ynch is calling every week is appalling, not
only because of the lives it takes, the rank cruelty and outrage to the
victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters and the stain it places
against the good name of a weak race.

The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in
any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of
the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and
punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a
service. Other considerations are of minor importance.

IDA B. WELLS
_New York City_, Oct. 26, 1892

To the Afro-American women of New York and Brooklyn, whose race love,
earnest zeal and unselfish effort at Lyric Hall, in the City of New York,
on the night of October 5, 1892--made possible its publication, this
pamphlet is gratefully dedicated by the author.

HON. FRED. DOUGLASS'S LETTER

_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. You give us what you know and testify from actual
knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity
and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.

Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can
neither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only half
alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if
American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of
outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame and
indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.

But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions
favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by
earth and Heaven yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the
power of a merciful God for final deliverance.

Very truly and gratefully yours,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
_Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C._, Oct. 25, 1892

1 _The_ OFFENSE

Wednesday evening May 24, 1892, the city of Memphis was filled with
excitement. Editorials in the daily papers of that date caused a meeting
to be held in the Cotton Exchange Building; a committee was sent for the
editors of the _Free Speech_ an Afro-Amer