American History Homework Assignment

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I D A B . W E L L S

FROM Southern Horrors (1892)

Ida Barnett Wells (1862–1931) was born early in the Civil War to slave parents in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her

father, a carpenter, was a devoted Republican during Reconstruction and encouraged Ida’s education at Shaw

University, a local Methodist institution founded immediately following the war for the education of

freedpeople. Wells moved to Memphis in the early 1880s to work as a teacher and journalist. In 1883, she was

forcibly removed from a railroad car when she refused to relocate to a compartment reserved for blacks. She

sued the railroad, only to see her initial victory invalidated by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

In 1889, Wells became editor and part owner of the Free Speech and Headlight, one of Memphis’s leading

black newspapers. Three years later, she was inspired to launch an anti-lynching crusade after a terrible

episode of racial violence in Memphis that cost the life of a personal friend. Wells’s article denouncing the

lynching was published in the Free Speech on May 21, 1892. She wisely left town for a vacation and business trip

to the North the day before the piece appeared in print. This decision probably saved her life, given the rage her

writing inspired among Memphis whites. This history and Ida B. Wells’s detailed exposé of the lynching

phenomenon are contained in her pamphlet “Southern Horrors,” which was published later in 1892. As you read

these excerpts, imagine the courage required for Wells to voice such dangerous thoughts.

From Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (New York: The New York Age Print, 1892), 2–

12, 17–20.

he greater part of what is contained in these pages was published in the New York Age June 25,

1892, in explanation of the editorial which the Memphis whites considered sufficiently infamous to

justify the destruction of my paper, the Free Speech.

Since the appearance of that statement, requests have come from all parts of the country that “Exiled”

(the name under which it then appeared) be issued in pamphlet form. Some donations were made, but not

enough for that purpose. The noble effort of the ladies of New York and Brooklyn Oct. 5 have enabled me to

comply with this request and give the world a true, unvarnished account of the causes of lynch law in the

South.

This statement is not a shield for the despoiler of virtue, nor altogether a defense for the poor blind

Afro-American Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white Delilahs.1 It is a contribution to

truth, an array of facts, the perusal of which it is hoped will stimulate this great American Republic to

demand that justice be done though the heavens fall.

It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. Somebody must show that

the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.

The awful death-roll that Judge Lynch is calling every week is appalling, not only because of the lives it

takes, the rank cruelty and outrage to the victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters and the stain it

places against the good name of a weak race.

The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and

at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen,

and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service. Other considerations are

of minor importance.

IDA B. WELLS New York City, Oct. 26, 1892

* * *

THE O FFENSE

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Wednesday evening May 24, 1892, the city of Memphis was filled with excitement. Editorials in the daily

papers of that date caused a meeting to be held in the Cotton Exchange Building; a committee was sent for

the editors of the Free Speech, an Afro-American journal published in that city, and the only reason the

open threats of lynching that were made were not carried out was because they could not be found. The

cause of all this commotion was the following editorial published in the Free Speech May 21, 1892, the

Saturday previous.

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.

The Daily Commercial of Wednesday following, May 25, contained the following leader:

Those negroes who are attempting to make the lynching of individuals of their race a means for arousing

the worst passions of their kind are playing with a dangerous sentiment. The negroes may as well

understand that there is no mercy for the negro rapist and little patience with his defenders. A negro organ

printed in this city, in a recent issue publishes the following atrocious paragraph:

“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; and a conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of

their women.”

The fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a

volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites. But we have had enough of it.

There are some things that the Southern white man will not tolerate, and the obscene intimations of the

foregoing have brought the writer to the very outermost limit of public patience. We hope we have said

enough.

The Evening Scimitar of same date, copied the Commercial’s editorial with these words of comment:

Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the negroes themselves do not apply the remedy

without delay it will be the duty of those whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these

calumnies to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in the forehead with a hot iron

and perform upon him a surgical operation with a pair of tailor’s shears.

Acting upon this advice, the leading citizens met in the Cotton Exchange Building the same evening, and

threats of lynching were freely indulged, not by the lawless element upon which the deviltry of the South is

usually saddled—but by the leading business men, in their leading business centre. Mr. Fleming, the

business manager and owning a half interest [in] the Free Speech, had to leave town to escape the mob, and

was afterwards ordered not to return; letters and telegrams sent me in New York where I was spending my

vacation advised me that bodily harm awaited my return. Creditors took possession of the office and sold

the outfit, and the Free Speech was as if it had never been.

