Lynching Was Not News Though A Red Record Summary

Lynching refers to a fatal punishment usually conducted by self-appointed groups on those who disobey a certain set of laws that may or may not be actual legal infractions. “The term ‘lynching’ probably had its origins during the Revolutionary War when Charles Lynch (1736- 1796), a Virginia patriot, conducted a campaign of violence against suspected loyalist” ("Lynching"). After the Civil War, the practice of lynching became an unwavering characteristic of southern life. This chronic feature of life in the South took its toll the hardest on African Americans. Lynching was an outright violation of their human rights and of their “most intolerable manifestations of their oppression” in America during the time ("Lynching”). Lynching was not news

One being that its author had little credibility during her time. Walker is also a female, but she wrote during a time where African American writers were more common. Meeropol had no problems with credibility, being an educated, white male. Being an African America female gave Wells less credibility when it came to publishing works, let alone publishing editorials that criticized and exposed white Americans. Not only was she not granted credibility, but she was punished for her works decrying lynching, specifically those of African American shopkeepers by their white competitors, by angry whites destroying her business and forcing her to flee to the North (Rogers). Such a bold move could have resulted in her being lynched just as the victims as her expose’ had been. However, Wells gains credibility by including the opinion of northern whites in her work. There was “an almost divine sentiment among the noblest, purest, and best white women of the North, who felt called to a mission to educated and Christianize the millions of southern ex-slaves” and these women testified that they never had problems with the ex-slaves (Wells 681). While the African American men were being accused of raping white women, the northern women, who spent much time with the African American men, “never complained of assaults and no mob was ever called into existence to avenge crimes against” these women (Wells 681). The mentioned northerners filled in where Wells