Ida B. Wells - Southern Horrors and The Red Record

Southern Horrors and The Red Record

In 1892 she published a pamphlet titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, and A Red Record, 1892–1894, which documented research on a lynching. Having examined many accounts of lynching based on alleged "rape of white women," she concluded that Southerners concocted rape as an excuse to hide their real reason for lynchings: black economic progress, which threatened not only white Southerners' pocketbooks, but also their ideas about black inferiority.

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 Red Record is a one hundred page pamphlet describing lynching in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation, while also describing blacks’ struggles since the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Red Record begins by explaining the alarming severity of the lynching situation in the United States. An ignorance of lynching in the U.S., according to Wells, developed over a span of ten years. Wells talks about slavery, saying the black man’s body and soul were owned by the white man. The soul was dwarfed by the white man, and the body was preserved because of its value. She mentions that “ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution,” therefore launching her campaign against lynching in this pamphlet, The Red Record.

Frederick Douglass wrote an article explaining three eras of Southern barbarism and the excuses that coincided with each. Wells goes into detail about each excuse:

• The first excuse that Wells explains is the “necessity of the white man to repress and stamp out alleged ‘race riots.’” Once the Civil War ended, there were many riots supposedly being planned by blacks; whites panicked and resisted them forcefully.
• The second excuse came during the Reconstruction Era: blacks were lynched because whites feared “Negro Domination” and wanted to stay powerful in the government. Wells encouraged those threatened to move their families somewhere safe.
• The third excuse was: Blacks had “to be killed to avenge their assaults upon women.” Wells explains that any relationship between a white woman and a black man was considered rape during that time period. In this article she states, “Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women.”

Wells lists fourteen pages of statistics concerning lynching done from 1892–1895; she also includes pages of graphic stories detailing lynching done in the South. She credits the findings to white correspondents, white press bureaus, and white newspapers. The Red Record was a huge pamphlet, not only in size, but in influence.