Ida B Wells Lynch Law In All Its Phases

In the words of Miss Ida B. Wells: The student of American sociology will find the year of 1894 marked by a pronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy and outlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common, that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon the humane sentiments of the people of our land. She is depicting a period of time in American history stained with the blood of hundreds of free African American men, women and children. These people were unjustly slaughtered through the practice of lynching within the South. Wells was an investigative journalist and was involved in exploring, reporting, publishing literature on, and eventually campaigning against the

DuBois and Ida B. Wells who both strongly believed in challenging inequality and pushing for African-American civil rights. Foner explains that in W.E.B. DuBois’s book The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois issued a clarion call for blacks dissatisfied with the accommodationist policies of Booker T. Washington to press for equal rights (Foner 595). He believed that educated blacks must use their education and training to challenge inequality. Another influential voice at the time was Ida B. Wells. Wells was a controversial newspaper editor. She once wrote an essay condemning the lynching of three black men in Memphis which consequently led a mob to destroy her newspaper, the Memphis Free Press. She later became a dominant voice and the nation’s leading antilynching crusader (Foner 523). In her brief pamphlet written in 1892 titled Southern Lynching Law in All Its Phases, Wells says that, “The men and women in the South who disapprove of lynching and remain silent on the perpetration of such outrages, are particeps, criminis, accomplices, accessories before and after the fact, equally guilty with the actual lawbreakers who would not persist if they did not know that neither the law nor militia would be employed against them” (Wells). Unlike Booker T. Washington, both DuBois and Wells encouraged African-Americans to not sit back and remain law-abiding but to act. Wells encourages black laborers to withdraw, that way capital will not

Wells-Barnett was an investigative journalist and was involved in researching, reporting, publishing pamphlets, and eventually campaigning against the historical tragedy known as lynching. She became aware of these atrocities occurring against African Americans at an alarming rate in the United States. Wells-Barnett had published a total of three pamphlets that had worked through the half-truths and outright lies to uncover the inhumane activity of lynching mob. In Mob Rule in New Orleans, Wells-Barnett stated, “Legal sanction was given to the mob or any man of the mob to kill Charles at sight by the Mayor of New Orleans, who publicly proclaimed a reward of two hundred and fifty dollars, not for the arrest of Charles, not at all, but the reward was offered for Charles’ body, “dead or alive.” (Wells-Barnett 842) This statement reflects the mindset of the majority of white Americans during this turbulent time. Consequently, Ida B. Wells-Barnett became not just a reporter of the facts, but a crusader for the cause of justice for

Wells,“Lynch Law in America,”) Over a hundred of African Americans were lynched every year. The unwritten law was practiced for thirty years, inhumanly butchering thousands of men, women, children by either drowning, hanging, shooting, and burning them alive. By this point, the national law was irrelevant and the unwritten law was superior among the southern states. With every killing, white Americans would invent an excuse accordingly and to make matters worse, they realized it was sufficient to put anyone to death if the crime was against a woman, no matter if it were true or not, since it was under the unwritten law, which did not allow any sort of trial. This accusation was done in “the interest of those who did the lynching to blacken the good name of the helpless and defenseless victims of their hate. For this reason they publish at every possible opportunity this excuse for lynching, hoping thereby not only to palliate their own crime but at the same time to prove the negro a moral monster and unworthy of the respect and sympathy

created. With Ida Wells strong ambition to protest against lynching in the 19th century, is

In “The Case Stated” (1895), Ida B. Wells asserts that failure to speak up against racial injustices contributed to the lynch law phenomenon and the loss of many African American lives. Wells supports her claims by giving examples of injustices served to African Americans such as slavery, a constitution that fails to promote equity, and false accusations and lynching’s that resulted in the deaths of thousands of African Americans. In order to convey her passion and desire for change, Ida B. Wells pleads to all Americans, both black and white, to fight for change and stop “avow(ing) anarchy, condon(ing) murder, and defy(ing) the contempt of civilization” (74). Ida B. Wells is not asking for pity for African Americans, she is asking for all

During the Progressive Era, many citizens attempted to stop the racism within former confederate states by exposing the horrors of the wrongdoings, through speeches, protests, literature and other means of expression, who were known as progressives. One progressive, Ida B. Wells. helped to expose lynchings and racial discrimination through the use of bold and clear literature. Another, Booker T. Washington, believed that blacks should become more economically independent, so that discrimination will eventually cease. W.E.B. Dubois, another progressive, wanted and expressed instant racial equality through the use of forming groups and classic literature.

