FLYIN’ WEST BACKSTAGE GUIDE 15 After the editorial was published, Wells left Memphis for a short trip to New England, to cover another story for the newspaper. Her editorial enraged white men in Memphis. Their responses in two leading white newspapers, The Daily Commercial and The Evening Scimitar, were brimming with hatred; "the fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome…calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of southern whites. But we have had enough of it". On May 27, 1892, while she was away in Philadelphia, a white mob destroyed the offices of the Free Speech and Headlight. When her office was destroyed by a mob, she wrote a more detailed account in the New York Age a black newspaper in New York City. Having examined many accounts of lynchings due to the alleged "rape of white women," she concluded that Southerners cried rape as an excuse to hide their real reasons for lynchings: black economic progress, which threatened white Southerners with competition; the fear of “Negro Domination” through voting and taking office; and white ideas of enforcing black second-class status in the society. Because of the threats to her life, Wells left Memphis altogether and moved to Chicago. She continued to investigate lynching incidents and the ostensible causes in the cases, and to write columns attacking Southern injustices. In 1985 she published a 100-page pamphlet called “The Red Record” which described lynching in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation. It included 14 pages of statistics related to lynching cases committed from 1892 to 1895; she also included pages of graphic accounts detailing specific lynchings. She notes that her data was taken from articles by white correspondents, white press bureaus, and white newspapers. “The Red Record” was a huge pamphlet, and had far-reaching influence in the debate about lynching. Numerous other studies have supported Wells' findings of lynching as a form of community control and analyzed variables that affect lynching. Beck and Tolnay's influential 1990 study found that economics played a major role, with the rate of lynchings higher when marginal whites were under threat because of uncertain economic conditions. Despite Wells' attempt to garner support among white Americans against lynching, she believed that her campaign could not overturn the economic interests whites had in using lynching as an instrument to maintain Southern order and discourage Black economic ventures. Ultimately, Wells concluded that appealing to reason and compassion would not succeed in gaining criminalization of lynching by Southern whites. Wells concluded that perhaps armed resistance was the only defense against lynching. Meanwhile, she extended her efforts to gain support of such powerful white nations as Britain to shame and sanction the racist practices of America. “Dear Miss Wells, Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison... Brave woman!” - Frederick Douglass A sign commemorating Ida B. Wells in Memphis, TN (edited from Wikipedia.org) A selection of the preface to Ida B. Wells’ pamphlet “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases”, written by abolitionist Frederick Douglass