Portfolio at NYU

Ida B. Wells Barnett, On Lynchings
Ida B. Wells Barnett was a voice beyond her time. A tireless advocate of civil rights in an America that was not ready to face the injustice of racism. On Lynchings is a compendium of her work as a journalist in the harshest of conditions.

In the post Civil War period black Americans were emancipated on paper, but often not in practice. The years of reconstruction and on produced some of the worst years for the civil rights movement. With a substantive rise in equal rights came a rise in organized racism. Lynching became the most horrifying and symbolic action of these groups. In her pamphlet 'A Red Record', she writes, " Emancipation came and the vested interests of the white man in the Negro's body were lost. The white man had no right to scourge the emancipated Negro, still less has he a right to kill him."

Her writing is significant in its subject and its reporting. She knew that to get her message out, she had to maintain the truth and not skew issues to suit her needs. She would sourced certain white Southerners that she might have disdained, but she new the society at the time would take it more seriously. Her reporting of the horrors of lynching is graphic and unblinking. More recently, she has become considered as a leading feminist figure (See Joanne M. Braxton: Black women writing autobiography).

Ida Wells Barnett was the daughter of slaves and she spent a lifetime trying to end the vestiges of her past. In 1893, three of her friends fought against a mob that tried to destroy their business. They were arrested, but a lynch mob abducted and murdered them. Wells Barnett, who wrote under the pseudonym 'Iola' began an editorial campaign at the Memphis Free Speech, where she was working. She continued her quest, through all of her life as a journalist and political activist. She was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP).

MORE:
A review of her biography by C. Du Bois