Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

About this book

In March 1892, three Black businessmen, friends of the journalist Ida B. Wells, were lynched by a white mob in Memphis, Tennessee. Wells began to investigate lynchings across the American South and in this pamphlet showed that the usual excuse for them, the claim that Black men had attacked white women, was false in most cases; many of the victims were killed for economic competition or for consensual relationships. When she published her findings, a mob destroyed her newspaper office, and she continued her campaign from the North, calling on Black Americans to defend themselves, to boycott and, if necessary, to leave.

Context and significance

Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) published the pamphlet in 1892 with a letter of support from Frederick Douglass, and it began her lifelong campaign against lynching; she is now recognised as a pioneer of investigative journalism. Read it with W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk.

About the author