The Red Record Summary

During Tom Robinson’s trial, the strong prejudice of Maycomb County and the negative effects of its social stratification were clearly demonstrated. Whilst Tom Robinson is innocent of the crime of rape, he gave the Caucasians more reason to convict him on the basis of daring to feel sorry for a Caucasian - it is not expected that a negro (considered as being a part of the lowest class of society, event lower than the ‘white trash’) could feel sorry for a Caucasian and the Caucasians could not accept such a presumption.

Ida B. Wells begins her writing of Southern Horrors announcing the lynching of eight negroes throughout the South in a month. These eight men were accused of killing, raping, and assaulting white citizens. All of the men captured were shot, hanged, or burned alive without being convicted of the alleged crimes in a court. If a white male was accused of committing burglary, murder, or rape, he would be convicted in court of law (if proven guilty) and sentenced for how severe the crime was. The white male may be let out of prison early,

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

Have you faced racial persecution due to the color of your skin? The time was 1900’s and this was the nightmare that Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote of in Mob Rule in New Orleans. This is the true account of Robert Charles as he fights for his life to escape the hands of a lynching mob. This impassion story collaborates with the witness of this terrifying event that Wells describes. Wells uses her literary skills to shed light on racial discrimination, media bias, and her personal crusade for justice to portray this heart wrenching reality of the violent lynching during the 19th century.

According to Dr. Benjamin Rush’s, M.D., writings from 1773, one of the justifications for slavery stemmed from the misconception that African Americans’ dark skin tone was the result of being “descended from Cain, who was supposed to have been marked with this colour” [sic] (Cummings 49) and as such they sort of deserve to be enslaved since they weren’t descended from the better biblical brother like white Americans apparently were. This Biblical justification thus equated being black with the Cain’s immoral actions, some of which include murder, lust, and dishonesty. This type of stigma lasted until after the Civil War emancipated the slaves in which claims of black men raping white women were used to justify the lynching of African American men. However, NAACP co-founder Ida B. Wells writes that despite these claims, such rapes never happened during the entirety of Civil War (Bouie) as slaves mustered the courage to free themselves in order to fight along Union lines. When Brown v. Board of Education lead to the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, “the court-ordered enrollment of nine black students in 1957 caused a full-scale panic” in which parents feared that their white

Wells provides a quote from the apologist John Temple Graves in which he claims lynch mobs are the only thing protecting white women from black men, and she uses strong diction to directly repudiate his reasoning. She claims that “All know [the apologists’ reasoning for lynching] is untrue”. This strong claim emphasizes her passion and knowledge in the reasoning behind the lynching. Furthermore, Wells clarifies that “The cowardly lyncher revels in murder, then seeks to shield himself from public execration by claiming devotion to woman. But truth is mighty and the lynching record discloses the hypocrisy of the lyncher as well as his crime,”. This claim confirms the racist reality of why many black people were lynched. Moreover, the use of the phrase “revels in murder” illustrates that the lynchers enjoyed the hangings, showing they were not for the punishment of crimes but, instead, for entertainment. To further elevate her claims and deny the lynching defenders, Wells provides a list of reasons why 285 people were lynched: “no cause, 10; race prejudice, 49;... making threats, 11...”. She asserts that these lynchings occurred mostly due to racial issues. By providing this list, Wells implies that few lynchings actually had to do with protecting white women; even further, she implies that many of the crimes were

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

In 1930’s Maycomb Alabama, a young woman is stirring up a sleepy town by accusing an African American man of rape. Mayella Ewell, a poor white woman has wrongly accused Tom Robinson of sexually assaulting her in her own home. Her testimony, as well as her fathers’, have gaping holes in them. Their stories do not coincide, and it is even implied that Mayella’s father may have been sexually abusing her.(DBQ Mayella page 15 Chapters 18 and 20) The lack of sufficient evidence and Tom Robinson’s claim that Mayella had made advances toward him should have been enough for the jury to find Tom not guilty, but unfortunately, that was not the case. Instead, the jury believed Mayella’s deceitful testimony, and Tom was sent to jail, which ultimately led to his death. Mayella used her position in society to manipulate the court, and dispose of the only evidence of her mistake. Mayella Ewell is powerful as defined by class, gender, and especially race.

