Bill Kerwin's Reviews > Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

Outraged by the execution of her friend Thomas Moss in the “Curve Riot” by a black-masked mob, Ida B. Wells, co-owner and editor of the Memphis negro newspaper The Free Speech and Headlight, began to research the facts that lay behind the lynching of black men in the South. Two and a half months later, in May of 1892, she published, in The Free Speech, an editorial on the subject:

Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the Free Speech, one at Little Rock, Ark., last Saturday morning where the citizens broke into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket--the new alarm about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter. Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.

Edward Ward Carmack, editor of the Memphis Commercial, questioned whether “a black scoundrel” like the writer of this editorial should be “allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies. . . There are some things that the Southern white man will not tolerate . . . We hope we have said enough.”

The office of The Free Speech was demolished and torched. There was also talk of lynching, but Ida Wells was far away, on vacation in New York. She says she was informed by telegram, however, that “bodily harm awaited my return.” Wells refused to even visit the South for thirty years.

She did, however, continue her research, the first fruit of which is this pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases. In it, Wells argues that cases in which a black man is charged with rape often suggest a more complex, consensual relationship: it is, in Miss Wells words, a case of “poor blind Afro-American Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white Delilahs.”

This is a well-argued, well organized pamphlet, and Wells is a meticulous researcher who writes with considerable self-assurance.

I will conclude with two excerpts. First, a passage in which Wells, discussing what “Afro-Americans" themselves may do to address the problem, refers to the “Curve Riot” and its aftermath:

To Northern capital and Afro-American labor the South owes its rehabilitation. If labor is withdrawn capital will not remain. The Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South. A thorough knowledge and judicious exercise of this power in lynching localities could many times effect a bloodless revolution. The white man's dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities.

The Afro-Americans of Memphis denounced the lynching of three of their best citizens, and urged and waited for the authorities to act in the matter and bring the lynchers to justice. No attempt was made to do so, and the black men left the city by thousands, bringing about great stagnation in every branch of business. Those who remained so injured the business of the street car company by staying off the cars, that the superintendent, manager and treasurer called personally on the editor of the Free Speech, asked them to urge our people to give them their patronage again. Other business men became alarmed over the situation and theFree Speech was run away that the colored people might be more easily controlled. A meeting of white citizens in June, three months after the lynching, passed resolutions for the first time, condemning it. . . Memphis is fast losing her black population, who proclaim as they go that there is no protection for the life and property of any Afro-American citizen in Memphis who is not a slave.

The appeal to the white man's pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is to be gained by a further sacrifice of manhood and self-respect. By the right exercise of his power as the industrial factor of the South, the Afro-American can demand and secure his rights, the punishment of lynchers, and a fair trial for accused rapists.

I conclude with another equally interesting passage on the subject of self-defense:

Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky, and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.

The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.