Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)
The lynching at The Curve in Memphis
Thomas Moss, a postman in addition to being the owner of the People's Grocery, was named as a conspirator along with McDowell and Stewart. The three men were arrested and jailed pending trial.
Around 2:30 a.m. on the morning of March 9, 1892, 75 men wearing black masks took Moss, McDowell, and Stewart from their jail cells at the Shelby County Jail to a Chesapeake and Ohio rail yard one mile north of the city and shot them dead. The Memphis Appeal-Avalanche reports:
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. ... Brave woman!
—Frederick Douglass (1895)[21]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. ... Brave woman!
Just before he was killed, Moss said to the mob: "Tell my people to go west, there is no justice here."[22]
After the lynching of her friends, Wells wrote in Free Speech and Headlight urging blacks to leave Memphis altogether:
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