in part b/c there is considerable repetition. That's b/c it is a collection of essays, speeches & letters, not a single narrative. And frankly, getting through the vivid descriptions of lynching & torture would require more morbid curiosity, like when you choose to watch a slasher film, or some sadistic horror movie. Indeed, the descriptions are vivid & disgusting, but necessary to convey the depth of depravity that centuries of white supremacy. Now that I know & understand our nation's history better, that's not what's important to me anyway.
What is important to me about this book is learning more about another hero in American history, whitewashed throughout my public schooling. The issue is timely b/c of efforts to block the teaching of Critical Race Theory, an euphemism for the true history kept from us by white supremacy. IMHO, what some GOP-led state legislatures are doing today, including non-apologetic voter suppression, is no different than during Jim Crow. Its success is due in large part the whitewashing of our shared history.
Ms. Wells-Barnett didn't take such mess. She sought the truth, exposed it, & took a righteous moral stand against lynching & disentrancement. Which leads me to ask, who was the first Black American journalist? Who was the first great American journalist? Who was our nation's best journalist? Who can top Ms. Wells-Barnett's life-long dedication of truth to a cause? She is up there w/ Sojourner Truth, John Lewis, & Malcom X as American heroes I'm only now discovering.

[Kaitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This title is a complete collection of Ida B. Wells’ surviving works (her printing press was taken over, and some of her works were destroyed). Ida B. Wells was an important journalist, suffragette, and activist. Her writing is accessible and straight forward. She uses pathos but also incorporates the use of logos. There was repetition present in her writing, but most of the works were articles for newspapers or pamphlets made for the public. It would make sense that she would recycle her work as it would give background for new audiences and provide an emphasis on points she was making. I really liked that the pieces were separated into parts and how there were little introductions for each work. I found it was helpful in understanding the context behind each work and in giving readers a greater insight of the events occurring during each piece.
I really admire the dedication of Ida B. Wells in her investigative reporting regardless of the threats on her livelihood and person. I think that everyone should at least read the pamphlets she published if not her articles. She won a Pulitzer Prize Citation posthumously in 2020 for her work, which I was really glad to find out. Ida B. Wells was a courageous woman who worked to bring justice and equality to her people. Reading this collection of works really put that era of history into perspective for me and provided a look into the past. These works demonstrated a time period where atrocities were committed without consequences because authorities were corrupt and servile to racist sentiment.

[Laura Hoffman Brauman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes the best way to learn about history is to spend time with source materials. Wells was an extraordinary journalist that didn't back down from telling the truth, regardless of her personal risk. She is passionate, articulate, and focused on fact. She takes the arguments against her account and breaks them down one by one, never getting pulled into personal attacks against those that were attacking her. She knew the facts were behind her and she stayed focused on them (even when it had to be so incredibly frustrating for her personally). There is a lot to unpack here and if you are going to read this, I'd recommend giving yourself time to go slowly. It's not hard reading from a technical perspective, but emotionally -- this is tough stuff. Highly recommend.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished 223 out of 581 pages +.
At once, this is fascinating, repulsive and repetitive. Ida B. Wells wrote for many publications, her own newspaper, pamphlets, books, speeches. As important and essential as her reporting is, in this form it is redundant. However, the last 200+ pages are her “Twentieth- Century Journalism and Letters.” That addresses murders, lynching and race riots in New Orleans, a murder trial in Arkansas and reporting on the 1927 Flood on the Mississippi, and subsequent slavery re- enforced on Black people there.
Borrowed from interlibrary loan. I read this for Book Riot Read Harder Challenge #12, Read a work of investigative nonfiction by an author of color.

[Atif Taj · Rating 4 out of 5]

The original works of anti lynching crusader Ida Wells is special. Her activism through writing against lynching, racism, and riots display the harrowing realities of a society that needed to be read to be believed.

Special articles: The Jim Crow Car, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All it’s Phases, Lynch Law in America, The Behring Case in Equity, A Red Record, Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His Fight to the Death, The St Louis Massacre: The Greatest Outrage of the Century, The Arkansas Race Riot.

[LeeAnn Heringer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my reading for Black History Month and I tried to shut up and listen because it’s not my history. But I am gobsmacked that there has ever been, maybe still needs to be, anti-lynching activists. Lynching seems indefensible.

The heart of the book is the fourth chapter, particular the section entitled Red Record. If the book gets a little repetitive or long for you, I recommend making sure you read that part.

[BigHeadWalt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging, interesting read.
Written by a woman born a slave in 1862, began to raise her siblings at 16 when her parents died, she started and contributed to newspapers throughout the reconstruction era. Especially focused on lynching and her anti-lynching crusade through the early 1920's.
Insightful and difficult.

[catherine ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Red Record and Southern Horrors stook out to me the most, but from beginning to end it's easy to see how Wells was probably the most fearless leader of Black political thought there ever was in U.S. history.

[T.R. Ormond · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent complement to Ida B Wells's autobiography. I really appreciate the attention to detail from the editor. My reading focused primarily on Wells's interactions with Frances Willard and her pamphlet about the 1893 Columbian World Fair in Chicago. That is only scratching the surface of this book's content. It covers Wells's journalistic writings over the course of her entire life.

[Erik Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was no easy read. This collection of Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s writings is essential. One of our Republic’s greatest failures is that we do not know our own history. Lord, have mercy on our nation, whose people made lynching common throughout our land for decades upon decades. We must study, repent, and act justly in righteousness.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Educational and challenging (given its often dark and brutal subject matter): a well-assembled collection of Wells’ writings (edited by Mia Bay) testifies the importance of Ida Wells as an influential writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who used her journalism to shape things for the better.

[Katrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read through page 291.

[Michael Blackmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's gets a bit repetitive because of it is a series of her writings roughly on the same topic over years and she does recycle a bit of her material - but that doesn't diminish the impact and importance of what she was writing about. An important figure in the history of civil rights who deserves to be read even now.

[Emma Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical and journalistic staple. I've read and discussed this twice. Powerful, shocking, devastating. 4/5.