Ida B. Wells, Crusading African-American Journalist, Publishes Her First Report on Lynching
Ida B. Wells, crusading African-American journalist, activist and educator on this day published her first report on the lynchings of African-Americans, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases.
The report documented recent lynchings and vigorously attacked the southern justifications for lynching. It ended with a chapter on “Self Help,” in which she argued that “Nothing is more definitely settled than [the African-American] must act for himself. I have shown how he may employ the boycott, emigration and the press, and I feel that a combination of all these agencies can effectively stamp out lynch law, that last relic of barbarism and slavery.”
Three years later, in 1895, Wells published a much longer report, A Red Record: Lynchings in the United States, 1892-1893-1894. In addition to detailed information about individual cases, with data on patterns by states and by the alleged cause, Wells also included a plan of action for her readers to help end lynching. They could: 1: “disseminate the facts contained in this book;” 2. have churches and other groups “pass resolutions of condemnation and protest” whenever another lynching occurs; 3. promote economic boycotts of southern states where lynchings are prevalent; 4. organize efforts among white Americans that raise the moral issue for America, because “after all, it is the white man’s civilization and the white man’s government which are on trial” regarding lynching; 5. participate in an effort to urge Congress to launch a national study on lynching.
In 1889 Wells became the editor and co-owner of the Free Speech and Headlight, an African-American newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee. Because of her editorials attacking lynching, in 1892 a white mob attacked and destroyed the Free Press building. Wells had been out of town on vacation, and she never returned to Memphis. She accepted a job with the New York Age, and continued her reporting on lynching from New York City.
In the 1890s she married and settled in Chicago, where she became an active civil rights organizer. Along with Frederick Douglass and others she organized an African American boycott of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. She also began writing for the Chicago Conservator, the oldest African-American newspaper in Chicago. She also organized the Women’ Era Club, the first African-American women’s club in Chicago. In 1900 the Chicago Tribune published a number of articles advocating racially segregated public schools for the city. She enlisted the famed social worker Jane Adams and the group they created succeeded in stopping the idea of segregated schools.
In 2020 Wells was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize “for her outstanding and courageous reporting” on lynching.
Wells was born on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the daughter of slaves.
Read Wells’ two reports in, Ida-B. Wells-Barnett, On Lynchings (2018)
And learn more: Philip Dray, Yours for Justice: The Daring Life of a Crusading Journalist (2008)
Learn more about Ida B. Wells-Barnett at the National Woman’s History Museum here
And more about her life and work here
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here