Her Response To A Horrific Lynching Changed America

Ida B. Wells
Cydney Smith
May 18, 2020

In 1862, Ida B. Wells was born into slavery - six months before the Emancipation Proclamation. 

Her parents, with their newfound freedom, actively fought the racial prejudice that emancipation couldn’t extinguish. Wells would soon follow in their footsteps after one horrific lynching.

The murder of three Black grocers by a mob of resentful whites was an all-too-familiar tragedy in 1892. But the People’s Grocery lynchings touched Ida B. Wells personally - her close friend, Thomas Moss, was one of the victims. 

She had to do something.

Incensed by his and countless other Black people’s deaths by lynching, Wells, an established journalist by this time, channeled her rage towards publishing her groundbreaking pamphlet, “Southern Horrors,” which launched her international anti-lynching crusade and changed America forever.

When tragedy struck, Ida B. Wells was there to report, inform, and fight for justice. 

Today, as the “Southern Horror” known as lynching continues throughout the country, resulting in the tragic murders of innocents like Ahmaud Arbery and Kenneth Herring, take a page from this civil rights pioneer’s book. Channel your rage and fight for justice.

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