Anti Lynching Movement

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“Strange as it may appear, illiterate negroes, who are the only ones contributing largely to the criminal class, are coddled and caressed by the South. To the educated, cultivated members of the race, they are held up as bright and shining examples of what a really good Negro should be. The dictionary is searched in vain by Southern gentlemen and gentlewomen for words sufficiently ornate and strong to express their admiration for a dear old "mammy" or a faithful old "uncle," who can neither read nor write, and who assure their white friends they would not, if they could. On the other hand, no language is sufficiently caustic, bitter and severe, to express the disgust, hatred and scorn which Southern gentlemen feel for what is called the "New …show more content…
Bruce, Jr. defines the Anti-lynching Campaign: as “a movement to end mob violence against African-Americans--particularly the summary execution of individuals accused of crime (often the rape of white women)--in the southern United States during the period from the 1880s to the 1940s” (Bruce). Many people participated in the anti-lynching campaign. This included the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Council for Interracial Cooperation (CIC), and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL). These groups “sought to fight lynching through education or legal action, or by securing federal legislation against it” (Bruce) The one person who single-handily started the campaign was Ida B. Wells-Barnett. A black journalist and editor of the Memphis Free Speech, Wells decided to speak against lynching when her close friend was lynched in 1892 along with two other for being successful black business owners (Bruce; Gibson). Ida B. Wells begged the white press to “stop printing the old thread bare lie that Negro men rape white women" (Waldrep 76). Wells fought for her campaign in multiple ways but her most successful strategy was her idea to use statistics. She started her campaign by writing a series of newspaper columns that was later expanded into a pamphlet titled the Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases that same year (Bruce). In 1895, she published a controversial report, A Red Record, which gave statistics about lynching and what was the reasoning behind them (Bruce). This record disproved “the widely accepted belief that the majority of black male lynch victims had been guilty of rape” (Broussard 73). “In fact, she found that most of them were not even accused of rape” (Broussard 73). It also established her as “the most vocal and effective advocate of anti-lynching in the nation.” Wells life was in danger because of her blunt
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