Download Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Critiquing & Justifying White Sources in Lynching Violence and more Study notes Law in PDF only on Docsity!
Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s The Red Record
Forthcoming in Neglected Classics of Philosophy, II ed. by E. Schliesser.
Oxford University Press"
Liam Kofi Bright
(Incomplete Draft - Please Cite Published Version.)
Intro Ida B Wells-Barnett’s The Red Record is an argument against lynching as a means of enforcing law and order in the United States. It is not, merely, a condemnation of lynching; it is an argument, with structure purporting to logically interlink premises so as to support a conclusion. It thus ad- duces reasons against a practice that many would say is totally unreasonable - and, indeed, so evidently unreasonable that the point scarcely needs to be argued. But argue it Wells-Barnett did, and the focus of my investigation in this essay shall be on what her argument is supposed to achieve and why she has arranged it in the manner she did. It is not the case that extra-judicial killing has vanished as a method of enforcing a social order. The lynch-mobs of Wells-Barnett’s day may have disappeared, but as I write this essay the United States - and much of the world beyond - is once more in uproar as footage of the extra-judicial murder of a black man, accused of a most trivial crime, came to light. This the latest of many such outrages in recent years. Perhaps as you read this essay a similar uprising shall be in process, or you will remember when recently it was - or anticipate it soon being so again. Under such circum- stances Wells-Barnett’s work will always seem pertinent. It is thus no coincidence that as the spectre of police violence towards African Americans has haunted American public life and politi- cal discourse, Wells-Barnett received a posthumous Pulitzer prize (Silkey 2020). More broadly, brute force and associated intimidation are central methods of racial oppression, and likely to be with us so long as any sort of domination continues to blemish the earth. By offering a detailed, well researched, examination of a particularly stark example of such evil, Wells-Barnett has of- fered future generations much data and a plausible analysis of said data to build upon. However, beyond being informative about its first order subject matter Wells-Barnett’s text, and Wells-Barnett herself, give us exemplars respectively for how to do socially relevant scholarship, and how to be an activist-scholar. The central tension I explore in this regard is the relationship between being persuasive to a hostile audience on the one hand, and doing work according to epistemic standards one endorses oneself. These are tensions any activist-scholar must navigate. I argue that through her style of work she realised a kind of epistemic self-determination that should be considered an admirable trait for scholar activists. Before explaining this, however, a summary of what this neglected classic actually says. A Brief Survey of The Red Record Published in 1895, The Red Record ’s main goal is to press the case against lynching as a form of upholding justice. That lynching is unethical may seem so obvious as to not need serious de- fence, and we shall return to this thought in the conclusion. But Wells-Barnett addresses this her- self within Red Record. She says that any Christian who knew the facts of the case would certain- ly oppose lynching (Wells-Barnett 2002a, pg 151 - henceforth all page number citations without attribution are to this text) - though as we shall see, there are dramatic ironies within the text on this point. But she also opens the text by recounting that at the time she writes African Americans were the subject of such dreadful propaganda that many thought even mass lynching might be justified against them. For, the charge was being made by defenders of this violence that lynching was the only way to prevent black men from raping white women, and the heinousness of the lat- ter crime (pg. 60) as well as white Southern men’s investment in the welfare and honour of women (pg. 62) justified this measure. So she takes her goal to at least be substantial in the following
sense: people are disposed to disbelieve her conclusion, and she has work to do in swaying them. Her argumentative strategy is itself simple yet effective. She begins by presenting some statistics on the prevalence and spread of lynching in 1894, and the causes behind each case as reported by the Chicago Tribune. Immediately this makes the point that in most of these cases no rape was even alleged by the people involved at the time, undermining the propagandistic argument made on behalf of lynch law by its retrospective defenders. However, while this is often the point the book is remembered for (and even then often not properly credited - Harris 2003, pg. 217), the bulk of the book goes beyond making this simple point. Wells-Barnett spends the substantial middle portion of the book going