White supremacy, Racism and Racial Formations

(1900) IDA B. WELLS, “LYNCH LAW IN AMERICA”

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Ida B. Wells, ca. 1893

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(1900) Ida B. Wells, "Lynch Law in America" • https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1900-ida-b-w...

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Beginning in 1892 with the destruction of her newspaper, the Memphis Free

Speech, Ida B. Wells for the next forty years was the most prominent

opponent of lynching in the United States. What follows is a speech she made

to a Chicago audience on the subject in January 1900.

Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the

sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane

mob. It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who

openly avow that there is an “unwritten law” that justifies them in putting

human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury,

without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal. The

“unwritten law” first found excuse with the rough, rugged, and determined man

who left the civilized centers of eastern States to seek for quick returns in the

gold-fields of the far West. Following in uncertain pursuit of continually

eluding fortune, they dared the savagery of the Indians, the hardships of

mountain travel, and the constant terror of border State outlaws.

Naturally, they felt slight toleration for traitors in their own ranks. It was

enough to fight the enemies from without; woe to the foe within! Far removed

from and entirely without protection of the courts of civilized life, these

fortune-seekers made laws to meet their varying emergencies. The thief who

stole a horse, the bully who “jumped” a claim, was a common enemy. If caught

he was promptly tried, and if found guilty was hanged to the tree under which

the court convened.

Those were busy days of busy men. They had no time to give the prisoner a bill

of exception or stay of execution. The only way a man had to secure a stay of

execution was to behave himself. Judge Lynch was original in methods but

exceedingly effective in procedure. He made the charge, impaneled the jurors,

Public Domain, Photo by Mary Garrity

(1900) Ida B. Wells, "Lynch Law in America" • https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1900-ida-b-w...

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and directed the execution. When the court adjourned, the prisoner was dead.

Thus lynch law held sway in the far West until civilization spread into the

Territories and the orderly processes of law took its place. The emergency no

longer existing, lynching gradually disappeared from the West.

But the spirit of mob procedure seemed to have fastened itself upon the lawless

classes, and the grim process that at first was invoked to declare justice was

made the excuse to wreak vengeance and cover crime. It next appeared in the

South, where centuries of Anglo-Saxon civilization had made effective all the

safeguards of court procedure. No emergency called for lynch law. It asserted

its sway in defiance of law and in favor of anarchy. There it has flourished ever

since, marking the thirty years of its existence with the inhuman butchery of

more than ten thousand men, women, and children by shooting, drowning,

hanging, and burning them alive. Not only this, but so potent is the force of

example that the lynching mania has spread throughout the North and middle

West. It is now no uncommon thing to read of lynchings north of Mason and

Dixon’s line, and those most responsible for this fashion gleefully point to these

instances and assert that the North is no better than the South.

This is the work of the “unwritten law” about which so much is said, and in

whose behest butchery is made a pastime and national savagery condoned. The

first statute of this “unwritten law” was written in the blood of thousands of

brave men who thought that a government that was good enough to create a

citizenship was strong enough to protect it. Under the authority of a national

law that gave every citizen the right to vote, the newly-made citizens chose to

exercise their suffrage. But the reign of the national law was short-lived and

illusionary. Hardly had the sentences dried upon the statute-books before one

Southern State after another raised the cry against “negro domination” and

proclaimed there was an “unwritten law” that justified any means to resist it.

The method then inaugurated was the outrages by the “red-shirt” bands of

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Louisiana, South Carolina, and other Southern States, which were succeeded by

the Ku-Klux Klans. These advocates of the “unwritten law” boldly avowed their

purpose to intimidate, suppress, and nullify the negro’s right to vote. In

support of its plans the Ku-Klux Klans, the “red-shirt” and similar

organizations proceeded to beat, exile, and kill negroes until the purpose of

their organization was accomplished and the supremacy of the “unwritten law”

was effected. Thus lynchings began in the South, rapidly spreading into the

various States until the national law was nullified and the reign of the

“unwritten law” was supreme. Men were taken from their homes by “red-shirt”

bands and stripped, beaten, and exiled; others were assassinated when their

political prominence made them obnoxious to their political opponents; while

the Ku-Klux barbarism of election days, reveling in the butchery of thousands

of colored voters, furnished records in Congressional investigations that are a

disgrace to civilization.

