A Red Record. Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States, 1892-1893-1894

The investigative journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, later Wells-Barnett, spearheaded the anti-lynching movement in the United States. Expanding on her groundbreaking exposé Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892), A Red Record used mainstream white newspapers to document a resurgence of white mob violence, finding that ­more than 10,000 African Americans had been killed by lynching in the South between 1864 and 1894. Wells compiled statistics on alleged offenses and the geographic distribution and extent of lynching, and tied whites’ increased brutality and violence to their fear of African Americans’ increased political power. Her conclusion exhorts anti-lynching advocates to “[t]ell the world the facts,” for “When the Christian world knows the alarming growth and extent of outlawry in our land, some means will be found to stop it.”