through principles one might wish a fair or decent judicial sys- tem to satisfy, and arguing that examination of how these lynchings have worked in practice vio- late all of them in an oft horrific manner. The principles Wells-Barnett argues are violated are as follows: one ought differentiate between those who are and are not mentally capable of culpability, which lynch-mobs routinely fail to do; due process is a requirement on an adequate system of justice, but since lynch-mobs make a mockery of this they clearly often target people who did not commit the crime in question; there must be proportionality between crime and punishment, but since lynching is applied to such a wide variety of cases this is impossible; and most basically of all punishment should not be ap- plied where there is no crime even alleged, and yet lynch-mobs sometimes target such innocents. Each of these sections works by Wells-Barnett briefly introducing the central theme, then pro- ceeding to go through various cases wherein the principle in question is manifestly violated in a horrific manner - always using white owned newspapers for their reports on events. What follows is a rather interesting chapter in itself, the central message of which can be de- scribed as: lynching as a practice facilitates a pernicious ideology. This is an ideology in the sense of a set of claims people are widely aware of and which can permissibly be appealed to in legit- imising their actions or legitimising the social order more broadly (see Táíwò 2018). Wells-Barnett argues that those familiar with the facts on the ground know full well that in many cases of alleged rape, there are “voluntary and clandestine” relationships going on between black men and white women. But given the anti-black racial prejudices of the day and the general desire of powerful Southern whites to maintain the subordination of blacks, it would be extremely inconvenient to acknowledge that such voluntary unions occur with reasonable frequency. As such the papers do not report honestly on what is going on. Lynching evidently serves as a powerful and shocking deterrent to such unions, it murders and thereby silences the black man involved while often gain- ing the participation of the white woman involved whose reputation now depends on denying the voluntary nature of the union. And finally, by perpetuating the line that such cases are invariably rape, it has “the effect of fastening the odium upon the race of a peculiar propensity for this foul crime”. (pg 109). As such, establishing the practice of lynching serves to establish something like the claim “black people are monstrous rapists who may, perhaps must, be violently suppressed if peace is to be had” as a publicly available justification for action (see also Wells-Barnett & Le Vin1899, pg 1). Needless to say, this general disdain for black people further legitimises our sub- ordination. All this being argued, Wells-Barnett rounds the book out by pressing her case that something must be done about all this, reiterating that mealy mouthed compromises with lynching’s justifica- tions are unacceptable, and calling upon those who read to get involved in the campaign against lynching. In words we shall return to, Wells-Barnett quite specific about what those who have been persuaded should do. “The very frequent inquiry made after my lectures by interested friends is “What can I do to help the cause?” The answer always is “Tell the world the facts.” When the Christian world knows the alarming growth and extent of outlawry in our land, some means will be found to stop it.” (pg. 151) Red Record is thus simultaneously an act of telling the world the facts and an inducement to pass this information on. It will be important later on that the audience for the latter inducement, and hence the presumed audience for the text, seems to be white Americans. This because in the midst of calling the read- er to anti-lynching action Wells-Barnett says one ought “[t]hink and act on independent lines in this behalf, remembering that after all, it is the white man’s civilisation and the white man’s gov- ernment which are on trial” (pg 149). The apparent meaning of this is an appeal to the reader’s
shall the murderers be condemned. For a number of years the Chicago Tribune , admittedly one of the leading journals of America, has made a speciality of the compilation of sta- tistics touching upon lynching. The data compiled by that journal and published to the world January 1, 1894, up to the present time has not been disputed. In order to be safe from the charge of exaggeration, the incidents hereinafter reported have been confined to those vouched for by the Tribune .” (Wells-Barnett 2002, pg. 68) It is evidently significant that her choice of sources means the condemnation comes out of their own - presumably, saliently, white - mouths, and that she cannot be charged with exaggeration. Further, throughout the text, Wells-Barnett makes a point of noting her sources, and frequently draws attention to