The alleged menace of universal suffrage having been avoided by the absolute

suppression of the negro vote, the spirit of mob murder should have been

satisfied and the butchery of negroes should have ceased. But men, women, and

children were the victims of murder by individuals and murder by mobs, just as

they had been when killed at the demands of the “unwritten law” to prevent

“negro domination.” Negroes were killed for disputing over terms of contracts

with their employers. If a few barns were burned some colored man was killed

to stop it. If a colored man resented the imposition of a white man and the two

came to blows, the colored man had to die, either at the hands of the white man

then and there or later at the hands of a mob that speedily gathered. If he

showed a spirit of courageous manhood he was hanged for his pains, and the

killing was justified by the declaration that he was a “saucy nigger.” Colored

women have been murdered because they refused to tell the mobs where

relatives could be found for “lynching bees.” Boys of fourteen years have been

lynched by white representatives of American civilization. In fact, for all kinds

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of offenses–and, for no offenses–from murders to misdemeanors, men and

women are put to death without judge or jury; so that, although the political

excuse was no longer necessary, the wholesale murder of human beings went

on just the same. A new name was given to the killings and a new excuse was

invented for so doing.

Again the aid of the “unwritten law” is invoked, and again it comes to the

rescue. During the last ten years a new statute has been added to the

“unwritten law.” This statute proclaims that for certain crimes or alleged crimes

no negro shall be allowed a trial; that no white woman shall be compelled to

charge an assault under oath or to submit any such charge to the investigation

of a court of law. The result is that many men have been put to death whose

innocence was afterward established; and to-day, under this reign of the

“unwritten law,” no colored man, no matter what his reputation, is safe from

lynching if a white woman, no matter what her standing or motive, cares to

charge him with insult or assault.

It is considered a sufficient excuse and reasonable justification to put a

prisoner to death under this “unwritten law” for the frequently repeated charge

that these lynching horrors are necessary to prevent crimes against women.

The sentiment of the country has been appealed to, in describing the isolated

condition of white families in thickly populated negro districts; and the charge

is made that these homes are in as great danger as if they were surrounded by

wild beasts. And the world has accepted this theory without let or hindrance. In

many cases there has been open expression that the fate meted out to the

victim was only what he deserved. In many other instances there has been a

silence that says more forcibly than words can proclaim it that it is right and

proper that a human being should be seized by a mob and burned to death

upon the unsworn and the uncorroborated charge of his accuser. No matter

that our laws presume every man innocent until he is proved guilty; no matter

that it leaves a certain class of individuals completely at the mercy of another

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class; no matter that it encourages those criminally disposed to blacken their

faces and commit any crime in the calendar so long as they can throw suspicion

on some negro, as is frequently done, and then lead a mob to take his life; no

matter that mobs make a farce of the law and a mockery of justice; no matter

that hundreds of boys are being hardened in crime and schooled in vice by the

repetition of such scenes before their eyes–if a white woman declares herself

insulted or assaulted, some life must pay the penalty, with all the horrors of the

Spanish Inquisition and all the barbarism of the Middle Ages. The world looks

on and says it is well.

Not only are two hundred men and women put to death annually, on the

average, in this country by mobs, but these lives are taken with the greatest

publicity. In many instances the leading citizens aid and abet by their presence

when they do not participate, and the leading journals inflame the public mind

to the lynching point with scare-head articles and offers of rewards. Whenever

a burning is advertised to take place, the railroads run excursions, photographs

are taken, and the same jubilee is indulged in that characterized the public

hangings of one hundred years ago. There is, however, this difference: in those

old days the multitude that stood by was permitted only to guy or jeer. The

nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh,

and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd. If the

leaders of the mob are so minded, coal-oil is poured over the body and the

victim is then roasted to death. This has been done in Texarkana and Paris,

Tex., in Bardswell, Ky., and in Newman, Ga. In Paris the officers of the law

delivered the prisoner to the mob. The mayor gave the school children a holiday

and the railroads ran excursion trains so that the people might see a human

being burned to death. In Texarkana, the year before, men and boys amused

themselves by cutting off strips of flesh and thrusting knives into their helpless

victim. At Newman, Ga., of the present year, the mob tried every conceivable

torture to compel the victim to cry out and confess, before they set fire to the

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faggots that burned him. But their trouble was all in vain–he never uttered a

cry, and they could not make him confess.

