Southern Horrors: Ida Bell Wells, published in 1892 her famous pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases. This pamphlet, along with her 1895 The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States, documented her research on and campaign against lynching. In 1892, Wells went to Great Britain at the behest of British Quaker Catherine Impey. An opponent of imperialism and proponent of racial equality, Impey wanted to be sure that the British public was informed about the problem of lynching. After her retirement, Wells wrote her autobiography, Crusade for Justice (1928). Her other works include Mob Rule in New Orleans (1900).
The four historic works in this collection, taken together, paint a picture in full of Wells-Barnett's gifts. Writer, activist, editor, analyst, statistician, orator, advocate, essayist—she was a rare talent and a force who altered the trajectory of America.
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases by American investigative journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett is a pamphlet about lynching in America first published in 1892 after a close friend died along with two other black men at the hands of a lynch mob. The book's title mocked Southern honor as the commonly cited justification for lynching.
"Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases" is a book written by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, an African American journalist, and civil rights activist. This gruesome history of lynching in the American South is documented in the book, along with its effects on the African American community. The legacy of slavery, the collapse of the rule of law in the South, and the emergence of white supremacist ideology are just a few of the cultural and socioeconomic issues that Wells-Barnett presents a detailed examination of. She also exposes the role of the media in continuing and justifying the violence, stating that newspapers and other publications frequently sensationalized the accounts of purported crimes perpetrated by black men, leading to demands for vigilante punishment.
"Elaine, Arkansas became the scene of one of the most violent racial conflicts the country had ever to that time experienced." -Readings in Arkansas Politics and Government (2009)
"The Arkansas Race Riot amplified...the cowardly penchant of white mobs for singling out the weakest individuals." -Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform (2003)
"Arkansas authorities convicted 12 black farmers...to death...at this point Ida stepped in." -Ida B. Wells: A Woman of Courage (2010)
"A massive race riot...near the town of Elaine...between 200 and 250 blacks and at least 4 whites had been killed...67 blacks were sent to prison." -Habeas Corpus: Rethinking the Great Writ of Liberty (2002)
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Over the course of a lifetime dedicated to combating prejudice and violence, and the fight for African-American equality, especially that of women, Wells arguably became the most famous Black woman in America.
Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War. At the age of 16, she lost both her parents and her infant brother in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. She went to work and kept the rest of the family together with the help of her grandmother. Later, moving with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, she found better pay as a teacher. Her reporting covered incidents of racial segregation and inequality.
The Red Record tabulates these scenes of brutality in clear, objective statistics, allowing the horrifying facts to speak for themselves.
"Wells...provided damning descriptions of the melee that claimed one too many black lives." -Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the 20th Century (2014)
"To Wells...the events at East St. Louis combined some of the worst racist elements...in three days of rioting, 39 African Americans were killed." -Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform (2003)
In the post-civil war American south, the despicable act of lynching was commonplace and considered to be a form of vigilantism that was used to murder African Americans for alleged “crimes” ranging from acting suspiciously to “insulting whites”. In “The Red Record”, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett records statistics concerning instances of lynching and offers vivid descriptions of the extrajudicial killings in an attempt to galvanise the public into action and put an end to such horrifying practices. Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) was an American educator, investigative journalist, and leading figure of the civil rights movement.
A classic of investigative journalism, the pamphlets of Ida B. Wells-Barnett shine a light on the evils of racism in the United States. With a contextual introduction and useful footnotes, this book gives students an opportunity to analyze and interpret primary texts. The book includes the full text of Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases; The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States; and Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His Fight to Death, the Story of His Life, Burning Human Beings Alive, and Other Lynching Statistics.
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her lifetime to combating prejudice and violence, the fight for African-American equality, especially that of women, and became arguably the most famous Black woman in the United States of her time.
On this page you will find books that are either written by, or about, Ida B. Wells-Barnett. While some of them may be in our local library, please note that a number of them can be found in the public library or university library near you.
Ida B. Wells committed herself to the needs of those who did not have power. In the eyes of the FBI, this made her a “dangerous negro agitator.” In the annals of history, it makes her an icon.