the fact that it is white journalists she quotes or white editors who approved certain stories etc. She even quite explicitly calls back to this rationale later, saying “Lest it might be charged that any deeds of that day are exaggerated, a white man’s description which was published In the white journals of this country is used” (pg. 78). Likewise she later notes that a “white person’s word is taken as absolutely for as against a Negro” (pg. 120) when discussing a case wherein intervention by white people vouching for a black person’s claims saved them from lynching. In contemporary terminology, Wells-Barnett might be thought of as here pre-empting a sort of tes- timonial injustice or epistemic violence. For an example of how this might be spelled out, Kristie Dotson points out that “to communicate we all need an audience willing and capable of hearing us” (Dotson 2011, pg 238). To display such a willingness and capacity to listen is linguistic recip- rocation. She then says that epistemic violence occurs just in case there is a “a refusal, intentional or unintentional, of an audience to communicatively reciprocate a linguistic exchange owing to pernicious ignorance” (ibid). Being systematically subject to such violence is one form of epis- temic oppression (Dotson 2014). With this in hand one can say that Wells-Barnett anticipates that her audience will not be willing or capable of hearing her out. This because as a black woman she was subject to epistemic oppres- sion. As such she cannot expect reciprocation, and must take steps to avoid epistemic violence she would otherwise be subject to. To this end she has her point made “out of the mouths” of white men more likely to get a fair hearing. If one sees in The Red Record the primary goal as be- ing to rouse action, the rhetorical goal of actually receiving uptake is very important to her pur- pose. The urgency of achieving this goal, and the fact that it requires reciprocity, would then justi- fy the epistemic sacrifice of not using all her available evidence, and relying upon untrustworthy sources. If this were all there was to say on the matter it could still hold lessons for contemporary activists or activist-scholars. For, the epistemic ju jitsu involved in turning the words of “the malicious and untruthful white press” (Wells-Barnnet 2002b, ch.4) against white supremacy is an example of what can be gained by judiciously engaging with the source material one’s opponents are working from. However, a fuller examination of the text and surrounding context makes this rhetorical reading of the text unlikely. For, a key part of the text is that plenty of white people are in fact aware of these events and have not changed their minds about what is going on. For instance, as she notes: “In July of this year, 1894, John Paul Bocock, a Southern white man living in New York, and assistant editor of the New York Tribune, took occasion to defy the publication of any instance where the lynched Negro was the victim of a white woman’s falsehood. Such cases are not rare, but the press and people conversant with the facts, almost invariably suppress them.” (pg 108) Mr. Bocock is evidently supposed to be aware of the falsehoods he is perpetuating by this con- duct. However, he simply does not care, and goes on perpetuating his lies. It might be thought
that he is unusually malicious, but then Wells-Barnett expressly says that such cases are not rare and that others like him invariably behave in the same way. One might instead think that the problem is especially with Southern as opposed to Northern whites, and the hope is that the latter can be persuaded to act against the former. As we shall see there is good evidence that Wells-Barnett thought that something like this might work. But her preferred mechanism for bringing this about was not likely to be moral suasion towards the Northern whites. Some background to this is - by the time Wells-Barnett wrote The Red Record she had experienced censorship, and indeed threats of violence and destruction of property, ow- ing to her own efforts to expose lynching through a black press in Memphis (Hardin & Hinton 2001). In light of this she had taken to giving speaking tours. Most pertinently, as she discusses in chapters 7 and 8 of The Red Record , she had given speeches in Britain. What’s noticeable for our purposes is that she had been acutely aware that these had met with more success than her at- tempts to sway white Americans (Zackodnik 2005). She would indeed contrast the reception she got in Britain and America as being to the latter’s discredit (Ochiai 1992, pg.371 - Appiah 2011 defends the efficacy of persuading people that international good name or national honour de- pends upon ending some grave injustice). In fact, in chapter 7 she answers the charge that it is unpatriotic of her to try and appeal to sup- port for the anti-lynching cause from England and else wise abroad. Against this she argues that there has been up to now little evidence that Americans are