The editorial in question was prompted by the many inhuman and fiendish lynchings of Afro-Americans

which have recently taken place and was meant as a warning. Eight lynched in one week and five of them

charged with rape! The thinking public will not easily believe freedom and education more brutalizing than

slavery, and the world knows that the crime of rape was unknown during four years of civil war, when the

white women of the South were at the mercy of the race which is all at once charged with being a bestial

one.

Since my business has been destroyed and I am an exile from home because of that editorial, the issue

has been forced, and as the writer of it I feel that the race and the public generally should have a statement

of the facts as they exist. They will serve at the same time as a defense for the Afro-Americans Sampsons

who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white Delilahs.

The whites of Montgomery, Ala., knew J. C. Duke sounded the keynote of the situation—which they would

gladly hide from the world, when he said in his paper, the Herald, five years ago: “Why is it that white

women attract negro men now more than in former days? There was a time when such a thing was

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unheard of. There is a secret to this thing, and we greatly suspect it is the growing appreciation of white

Juliets for colored Romeos.” Mr. Duke, like the Free Speech proprietors, was forced to leave the city for

reflecting on the “honah” of white women and his paper suppressed; but the truth remains that Afro-

American men do not always rape (?) white women without their consent.

Mr. Duke, before leaving Montgomery, signed a card disclaiming any intention of slandering Southern

white women. The editor of the Free Speech has no disclaimer to enter, but asserts instead that there are

many white women in the South who would marry colored men if such an act would not place them at

once beyond the pale of society and within the clutches of the law. The miscegenation laws of the South

only operate against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free to seduce all the

colored girls he can, but it is death to the colored man who yields to the force and advances of a similar

attraction in white women. White men lynch the offending Afro-American, not because he is a despoiler of

virtue, but because he succumbs to the smites of white women.

THE BLACK AND WHITE O F IT

The Cleveland Gazette of January 16, 1892, publishes a case in point. Mrs. J. S. Underwood, the wife of a

minister of Elyria, Ohio, accused an Afro-American of rape. She told her husband that during his absence in

1888, stumping the State for the Prohibition Party, the man came to the kitchen door, forced his way in the

house and insulted her. She tried to drive him out with a heavy poker, but he overpowered and

chloroformed her, and when she revived her clothing was torn and she was in a horrible condition. She did

not know the man but could identify him. She pointed out William Offett, a married man, who was arrested

and, being in Ohio, was granted a trial.

The prisoner vehemently denied the charge of rape, but confessed he went to Mrs. Underwood’s

residence at her invitation and was criminally intimate with her at her request. This availed him nothing

against the sworn testimony of a minister’s wife, a lady of the highest respectability. He was found guilty,

and entered the penitentiary, December 14, 1888, for fifteen years. Some time afterwards the woman’s

remorse led her to confess to her husband that the man was innocent.

These are her words:

I met Offett at the Post Office. It was raining. He was polite to me, and as I had several bundles in my arms

he offered to carry them home for me, which he did. He had a strange fascination for me, and I invited him

to call on me. He called, bringing chestnuts and candy for the children. By this means we got them to leave

us alone in the room. Then I sat on his lap. He made a proposal to me and I readily consented. Why I did so,

I do not know, but that I did is true. He visited me several times after that and each time I was indiscreet. I

did not care after the first time. In fact I could not have resisted, and had no desire to resist.

When asked by her husband why she told him she had been outraged, she said: “I had several reasons for

telling you. One was the neighbors saw the fellows here, another was, I was afraid I had contracted a

loathsome disease, and still another was that I feared I might give birth to a Negro baby. I hoped to save my

reputation by telling you a deliberate lie.” Her husband horrified by the confession had Offett, who had

already served four years, released and secured a divorce.

There are thousands of such cases throughout the South, with the difference that the Southern white

men in insatiate fury wreak their vengeance without intervention of law upon the Afro-Americans who

consort with their women. A few instances to substantiate the assertion that some white women love the

company of the Afro-American will not be out of place. Most of these cases were reported by the daily

papers of the South.

In the winter of 1885–86 the wife of a practicing physician in Memphis, in good social standing whose

name has escaped me, left home, husband and children, and ran away with her black coachman. She was

with him a month before her husband found and brought her home. The coachman could not be found. The

doctor moved his family away from Memphis, and is living in another city under an assumed name.

* * *

Sarah Clark of Memphis loved a black man and lived openly with him. When she was indicted last spring

for miscegenation, she swore in court that she was not a white woman. This she did to escape the

penitentiary and continued her illicit relation undisturbed. That she is of the lower class of whites, does not

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disturb the fact that she is a white woman. “The leading citizens” of Memphis are defending the “honor” of

all white women, demi-monde2 included.

