A review by loppear
Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 by Jacqueline Jones Royster, Ida B. Wells-Barnett

4.0

Tough historical documents - the first from 1892 is narrowly focused on bringing to light the regularity of mob violent murders without justice for reasons far from the claimed "honor of our white women". The second from 1895 expands this to a national (southern-dominated, by fact) review of the varieties of brutality and range of justifications or circumventions of justice given for these terrorizing deaths. The third from 1900 resonates most today, as with the others mostly commentary on newspaper reports, of one mob riot against random black individuals in New Orleans following the injury (and subsequent deaths) of police. Wells lays the presumptions and contortions to arrive at who is good and evil in these reports very bare, while blacks are killed for no reason and with no concern in the headlines of the days.