all that concerned to do anything about lynchings even when the facts are made apparent to them - though it should be noted that she expresses hope that this is in the midst of changing (pg 125). She prefaces her response to the charge of unpatriotic behaviour by saying that “If America would not hear the cry of men, women and children whose dying groans ascended to heaven praying for relief…” then no fair minded person could begrudge her going abroad. And she then says: “If stating the facts of these lynchings, as they appeared from time to time in the white newspapers of America - the news gathered by white correspondents, compiled by white press bureaus and disseminated among white people - shows any vindictiveness, then the mind which so charges is not amenable to argument” (pg 121) In short, it seems that it is not only Southern whites but (white) Americans more generally that Wells-Barnett was wary of actually being persuaded of the evils of lynching by being made aware of the facts. But, I have argued above, white Americans seems to be the intended audience of The Red Record. It thus does not seem to me that a practical purpose which required a rhetorical- ly effective strategy can be the justification for the evidential self-limitation. Wells-Barnett could well, of course, have reasonably hoped that some in her intended audience would be persuaded, and was aware of what we would now call her epistemic oppression and how it affected her epis- temic and rhetorical situation. But given her pessimism about white America’s reaction to the facts even when they are known, I deny that it was her motivation to ensure she was believed on this point. Even if she were believed, white America’s interest in perpetuating the suppression of blacks may induce many to simply ignore the facts. I thus see Wells-Barnett as appreciating a point that Du Bois famously only came to much later in his career (Du Bois 1990, pg.41), and think there are better justifications available for her evidential self-limitation. To summarise the results of this section, Wells-Barnett might plausibly be making use of only white evidential sources for rhetorical reasons, to overcome prejudice. This could be justified on the grounds of noting the urgency of persuading people given the drastic evil of lynching, and a plausible analysis of the epistemic oppression of black women in Wells-Barnett’s own circum- stance. However, this would rely on believing that white Americans would, if faced with the facts, change their mind and change behaviour. There is some material in the text to support this. But on the whole The Red Record contains too many passages evincing scepticism about the degree to which acquaintance with the facts changes minds in white America, and the broader context of Wells-Barnett’s own writings suggest this was not something she had much faith in. As such it would be preferable to seek an alternative justification of The Red Record ’s evidential self-limita- tion.
prove her central claims too easily, by cherry picking sources or drawing upon the interpretations of events from persons who already agree with her. Wells-Barnett’s evidential self-limitation immediately cuts down on this freedom, and does so in a way that apparently stacks the deck against her. By this choice she’s only allowed to draw from a source which, were there evidence that lynching was in fact usually a response to alleged rape, would be keen to document and advertise as much. And, likewise, given how keen the malicious and untruthful white press was to defend Southern whites, if there was evidence that lynch-mobs had behaved judiciously it would be here. But this is just to say, if her claims were false, she would be unlikely to have been able to support them by appeal to these evidential sources. Her claims would not have passed the test of these evidential sources if they were false; but they have, and hence have passed severe tests. And by restricting herself to such sources and gener- ally avoiding supplementing them with other news sources, Wells-Barnett ensures that only claims that pass severe test are allowed in. For the simple reason that it was only the severe tests that they were put to, only the kind of evidence base which would have caught them out were they to be false which did the work in validating them. Not only is the epistemic self-limitation thus seen to be an epistemically defensible procedure, it is also in line with what might be expected of Wells-Barnett’s general beliefs. Indeed, I shall argue in the next section that this way of justifying her procedure also allowed her to avoid a certain kind of mental domination. The repeated emphasis on avoiding exaggeration can be seen as a refer- ence to the fact that her evidence source will, if anything, push in the other direction from her cen- tral claims. As just argued, this plausibly generates severe tests for her claims. Yet it might be thought odd that, unlike the previous suggestion, this rationale for the evidential self-limitation