This condition of affairs were brutal enough and horrible enough if it were true

that lynchings occurred only because of the commission of crimes against

women–as is constantly declared by ministers, editors, lawyers, teachers,

statesmen, and even by women themselves. It has been to the interest of those

who did the lynching to blacken the good name of the helpless and defenseless

victims of their hate. For this reason they publish at every possible opportunity

this excuse for lynching, hoping thereby not only to palliate their own crime but

at the same time to prove the negro a moral monster and unworthy of the

respect and sympathy of the civilized world. But this alleged reason adds to the

deliberate injustice of the mob’s work. Instead of lynchings being caused by

assaults upon women, the statistics show that not one-third of the victims of

lynchings are even charged with such crimes. The Chicago Tribune, which

publishes annually lynching statistics, is authority for the following:

In 1892, when lynching reached high-water mark, there were 241 persons

lynched. The entire number is divided among the following States:

Alabama………    22    Montana……….     4

Arkansas……..    25    New York………     1

California……     3      North Carolina…     5

Florida………    11      North Dakota…..     1

Georgia………    17     Ohio………….     3

Idaho………..     8      South Carolina…     5

Illinois……..     1        Tennessee……..    28

Kansas……….     3     Texas…………    15

Kentucky……..     9    Virginia………     7

Louisiana…….    29     West Virginia….     5

Maryland……..     1     Wyoming……….     9

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Arizona Ter….     3      Missouri……….    6

Mississippi…..    16     Oklahoma………     2

Of this number, 160 were of negro descent. Four of them were lynched in New

York, Ohio, and Kansas; the remainder were murdered in the South. Five of

this number were females. The charges for which they were lynched cover a

wide range. They are as follows:

Rape………………    46        Attempted rape……    11

Murder…………….    58    Suspected robbery…     4

Rioting……………     3    Larceny………….     1

Race Prejudice……..     6    Self-defense……..     1

No cause given……..     4    Insulting women….     2

Incendiarism……….     6    Desperadoes………     6

Robbery……………     6    Fraud……………     1

Assault and battery…     1    Attempted murder….     2

No offense stated, boy and girl………….. 2

In the case of the boy and girl above referred to, their father, named Hastings,

was accused of the murder of a white man. His fourteen-year-old daughter and

sixteen-year-old son were hanged and their bodies filled with bullets; then the

father was also lynched. This occurred in November, 1892, at Jonesville, La.

Indeed, the record for the last twenty years shows exactly the same or a smaller

proportion who have been charged with this horrible crime. Quite a number of

the one-third alleged cases of assault that have been personally investigated by

the writer have shown that there was no foundation in fact for the charges; yet

the claim is not made that there were no real culprits among them. The negro

has been too long associated with the white man not to have copied his vices as

well as his virtues. But the negro resents and utterly repudiates the efforts to

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blacken his good name by asserting that assaults upon women are peculiar to

his race. The negro has suffered far more from the commission of this crime

against the women of his race by white men than the white race has ever

suffered through his crimes. Very scant notice is taken of the matter when this

is the condition of affairs. What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment

when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman

is the accusing party.

But since the world has accepted this false and unjust statement, and the

burden of proof has been placed upon the negro to vindicate his race, he is

taking steps to do so. The Anti-Lynching Bureau of the National Afro-American

Council is arranging to have every lynching investigated and publish the facts

to the world, as has been done in the case of Sam Hose, who was burned alive

last April at Newman, Ga. The detective’s report showed that Hose killed

Cranford, his employer, in self-defense, and that, while a mob was organizing

to hunt Hose to punish him for killing a white man, not till twenty-four hours

after the murder was the charge of rape, embellished with psychological and

physical impossibilities, circulated. That gave an impetus to the hunt, and the

Atlanta Constitution’s reward of $500 keyed the mob to the necessary burning

and roasting pitch. Of five hundred newspaper clippings of that horrible affair,

nine-tenths of them assumed Hose’s guilt–simply because his murderers said

so, and because it is the fashion to believe the negro peculiarly addicted to this

species of crime. All the negro asks is justice–a fair and impartial trial in the

courts of the country. That given, he will abide the result.