Since the manager of the Free Speech has been run away from Memphis by the guardians of the honor of

Southern white women, a young girl living on Poplar St., who was discovered in intimate relations with a

handsome mulatto young colored man, Will Morgan by name, stole her father’s money to send the young

fellow away from that father’s wrath. She has since joined him in Chicago.

* * *

What is true of Memphis is true of the entire South. The daily papers last year reported a farmer’s wife in

Alabama had given birth to a Negro child. When the Negro farm hand who was plowing in the field heard it

he took the mule from the plow and fled. The dispatches also told of a woman in South Carolina who gave

birth to a Negro child and charged three men with being its father, every one of whom has since disappeared.

In Tuscumbia, Ala., the colored boy who was lynched there last year for assaulting a white girl told her

before his accusers that he had met her there in the woods often before.

* * *

In Natchez, Miss., Mrs. Marshall, one of the creme de la creme of the city, created a tremendous sensation

several years ago. She has a black coachman who was married, and had been in her employ several years.

During this time she gave birth to a child whose color was remarked, but traced to some brunette ancestor,

and one of the fashionable dames of the city was its godmother. Mrs. Marshall’s social position was

unquestioned, and wealth showered every dainty on this child which was idolized with its brothers and

sisters by its white papa. In course of time another child appeared on the scene, but it was unmistakably

dark. All were alarmed, and “rush of blood, strangulation” were the conjectures, but the doctor, when asked

the cause, grimly told them it was a Negro child. There was a family conclave, the coachman heard of it and

leaving his own family went West, and has never returned. As soon as Mrs. Marshall was able to travel she

was sent away in deep disgrace. Her husband died within the year of a broken heart.

Eben[e]zer Fowler, the wealthiest colored man in Issaquena County, Miss., was shot down on the street

in Mayersville, January 30, 1885, just before dark by an armed body of white men who filled his body with

bullets. They charged him with writing a note to a white woman of the place, which they intercepted and

which proved there was an intimacy existing between them.

Hundreds of such cases might be cited, but enough have been given to prove the assertion that there are

white women in the South who love the Afro-American’s company even as there are white men notorious

for their preference for Afro-American women.

There is hardly a town in the South which has not an instance of the kind which is well known, and

hence the assertion is reiterated that “nobody in the South believes the old threadbare lie that negro men

rape white women.” Hence there is a growing demand among Afro-Americans that the guilt or innocence of

parties accused of rape be fully established. They know the men of the section of the country who refuse

this are not so desirous of punishing rapists as they pretend. The utterances of the leading white men show

that with them it is not the crime but the class. Bishop Fitzgerald has become apologist for lynchers of the

rapists of white women only. Governor Tillman, of South Carolina, in the month of June, standing under the

tree in Barnwell, S.C., on which eight Afro-Americans were hung last year, declared that he would lead a

mob to lynch a negro who raped a white woman. So say the pulpits, officials and newspapers of the South.

But when the victim is a colored woman it is different.

* * *

THE NEW CRY

* * *

From this exposition of the race issue in lynch law, the whole matter is explained by the well-known

opposition growing out of slavery to the progress of the race. This is crystalized in the oft-repeated slogan:

“This is a white man’s country and the white man must rule.” The South resented giving the Afro-American

his freedom, the ballot box and the Civil Rights Law. The raids of the Ku-Klux and White Liners to subvert

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reconstruction government, the Hamburg and Ellerton, S.C., the Copiah County, Miss., and the Lafayette

Parish, La., massacres were excused as the natural resentment of intelligence against government by

ignorance.

Honest white men practically conceded the necessity of intelligence murdering ignorance to correct the

mistake of the general government, and the race was left to the tender mercies of the solid South.

Thoughtful Afro-Americans with the strong arm of the government withdrawn and with the hope to stop

such wholesale massacres urged the race to sacrifice its political rights for sake of peace. They honestly

believed the race should fit itself for government, and when that should be done, the objection to race

participation in politics would be removed.

But the sacrifice did not remove the trouble, nor move the South to justice. One by one the Southern

States have legally (?) disfranchised the Afro-American, and since the repeal of the Civil Rights Bill3 nearly

every Southern State has passed separate car laws with a penalty against their infringement. The race

regardless of advancement is penned into filthy, stifling partitions cut off from smoking cars. All this while,

although the political cause has been removed, the butcheries of black men at Barnwell, S.C., Carrolton,

Miss., Waycross, Ga., and Memphis, Tenn., have gone on; also the flaying alive of a man in Kentucky, the

burning of one in Arkansas, the hanging of a fifteen-year-old girl in Louisiana, a woman in Jackson, Tenn.,

and one in Hollendale, Miss., until the dark and bloody record of the South shows 728 Afro-Americans

lynched during the past eight years. Not fifty of these were for political causes; the rest were for all manner

of accusations from that of rape of white women, to the case of the boy Will Lewis who was hanged at

Tullahoma, Tenn., last year for being drunk and “sassy” to white folks.