does not involve consideration of what will prompt action in the audience; it’s attraction lies en- tirely in terms of the epistemic good of passing severe test. But I shall argue that this is not so odd in light of Wells-Barnett’s statements on the intrinsic good of truth seeking. For instance, in an essay from Christmas of 1895 on the role of women as a force for social good, she wrote that “… it is not queens, conscious of power… but yet the many workers and artists who minister to their love of the truthful and the beautiful, that most possess this influence for good” (Wells-Barnett 1895, pg 181). Here she is directly saying that those who work out of the love of what is truthful are those who will bring about social change. That latter is, of course, a pragmatic good; but it is secured by being the sort of woman who loves truth in an intrinsic fash- ion. Note that the language here could be read as suggesting that one needs both the epistemic and aesthetic concerns to be a good activist - this might then in turn suggest a close alliance be- tween the rhetorical and epistemic purposes of the text. I shall return to this in the conclusion. Whatever her thoughts on the love of beauty, the importance of the love of what is truthful was always clear. It can also be seen in the opening to her narration in Lynch Law in Georgia where she says “[w]e submit all to the sober judgement of the Nation, confident that, in this cause as well as all others, `Truth is mighty and will prevail’” (Wells-Barnett & Le Vin 1899, pg.1). And all this is consonant with the closing chapter of The Red Record when encouraging readers to spread the word and change public opinion on lynching, she advises that they “let the facts speak for them- selves, with you as their medium” (pg. 148). Recall also the advice to tell the world the facts as being the central take away for readers. Here, again, there is a suggestion that good will come from the epistemic achievement of being a medium through which facts may speak. There is no doubt a tension here between these pronouncements and her distrust in her white readership, and before concluding I shall explore that tension. But for now suffice it to note that Wells-Barnett seems to think that an intrinsic concern for the truth is admirable, and that work produced in line with that intrinsic concern can change the world. It thus seems plausible that the fact that the epistemic-self-limitation would secure an epistemic good would be in itself enough to explain Wells-Barnett’s own adoption of the procedure; she wrote for truth, not just for direct sua- siveness. To summarise the argument of this section, I sought a rationale for the epistemic self-limitation that was not directly tied to the good of ensuring that white people came to see the facts. This was found in noting that Wells-Barnett’s mode of argument ensures her central claims have passed severe tests, an intuitively desirable epistemic property nowadays studied by philoso-
phers of statistics. Not only does this provide an attractive epistemic rationale for Wells-Barnett’s evidential self-limitation, but Wells-Barnett’s herself suggests that it is important for her mode of activism that her texts be epistemically well motivated. It thus seems to suffice as a motive for her work that it would be epistemically virtuous to proceed as such, without it necessarily having the sort of direct rhetorical or practically-persuasive advantages that were claimed for the former ra- tionale. Lessons for a Scholar-Activist Wells-Barnett was an activist and an intellectual. As Collins puts it, “[u]nlike contemporary distinc- tions made between intellectual production and activism, Wells-Barnett managed to do both” (Collins 2002, pg. 9). Guided by Collins’ contextualisation of Wells-Barnett’s work, I have been trying to draw attention to the interplay between Wells-Barnett’s urgent need to persuade and spur action on the one hand, and her high epistemic purpose and reverence for truth seeking as an admirable goal in itself, combined with a realistic understanding on how much she could hope to sway white Americans in any case, on the other. These were not strictly separable fea- tures of her work. In this section I explain this feature of Wells-Barnett as a scholar activist in more detail, and draw out an explicit moral for contemporary readers. What exactly is the relationship between the attempt to be persuasive to a white audience who cannot be trusted to care, and the attempt to do work according to plausible epistemic standards. Wells-Barnett is part of an African American intellectual tradition which places great stock in the importance of “describ[ing] the truth of Black lives in a way that gives agency to African Ameri- cans” (Colilns 2002 pg 15). She had a central moral proposition that she hoped both to prove and encourage belief in - as she put it in the introduction to the 1892 text Southern Horrors “The Afro- American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in any way