. . but specifics [to him] didn’t matter because the victims were now symbols of injustice: a NAACP cause” (78). Especially given the long-past, over-60-years-old nature of the lynching, Wexler’s goal, and therefore also her writing, must more profound, and compelling, than this, and therefore she, unlike White, is interested in the specifics: “Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, and George and Mae Murray [the lynching victims] . . . I have tried to bring them to life” (266). Wexler succeeds in that, rather than merely mentioning these victims in the context of the lynching, she includes detailed biographies of each, as well as of their relations, and describes their actions long before and immediately leading up to the lynching, in an attempt to give the reader a better understanding of and greater empathy for them.

Revenge is what set the beginning tone of Wexler’s story and the initial reason for why four African-Americans were shot to death. Roger Malcom, one of the lynching victims, stabbed Barnette Hester out of revenge; he believed that his wife, Dorothy, was sleeping with Barnette (Wexler, page13). Since Roger was black and not white, this was considered an act that the white population could not let go unpunished. The death of Roger Malcom was expected by everyone, even Roger knew, “when Barnette Hester died, he would die too” (Wexler, page 55). Many people at the time thought that this was the main motive behind the lynching and that the other three, Dorothy, Mae Murray,

Another victim of white on black rape was Betty Jean Owens, she was kidnapped from a school dance and taken into the woods and was gang raped by four white different men. Betty was so hurt from this rape she was sent to the hospital. When the students from the school she attended in Tallahassee, Florida had heard about the rape they were enraged, “Early the next day more than a thousand students gathered in the university’s grassy quadrangle with signs, hymns, and prayers aimed at the national news media, which sent stories of the attack across the country” (McGuire 136). These students were no longer going to sit back and watch the women they love and care about get raped and treated as though they aren’t human. They were letting the world

During the early nineteen hundreds many people especially in the south were often convicted of crimes for no other reason than their skin color and contrary to many ideas about our court system, we have not always been the most honest and unbiased people. One prime example of this is the case of the Scottsboro Boys and how they were accused of rape and had to go to court numerous times, almost everytime ending in the death sentence. The evidence in the case clearly points towards the innocence of the Scottsboro boys, evidence such as unclear stories from the girls, lack of bruises and marks indicating assault as well as a previous history of prostitution from both of the girls. This evidence helps to prove that Charles Weems and the Scottsboro boys were innocent and wrongly accused and convicted.

The first action Ida B Wells took to stop lynching was in 1892. She composed a pamphlet exposing the fear and brutal treatment of mob violence ("Biography for kids: Ida B. Wells”). Meanwhile Wells led an anti-lynching crusade in the late 1890s for the United States for thoses who did not get a fair trial for an alleged offence ("Biography”). By Wells being so devoted and interactive with the movement it became stronger because she dedicated an excessive amount of time and effort proving that the lynching of men, women, children were considered murders ("Woman Journalist Crusades Against Lynching”). Currently, because Wells stepped up and chose to be brave, lynching is banned today. Not only did Ida B Wells expose lynching as this country’s national crime, her efforts directly affected us

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

The main excuse given for the mob lynchings of the Negroes was rape. Any blacks found to be involved intimately with a white woman were immediately accused of rape. Ida writes, “In numerous instances where colored men have been lynched on the charge of rape, it was positively known at the time of lynching, and indisputably proven after the victims’ death, that the relationship sustained between the man and the woman was voluntary and clandestine, and that in no court of law could even the charge of assault have been successfully maintained.” However, she also writes, “The Southern white man says it is impossible for a voluntary alliance to exist between a white woman and a colored man, and therefore, the act of an alliance is a proof of force.” Even though they know that the acts had been completely consensual, the white males continued this butchery of the blacks. Anything that could be thought up, even if it lacked truth or evidence, was used as excuses for these continued forms of slavery.