Lynching was rampant in the southern United States during the late 19th century. In 1891 alone, Chicago Tribune reports indicate that 169 black Americans were lynched by white mobs, a brutal increase from the 39 occurrences in 1883 (Wells 2). Of the 800 black Americans who were lynched between 1882-1891, a span of only 10 years, few were culprits of an actual crime, even fewer were investigated or backed up by evidence, all were carried out by “unauthorized citizens,” and none involved police interference (1, 2). Southern white males could not bear living in a world where black men were increasingly becoming more human, where they, under constitutional law, had the right to vote, the right to due process, the right to live freely like their …show more content…
Wells became aware of these blunt violations of constitutional rights and began an anti-lynching crusade. Born into this era of brutality based on race and extreme prejudice, Wells had her parents, who were involved with the Republican Party during its fight for universal suffrage and equal citizenship regardless of skin color, to set the precedent in her fight for equality, which began early in her career. Via newspapers such as the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and the Free Speech, Ida B. Wells took it upon herself to dive into the deep south and gather information about lynching and its dehumanizing components, the lack of just court procedures, and to uncover the police’s neglect of duty. Wells actually led her own investigations of lynching ceremonies in the south in order to develop a better understanding of how these mob murders were carried out, what role sheriffs played in them, and how unequivocally illegal they were. The southern United States Ida B. Wells was born into was characterized by a widespread notion that African Americans were not part of the community; consequently, police forces did not work to protect them and their wellbeing. In fact, southern whites divided the populace into the “us” and the “them”, the victims and the criminals, and in their eyes and those of the police, all black Americans belonged in the latter category. Whenever “a crime [against a white person was] committed, someone had to hang for it,” and it was almost always a black man, any black man