After this, Ida B. Wells started her career as a journalist, writing about race and politic issues in the South, writing for black newspapers, and eventually became part-owner of Memphis Free Speech and Headlight which later changed to Free Speech.
During 1892, Memphis with the creation of many editorials in papers caused a meeting to be held in a building that was threats of lynching were happening. According to the reading on page 5, “And the only reason the open threats of lynching that were made were not carried out was because they could not be found. The Cause of all this commotion was the following editorial published in the Free Speech, “Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the Free Speech one at little rock, Ark, last Saturday morning where the citizens broke into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one near New Orleans: and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for killing a white man.”” So people were writing in papers about how the inhumane lynching that were going on that killed eight people in one week, of the eight lynched five of them were charged of rape. So the reason that Wells wrote the article was that she was angered by the fact that people were killed mainly as a way to threaten the minority group