Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

Introduction

Ida B. Wells, co-owner of the Memphis newspaper Free Speech and Headlight, began investigating lynching after three Black grocers were lynched in March 1892. When she suggested in print that relationships between white women and Black men were often consensual, a mob destroyed the paper’s office while she was in the North, and she was warned not to return. Southern Horrors, published in New York in October 1892 with funds raised by Black women’s clubs, sets out her findings: the charge of rape was a pretext, and lynching served to keep Black citizens from economic and political advance. Wells called for boycotts, migration and self-defence, writing that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honour in every Black home.

Connections

Taken up in

• A Red Record1895 · Ida B. Wells

More works by Ida B. Wells

• 1895A Red Record