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The Red Record Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States By: Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) |
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By Ida B. Wells Barnett
1895 [Transcriber's Note: This pamphlet was first published in 1895 but was
subsequently reprinted. It's not apparent if the curiosities in spelling
date back to the original or were introduced later; they have been
retained as found, and the reader is left to decide. Please verify with
another source before quoting this material.]
PREFACE HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS'S LETTER DEAR MISS WELLS: Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination
now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has
been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word
is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual
knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity,
and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves. Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can
neither be weighed nor measured. If the American conscience were only half
alive, if the American church and clergy were only half Christianized, if
American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of
outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame, and
indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read. But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions
favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by
earth and Heaven yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in
the power of a merciful God for final deliverance. Very truly and gratefully yours,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C.
CONTENTS CHAPTER 1
The Case Stated 57 CHAPTER 2
Lynch Law Statistics 65 CHAPTER 3
Lynching Imbeciles 73 CHAPTER 4
Lynching of Innocent Men 84 CHAPTER 5
Lynched for Anything or Nothing 93 CHAPTER 6
History of Some Cases of Rape 108 CHAPTER 7
The Crusade Justified 121 CHAPTER 8
Miss Willard's Attitude 129 CHAPTER 9
Lynching Record for 1894 139 CHAPTER 10
The Remedy 147
1 THE CASE STATED
The student of American sociology will find the year 1894 marked by a
pronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy and
outlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common,
that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon
the humane sentiments of the people of our land. Beginning with the emancipation of the Negro, the inevitable result of
unbribled power exercised for two and a half centuries, by the white man
over the Negro, began to show itself in acts of conscienceless outlawry.
During the slave regime, the Southern white man owned the Negro body and
soul. It was to his interest to dwarf the soul and preserve the body.
Vested with unlimited power over his slave, to subject him to any and all
kinds of physical punishment, the white man was still restrained from such
punishment as tended to injure the slave by abating his physical powers
and thereby reducing his financial worth. While slaves were scourged
mercilessly, and in countless cases inhumanly treated in other respects,
still the white owner rarely permitted his anger to go so far as to take a
life, which would entail upon him a loss of several hundred dollars. The
slave was rarely killed, he was too valuable; it was easier and quite as
effective, for discipline or revenge, to sell him "Down South." But Emancipation came and the vested interests of the white man in the
Negro's body were lost. The white man had no right to scourge the
emancipated Negro, still less has he a right to kill him. But the Southern
white people had been educated so long in that school of practice, in
which might makes right, that they disdained to draw strict lines of
action in dealing with the Negro. In slave times the Negro was kept
subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of the scourging,
but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro
was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed... Continue reading book >>
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