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Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells
EXCERPT FROM SOUTHERN HORRORS: LYNCH LAWS IN ALL ITS PHASES
EXCERPT FROM SOUTHERN HORRORS: LYNCH LAWS IN ALL ITS PHASES
Ida Bell Wells (1862-1931) was an African American journalist, suffragist, sociologist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. The following excerpt comes from her work entitled Southern Horrors: Lynch Laws in All Its Phases , which was originally published in the New York Age (June 25, 1892) and was then printed as a pamphlet after much demand and many donations. In this pamphlet, Wells talks about lynching, or the murder by mob for an alleged crime without a legal trial. The targets of such wanton violence and hatred were almost always African Americans. Wells began investigating Southern lynching in 1889 when she wrote about the local lynching of a friend in her newspaper, Free Speech. This caused so much anger that people threatened Wells not to return from a trip to New York to her hometown of Memphis, prompting her to write Southern Horrors while exiled from the South. As you read, take notes on Wells’ argument as to why black people in the South were so targeted and the consequences of lynching that, essentially, let whites take the law into their own hands.
EXCERPT FROM SOUTHERN HORRORS: LYNCH LAWS IN ALL ITS PHASESGoogle Sites
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