They Say: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race, by James W. Davidson. Ida B. Wells as a parallel to African Americans trying to gain empowerment in post-emancipation America

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

In the aftermath of the lynching and her outspoken criticism of it, her newspaper's office was sacked. Wells then moved to New York City, where she continued to write editorials and against lynching, which was at an all time high level in the years after Reconstruction. Joining the staff of The New York Age, Wells became a very respected lecturer and organizer for anti-lynching societies made up of men and women of all races. She traveled throughout the U.S. and went to Britain twice to speak about anti-lynching activities.

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

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.

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

A number of black women writers forged their way into classrooms to teach us. “Historian Gerda Lerner edited Black Women in White America in 1973 which further revised the understanding of African American roles in U.S. history as both the victims

In the late 19th century, lynchings were commonplace occurrences, especially in Southern states. The lynchings were publicized in newspaper ads and were so accepted that postcards showing pictures of the event were sold as souvenirs. Apologists claimed that the lynchings took place to punish criminals for their crimes and to protect white women from black aggressors. To counter the claims that resulted in these “punishments,” many activists, including Ida B. Wells, wrote speeches depicting the harsh and racist reality of lynchings. In 1909, Wells gave a speech at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s first annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia, in which she condemns lynchings and their public acceptance. By offering

M.V. Ball was a prison doctor, who believed the high mortality rates among black prisoners was due to “childhood poverty, unsanitary living conditions, and poor hygiene.”3 Ball also stated that black people were treated unfairly and there was prejudice from white people, which have led to an increase in criminality among African Americans. Another household name in the world of black reformers was Ida B. Wells, she began to show the double standard of black men being lynched for sleeping with willing white women and white men going unpunished for their rape of black women. Wells also highlighted the fact that lynching was not exclusive to black men accused of rape. Over 110 black men, women, and children were lynched, but only 21% had been accused of rape. Throughout her career, she continued to show statistics of discrimination against black people in American society. This was an important and significant shift from the use of statistics against African American as seen by white supremacists and

Wells’ experiences living and writing in Memphis paved the way for her later, and more influential time writing for the New York Age. Wells became active in the fight against

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

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

Henry Smith was one of the first African American to be lynched with fire. His death caused newspapers to publish his story all over the United states, but newspapers in the South almostly defended the citizens of Paris, Texas. Which goes to show how bias people were against the rights of African Americans because newspaper were conveying the message to the public that lynching was acceptable in any given scenario. Ida B. Wells went to the crime scene and investigated by interviewing witnesses and collected evidence, she found there to be no rape charges on Smith. She continued on by writing the horrors and injustice of lynching. All of that paid off because she became a part of the federal government and passed the anti-lynching legislation.

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

Before the Civil War, the institution of slavery, racism, and prejudice tried to silence many generations of African Americans. Postbellum African American literary expressions are characterized as an archive of protest through the way African American expressed their different views and experiences of racial structures. Songs, poems, speeches, and other oral expressions helped reflect the lives of those who struggled during slavery. After the Civil War, oral and written history became a way of resisting oppression in society. These ways of communication became a tool for achieving equal rights and freedom for black people. Ida B.Wells and Frances Harper both suffragist and civil rights activist, strived for social change within society. Harper was referred to as an “abolitionist poet” in which her poems focused on topics like religion, heroism, women 's rights and black achievement. Wells was like a abolitionist/investigative journalist. Through her pamphlets, articles, and public speakings she raised public awareness on lynchings in America. Her efforts led to lynching becoming a federal crime. These women had a large impact on the lives of African Americans through their forms of communication that initiated change in the norms and views of opposing others in society.

Ida B. Wells fought against lynching activities by increasing public awareness through editorials and her pamphlets. With her powerful, pamphlets, Wells used it to explain the idea of the lynching by providing the evidences from all the lynching cases that she had collected.