But this question affects the entire American nation, and from several points of

view: First, on the ground of consistency. Our watchword has been “the land of

the free and the home of the brave.” Brave men do not gather by thousands to

torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make

even feeble resistance or defense. Neither do brave men or women stand by and

see such things done without compunction of conscience, nor read of them

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without protest. Our nation has been active and outspoken in its endeavors to

right the wrongs of the Armenian Christian, the Russian Jew, the Irish Home

Ruler, the native women of India, the Siberian exile, and the Cuban patriot.

Surely it should be the nation’s duty to correct its own evils!

Second, on the ground of economy. To those who fail to be convinced from any

other point of view touching this momentous question, a consideration of the

economic phase might not be amiss. It is generally known that mobs in

Louisiana, Colorado, Wyoming, and other States have lynched subjects of other

countries. When their different governments demanded satisfaction, our

country was forced to confess her inability to protect said subjects in the

several States because of our State-rights doctrines, or in turn demand

punishment of the lynchers. This confession, while humiliating in the extreme,

was not satisfactory; and, while the United States cannot protect, she can pay.

This she has done, and it is certain will have to do again in the case of the

recent lynching of Italians in Louisiana. The United States already has paid in

indemnities for lynching nearly a half million dollars, as follows:

Paid China for Rock Springs (Wyo.) massacre………..    $147,748.74

Paid China for outrages on Pacific Coast…………..    276,619.75

Paid Italy for massacre of Italian prisoners at

New Orleans ………………………     24,330.90

Paid Italy for lynchings at Walsenburg, Col …………     10,000.00

Paid Great Britain for outrages on James Bain

and Frederick Dawson ……………….    2,800.00

Third, for the honor of Anglo-Saxon civilization. No scoffer at our boasted

American civilization could say anything more harsh of it than does the

American white man himself who says he is unable to protect the honor of his

women without resort to such brutal, inhuman, and degrading exhibitions as

characterize “lynching bees.” The cannibals of the South Sea Islands roast

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human beings alive to satisfy hunger. The red Indian of the Western plains tied

his prisoner to the stake, tortured him, and danced in fiendish glee while his

victim writhed in the flames. His savage, untutored mind suggested no better

way than that of wreaking vengeance upon those who had wronged him. These

people knew nothing about Christianity and did not profess to follow its

teachings; but such primary laws as they had they lived up to. No nation,

savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its

inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged

offenders.

Finally, for love of country. No American travels abroad without blushing for

shame for his country on this subject. And whatever the excuse that passes

current in the United States, it avails nothing abroad. With all the powers of

government in control; with all laws made by white men, administered by white

judges, jurors, prosecuting attorneys, and sheriffs; with every office of the

executive department filled by white men–no excuse can be offered for

exchanging the orderly administration of justice for barbarous lynchings and

“unwritten laws.” Our country should be placed speedily above the plane of

confessing herself a failure at self-government. This cannot be until Americans

of every section, of broadest patriotism and best and wisest citizenship, not

only see the defect in our country’s armor but take the necessary steps to

remedy it. Although lynchings have steadily increased in number and barbarity

during the last twenty years, there has been no single effort put forth by the

many moral and philanthropic forces of the country to put a stop to this

wholesale slaughter. Indeed, the silence and seeming condonation grow more

marked as the years go by.

A few months ago the conscience of this country was shocked because, after a

two-weeks trial, a French judicial tribunal pronounced Captain Dreyfus guilty.

And yet, in our own land and under our own flag, the writer can give day and

detail of one thousand men, women, and children who during the last six years

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were put to death without trial before any tribunal on earth. Humiliating

indeed, but altogether unanswerable, was the reply of the French press to our

protest: “Stop your lynchings at home before you send your protests abroad.”

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S U B J E C T S :

Af rican American History, , Speeches

T E R M S :

Gender - Women, , United States - Illinois, , 19th Century (1800-1899), ,

Speech Time Frame: 1878-1900

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BlackPast, B. (2010, July 13) (1900) Ida B. Wells, “Lynch Law in America”.

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