Ida B. Wells: “Eight Men Lynched”

Ida Wells was deeply affected by racism and the violence inflicted by whites upon blacks in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In an attempt to arouse the nation to confront its racial prejudices and barbaric actions, she began to write articles and pamphlets and to lecture widely both in this country and in Great Britain. Her vivid depictions of the horrors of lynching and her statistically supported discussion of that practice began the slow, arduous process toward public rejection of those crimes. Pulling no punches in her comments, Wells criticized both blacks and whites. Black elites, shielded by their wealth from many of the indignities of discrimination, ignored the problems of others in their communities. Black clergymen did not speak out strongly enough against segregation. Black politicians betrayed their race to seek the favor of whites. Whites accepted social myths and cultural stereotypes that allowed them to excuse inexcusable crimes against humanity.

Wells took it upon herself to wage a public crusade against the sufferings, indignities, and wrongs of an oppressed race. In “Eight Men Lynched,” an editorial written for the Memphis Free Speech, she boldly challenges the rape myth, which argued that the black men’s raping of white women was at the root of lynching..