To a degree, large segments of the white population used this as a way of asserting superiority and to show that the white race was moral while the black race was not. That this was achieved by murder was an irony that Wells-Barnett found to be horrible and frightening. Her outrage never flags, and she proves this by pursuing one case after another and writing about the experience so the many victims will not be tarred with the criminal taint the mob wants to place upon them.

Wells-Barnett noted in an editorial in 1892 that many of the lynchings were for "the same old racket -- the new alarm about raping white women" (Wells-Barnett 29). Shew also calls this "the old threadbare lie" that no one believes and that could lead to a public reaction against those white men perpetrating these deeds, as well as against the reputation of their women (Wells-Barnett 29). This argument on both sides shows the way racism and sexism were intertwined and would show a number of forces at work in white society, forces suggesting a social order that was not as stable or as powerful as it wanted to think. The insecurities of the white male after the loss in the Civil War may have been a contributing factor. Open racism was also one of the products of Reconstruction and the belief of many in the South that the North was intent on punishing them for the war. Tensions between the two communities would continue over issues such as employment (with whites believing they had a right to the bet jobs and blacks had no rights at all).

In addition to noting the crimes committed against her race, Wells-Barnett notes ways in which the white power structure would close ranks to protect its own and to demonize African-Americans. She cites various newspaper editorials that supported the idea of lynching,...

Wells-Barnett also sees these actions as flowing from the "unbridled power exercised for two and a half centuries, by the white man over the Negro" (Wells-Barnett 57). The new violence was thus only an extension of the way whites had viewed themselves for so long and the inferior position they had given to the black people they had dragged here in the first place. After Emancipation, the white man had lost any vested interests in the Negro's body, but the white people in the South had been trained otherwise for so long that they continued to act as if they had the same rights as always and as if the world had not changed.
Wells-Barnett provides a strong argument, one that recalls the nature of the era after the Civil War while also serving as a link to attitudes and actions we can see in our own time. We might like to think that these things all happened in the past and have no real effect on our present, but this is not the case. The fact that so many were murdered in this manner still has an effect on race relations and on attitudes toward the law in many parts of the country, especially in the South. The courage shown by Wells-Barnett in her writings is something we need today as well, and this is an important lesson in a time when many in the media are interested only in getting along and in avoiding any confrontation that might threaten their bottom line. Wells-Barnett serves as an example to be followed and also offers lessons that need to learned over and over again in any society that pretends to be just.

Works Cited

Wells-Barnett, Ida B. On Lynchings. Chicago: Humanity…