Lynching: The Hidden Truth What exactly was the Lynch Law? It seems to have come about after slavery was abolished back in the nineteenth century. Nowadays, this law ceases to exist but was a huge issue in the Post-Reconstruction period. The Lynch law can be defined as a punishment of assumed crimes, usually by death, without the process of an authentic criminal trial. Years after the Civil War ended, the law became in effect causing a great deal of agony for African Americans. This lead Ida B. Wells, a newspaper editor, and a journalist, to investigate the violence acted upon the African American community. Wells wrote of her findings in the novel Southern Horrors and Other Writings where she