Wells was the first to put her life on the line for the anti-lynching cause. “With me it is not myself nor my reputation, but the life of my people, which is at stake,” she wrote, responding to an interview by Frances Willard of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Moderation was not a virtue when “men, women, and children were scourged, hanged, shot, and burned.” “It may be unwise to express myself so strongly,” Wells wrote in her diary, expressing her outrage at the lynching of Eliza Woods of Jackson, Tennessee, “but I cannot help it and I know not if capital may not be made of it
...more
