Ida B. Wells: “Eight Men Lynched”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Ida Wells had written newspaper editorials that attacked the practice of lynching prior to the killing of three black men in Memphis, Tennessee, in March 1892. As the topic of lynching began to occupy more of her attention, she became increasingly curious about the alleged causes of those crimes. Searching through newspaper accounts, she had expected to find that rape was the most common charge. To her surprise, she learned that was not the case. But if rape was not the overriding explanation for the increase in the number of lynchings, then what was? The conclusion she drew was that southern whites were becoming increasingly alarmed by evidence of African American advancement in the post-Reconstruction era. Whites did not want competition from educated and enterprising black men and used racial terrorism to prevent it. She was learning that perceived challenges to white supremacy came in many forms.

The incident that caused Wells to deepen her understanding of lynching as a form of intimidation and to enter into a lifelong crusade against that practice occurred when three friends were murdered by a white mob in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. One method open to blacks hoping for advancement in the years following Reconstruction was black capitalism. In pursuit of that dream, three black men had opened the People's Grocery in direct competition with a white store owner. Desperate for a way to eliminate his competition, the white store owner persuaded the police to raid the People's Grocery and arrest its three owners. Taken from jail several days later by an angry mob, the three men were brutally murdered.

The Memphis murders affected Wells on a deeply personal level and made her rethink her assumptions. She found herself questioning the dominant cultural assumption about lynching in the South—that the rape of white women by black men was the root of lynching and that it was the outrage of that offense that provoked mobs to act. But the three black store owners had not committed any crime against white women, nor were they accused of one. For Wells, the event cast a new light on lynching. She understood it as an excuse to eliminate blacks who were starting to acquire property and improve themselves economically; it was intended to keep the race terrorized and to hold the black man down.

Having grasped this new dynamic behind lynching, Wells boldly decided to challenge the rape myth in an editorial in the Memphis Free Speech. After detailing eight recent lynchings in Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia, Wells calls the rape excuse a lie and warns that 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 implied meaning of her editorial was that white women often encouraged liaisons with black men. Her comments had the impact of an explosion. The offices and presses of the Free Speech were destroyed. Forced to flee the South, Wells joined the editorial staff of the New York Age and immediately began to write a series on lynching. When her seven-column article signed “Exiled” appeared on June 25, 1892, it created a sensation. Providing detailed statistics on lynching and again challenging the rape myth, the article was such a forceful indictment of lynching and its dominant rationale that ten thousand copies were distributed to the public. The article served as the basis for her first pamphlet, Southern Horrors, published later that year.