Reproduction of the original: Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Written just a year before his death, ‘Why is the Negro Lynched?’ is one of Douglass’ most moving and passionate speeches. Still sadly-pertinent today, his skill as a wordsmith is captured in passages that discuss everything from law and respect for human life to religion and the necessity for belonging. An expert orator, Douglass presents his arguments as though they were part of a court case, deftly switching between the roles of prosecution and defence, before passing sentence against the white establishment of the time. An important book for anyone and everyone. Frederick Douglass (1818-1995) was an American abolitionist and author. Born into slavery in Maryland, he was of African, European, and Native American descent. He was separated from his mother at a young age and lived with his grandmother until he was moved to another plantation. Frederick was taught his alphabet by the wife of one of his owners, a knowledge he passed on to other slaves. In 1838, he successfully escaped slavery by jumping on a north-bound train. After less than 24 hours, he was in New York and free. The same year, he married the woman that had inspired his run for freedom and started working actively as a social reformer, orator, statesman, and women’s rights defender. He remains most known today for his 1845 autobiography "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave."

Pulitzer Prize Board citation to Ida B. Wells, as an early pioneer of investigative journalism and civil rights icon From a thinker who Maya Angelou has praised for shining “a brilliant light on the lives of women left in the shadow of history,” comes the definitive biography of Ida B. Wells—crusading journalist and pioneer in the fight for women’s suffrage and against segregation and lynchings Ida B. Wells was born into slavery and raised in the Victorian age yet emerged—through her fierce political battles and progressive thinking—as the first “modern” black women in the nation’s history. Wells began her activist career when she tried to segregate a first-class railway car in Memphis. After being thrown bodily off the car, she wrote about the incident for black Baptist newspapers, thus beginning her career as a journalist. But her most abiding fight would be the one against lynching, a crime in which she saw all the themes she held most dear coalesce: sexuality, race, and the law.

In recent decades, scholars have explored much of the history of mob violence in the American South, especially in the years after Reconstruction. However, the lynching violence that occurred in American regions outside the South, where hundreds of persons, including Hispanics, whites, African Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans died at the hands of lynch mobs, has received less attention. This collection of essays by prominent and rising scholars fills this gap by illuminating the factors that distinguished lynching in the West, the Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic. The volume adds to a more comprehensive history of American lynching and will be of interest to all readers interested in the history of violence across the varied regions of the United States. Contributors are Jack S. Blocker Jr., Brent M. S. Campney, William D. Carrigan, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Dennis B. Downey, Larry R. Gerlach, Kimberley Mangun, Helen McLure, Michael J. Pfeifer, Christopher Waldrep, Clive Webb, and Dena Lynn Winslow.