Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), co-owner and editor of The Free Speech and Headlight in Memphis, wrote a series of editorials denouncing the lynching of innocent African-American men on trumped-up charges. Her office was stormed and her press ransacked. Out of fear for her own safety, she moved to New York, where she continued her crusade against racial injustice.

This excerpt is from Wells’ 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases:

"The editorial in question was prompted by the many inhuman and fiendish lynchings of Afro-Americans which have recently taken place and (were) meant as a warning. Eight lynched in one week and five of them charged with rape! The thinking public will not easily believe freedom and education more brutalizing than slavery, and the world knows that the crime of rape was unknown during four years of civil war, when the white women of the South were at the mercy of the race. …

"Since my business has been destroyed and I am an exile from home because of that editorial, the issue has been forced, and as the writer of it I felt that the race and the public generally should have a statement of the facts as they exist. They will serve at the same time as a defense for the Afro-American Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white Delilhas. …"

For more, visit the Chicago Historical Society's Ida B. Wells page.

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