The Project Gutenberg EBook of Southern Horrors, by Ida B. Wells-Barnett

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Title: Southern Horrors
Lynch Law in All Its Phases

Author: Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Release Date: February 8, 2005 [EBook #14975]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Transcriber's Note: This pamphlet was first published in 1892 but was
subsequently reprinted. It's not apparent if the curiosities in spelling
date back to the original or were introduced later; they have been
retained as found, and the reader is left to decide. Please verify with
another source before quoting this material.]

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

1892, 1893, 1894

By Ida B. Wells-Barnett

PREFACE

The greater part of what is contained in these pages was published in the
_New York Age_ June 25, 1892, in explanation of the editorial which the
Memphis whites considered sufficiently infamous to justify the destruction
of my paper, the _Free Speech_.

Since the appearance of that statement, requests have come from all parts
of the country that "Exiled" (the name under which it then appeared) be
issued in pamphlet form. Some donations were made, but not enough for that
purpose. The noble effort of the ladies of New York and Brooklyn Oct. 5
have enabled me to comply with this request and give the world a true,
unvarnished account of the causes of lynch law in the South.

This statement is not a shield for the despoiler of virtue, nor altogether
a defense for the poor blind Afro-American Sampsons who suffer themselves
to be betrayed by white Delilahs. It is a contribution to truth, an array
of facts, the perusal of which it is hoped will stimulate this great
American Republic to demand that justice be done though the heavens fall.

It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here
exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned
against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. The
awful death-roll that Judge L