These statistics compiled by the Chicago Tribune were given the first of this year (1892). Since then, not

less than one hundred and fifty have been known to have met violent death at the hands of cruel

bloodthirsty mobs during the past nine months.

To palliate this record (which grows worse as the Afro-American becomes intelligent) and excuse some

of the most heinous crimes that ever stained the history of a country, the South is shielding itself behind

the plausible screen of defending the honor of its women. This, too, in the face of the fact that only one-

third of the 728 victims to mobs have been charged with rape, to say nothing of those of that one-third who

were innocent of the charge. A white correspondent of the Baltimore Sun declares that the Afro-American

who was lynched in Chestertown, Md., in May for assault on a white girl was innocent; that the deed was

done by a white man who had since disappeared. The girl herself maintained that her assailant was a white

man. When that poor Afro-American was murdered, the whites excused their refusal of a trial on the

ground that they wished to spare the white girl the mortification of having to testify in court.

This cry has had its effect. It has closed the heart, stifled the conscience, warped the judgment and

hushed the voice of press and pulpit on the subject of lynch law throughout this “land of liberty.” Men who

stand high in the esteem of the public for Christian character, for moral and physical courage, for devotion

to the principles of equal and exact justice to all, and for great sagacity, stand as cowards who fear to open

their mouths before this great outrage. They do not see that by their tacit encouragement, their silent

acquiescence, the black shadow of lawlessness in the form of lynch law is spreading its wings over the

whole country.

* * *

SELF-HELP

In the creation of this healthier public sentiment, the Afro-American can do for himself what no one else

can do for him. The world looks on with wonder that we have conceded so much and remain law-abiding

under such great outrage and provocation.

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.

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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 the Free 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. But they did not punish the lynchers. Every one of them was known by name, because they

had been selected to do the dirty work, by some of the very citizens who passed these resolutions.

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.

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 [a] 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.

The assertion has been substantiated throughout these pages that the press contains unreliable and

doctored reports of lynchings, and one of the most necessary things for the race to do is to get these facts

before the public. The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the

press.

The Afro-American papers are the only ones which will print the truth, and they lack means to employ

agents and detectives to get at the facts. The race must rally a mighty host to the support of their journals,

and thus enable them to do much in the way of investigation.

* * *

Near Vicksburg, Miss., a murder was committed by a gang of burglars. Of course it must have been done

by Negroes, and Negroes were arrested for it. It is believed that two men, Smith Tooley and John Adams

belonged to a gang controlled by white men and, fearing exposure, on the night of July 4, they were hanged

in the Court House yard by those interested in silencing them. Robberies since committed in the same

vicinity have been known to be by white men who had their faces blackened. We strongly believe in the

innocence of these murdered men, but we have no proof. No other news goes out to the world save that

which stamps us as a race of cutthroats, robbers and lustful wild beasts. So great is Southern hate and

prejudice, they legally (?) hung poor little thirteen-year-old Mildrey Brown at Columbia, S.C., Oct. 7, on the

circumstantial evidence that she poisoned a white infant. If her guilt had been proven unmistakably, had

she been white, Mildrey Brown would never have been hung.

The country would have been aroused and South Carolina disgraced forever for such a crime. The Afro-

American himself did not know as he should have known as his journals should be in a position to have him

know and act.

Nothing is more definitely settled than he must act for himself. I have shown how he may employ the

boycott, emigration and the press, and I feel that by a combination of all these agencies can be effectually

stamped out lynch law, that last relic of barbarism and slavery. “The gods help those who help themselves.”4

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Study Questions

1.  What did Wells mean in referring to “Afro-American Sampsons and white Delilahs”? What is her evidence for the prevalence of consensual interracial relationships? How did the white men of the South respond

to her writings and claims?

2.  How does Wells explain the growing frequency of lynching in the post–Civil War period? How large a part did rape charges play in these episodes? What explains this?

3.  Wells says that boycott, emigration, and the press are weapons to use in the fight against lynching. Elaborate on the contributions each of these might make.

4.  Explain fully Wells’s statement that “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.” Why didn’t more African Americans respond violently to white oppression in the 1890s? Would a tactic of

armed self-defense rather than nonviolence have more effectively promoted the cause of black civil

rights through the history of the freedom struggle?