Ida B. Wells: “Lynching: Our National Crime”

Audience

Wells targeted a national and even international audience as she strove to arouse the nation to confront its racial prejudices and barbaric actions. During two speaking tours in Great Britain in the 1890s, Wells hoped to draw her foreign listeners into the antilynching debate, to shine a light on the continued barbarity, and to bring pressure to bear on her own country. Her tour brought about the creation of the British Anti-Lynching Society, a model of citizen activism that she hoped to replicate in the United States. In the ongoing process of trying to reeducate Americans about lynching, Wells hoped to show that such actions were offenses against American values and the universal concept of justice.