The RED Record by Ida B. Wells

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

 (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) 

Wells-Barnett explored these in detail in her The Red Record.

• During slavery time, she noted that whites worked to "repress and stamp out alleged 'race riots'" or suspected slave rebellions, usually killing black people in far higher proportions than any white casualties. Once the Civil War ended, white people feared black people, who were in the majority in many areas. White people acted to control them and suppress them by violence.

 

• During the Reconstruction Era white people lynched black people as part of mob efforts to suppress black political activity and re-establish white supremacy after the war. They feared "Negro Domination" through voting and taking office. Wells-Barnett urged black people in high-risk areas to move away to protect their families.

 

• She noted that whites frequently claimed that black men had "to be killed to avenge their assaults upon women". She noted that white people assumed that any relationship between a white woman and a black man was a result of rape. But, given power relationships, it was much more common for white men to take sexual advantage of poor black women. She stated: "Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that black men rape white women." Wells connected lynching to sexual violence, showing how the myth of the black man's lust for white women led to murder of African-American men.