In her speech, Ida B. Wells appeals to emotion and logic by using statistics and real-life stories of lynchings. She also counters the apologists’ defense of lynching by using strong language and statistics to disprove the validity of their claims. Finally, Wells offers a solution on how to end lynching and ensures that crimes will still be punished, even if lynching subsides. Despite the criticism of Wells and many other authors and activists, lynching persisted in the United States for a substantial period of time. Lynchings were so frequent in Southern states that Montgomery, Alabama, has plans to build a lynching memorial to recognize the mistreatment of black citizens and memorialize the victims. However, lynchings then were not the public disgrace they are now considered, and the unjust treatment of black citizens continued even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Activists like Wells have continued to identify racism when they see it in hopes to create a more equal society, but many would argue that an equal society still has not been

Lynching was a tool used by white people in this time period to try to control black people, and Ida B. Wells helped bring international attention to this problem and fight to end it.

First, ask yourself how would you feel after hearing the news that one of your family members had been lynched? Throughout the chapters 1-8, we can experience and observe the disheartening history of violence and lies. It is additionally an irritating depiction of a partitioned country on the very edge of the social equality development and an eerie contemplation on race, history, and the battle for truth. Throughout history, the conditions of the lynching, how it affected the legislators of the day, quickened the social equality development and keeps on shadowing the Georgia people group where these homicides occurred. During the 1900s until 19600s various African-Americans experienced various harsh conditions of violence, never being granted the right to vote and being segregated from whites based on their race and skin-color from their white masters. In general racism between whites and blacks can be seen throughout the globe during the era of slavery

2. One of the texts most focused on educating readers about race and the challenges it presents to American culture is Ida B. Wells’ “Lynch Law in All its Phases.” As discussed in previous reading responses, Wells’ speech is made up primarily of evidence due to the limitations placed on women of colors’ speech but even more so due to her “deep-seated conviction that the country at large does not know the extent to which lynch law prevails in parts of the Republic” (189). In this way, Wells endeavours to educate the US both about lynching and about the repercussions of allowing lynch law to prevail. That is, Wells forces audiences to acknowledge the fact that lynching, and thus white supremacy and racism, actively threaten the moral pillars that the United States is built on.

Emancipated blacks, after the Civil War, continued to live in fear of lynching, a practice of vigilantism that was often based on false accusations. Lynching was not only a way for southern white men to exert racist “justice,” it was also a means of keeping women, white and black, under the control of a violent white male ideology. In response to the injustices of lynching, the anti-lynching movement was established—a campaign in which women played a key role. Ida B. Wells, a black teacher and journalist was at the forefront and early development of this movement. In 1892 Wells was one of the first news reporters to bring the truths of lynching to proper media attention. Her first articles

Ida B. Wells was a woman dedicated to a cause, a cause to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from being murdered by lynching. Lynching is defined as to take the law into its own hands and kill someone in punishment for a crime or a presumed crime. Ida B. Wells’ back round made her a logical spokesperson against lynching. She drew on many experiences throughout her life to aid in her crusade. Her position as a black woman, however, affected her credibility both in and out of America in a few different ways.

Another way that white southerners were able to rolled back many of the rights held by African Americans is by lynching. Lynch is a mob of people killed, especially by hanging, for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial. The primary source, ““Lynch Law in America” the author Ida B. Wells organized a national fight against lynching in the early twentieth century. Born a slave, Wells became a teacher and civil rights leader in Memphis, Tennessee. When a white mob lynched three of her friends, she helped organize a black boycott of white-owned businesses and wrote harsh editorials in her own newspaper. According to Wells, lynching “ It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is

Ida also writes about the young white women from the North that left their lives behind to go to the south and educate the newly emancipated blacks. These women were treated just as the blacks, no respect or