towards proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice… I shall feel I have done my race a service” (Wells-Barnett 2002b pg. 26). Note, again, that proving the point and persuading people to take action towards justice are both listed as goals for her work - but clearly separated, at least analytically, in how Wells-Barnett describes her own purpose for work. She hopes to persuade, but recognising this as a distinct goal from trying to do good work ac- cording to her own epistemic standards. This analytic separation allowed Wells-Barnett to gener- ate a mode of scholar-activism that encourages mental self-determination as a step along the path to general liberation. Wells-Barnett can plausibly be seen as a forerunner to the militant African American movement of the 1960s (Curry 2012). In memorable words found in Southern Horrors she said that African Americans could learn from both the failures of the justice system to protect black people and the success of some people in fighting off lynch-mobs. As she put it: “The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honour in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American vic- tim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.” (Wells-Barnnett 2002b, pg.52) And this is far from the only time one sees Wells-Barnett expressing such radical sentiments. She also advocated labour radicalism to force Northern capital to intervene against Southern whites: “In the creation of this healthier public sentiment, the Afro-American can do for himself what no one else can do for him. The world looks on with wonder that we have conceded so much and remain law-abiding under such great outrage and provocation. To Northern capital and Afro-American labor the South owes its rehabilitation. If labor is withdrawn capital will not remain. The Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South. A thorough knowledge and judicious exercise of this power in lynching localities could many times ef- fect a bloodless revolution. The white man’s dollar is his god, and to stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities,” (Wells-Barnnett 2002b, pg.50)
Curry, Tommy J. 2012. “The Fortune of Wells: Ida B. Wells-Barnett's Use of T. Thomas Fortune's Philosophy of Social Agitation as a Prolegomenon to Militant Civil Rights Activism” in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society , Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 456- Dotson, Kristie. 2011. "Tracking epistemic violence, tracking practices of silencing.” in Hypatia 26.2: 236-257. Dotson, Kristie. 2014. "Conceptualizing epistemic oppression." Social Epistemology 28.2: 115-138. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1990. “My evolving program for negro freedom" In Clinical Sociology Review , 8(1); 27-57. Fletcher, Samuel C. and Mayo-Wilson, Conor (2019) Evidence in Classical Statistics. [Preprint] Good, Irving John. 1967. "On the principle of total evidence." In the British Journal for the Philos- ophy of Science 17.4: 319-321. Hardin, Robin, and Marcie Hinton. 2001. "The Squelching of Free Speech in Memphis: The Life of a Black Post-Reconstruction Newspaper." In Race, Gender & Class Vol. 8, No.4 pg 78- Harris, Paisley Jane. 2003. “Gatekeeping and Remaking: The Politics of Respectability in African American Women's History and Black Feminism’ in Journal of Women's History , Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 212- King, Preston. (2004) “Ida B. Wells and the management of violence”, in Critical Review of In- ternational Social and Political Philosophy , 7:4, 111- Mayo, Deborah G., and Aris Spanos. 2006. "Severe testing as a basic concept in a Neyman– Pearson philosophy of induction." The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57.2: 323-357. Mayo, Deborah G. 2018. Statistical inference as severe testing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Ochiai, Akiko. 1992. IDA B. WELLS AND HER CRUSADE FOR JUSTICE: An African American Woman's Testimonial Autobiography in Soundings , 365-381. Popper, Karl. 1959: The Logic of Scientific Discovery , New York: Basic Books. Silkey, Sarah L. 2015. Black Woman Reformer: Ida B. Wells, Lynching, & Transatlantic Activism. University of Georgia Press Silkey, Sarah L. 2020. “Ida B. Wells won the Pulitzer. Here’s why that matters.” In The Washington Post - available online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/07/ida-b-wells-won- pulitzer-heres-why-that-matters/ Simmons, Joseph P.; Nelson, Leif D.; Simonsohn, Uri. 2011. "False-Positive Psychology: Undis- closed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant” in Psychological Science. 22 (11): 1359–1366. Schechter, Patricia Ann. 2001. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880-1930. Univ of North Carolina Press. Táíwò, Olúfémi O. 2018. "The Empire Has No Clothes." In Disputatio ahead-of-print Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 1885. “Women’s Mission” in The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells , DeCosta- Willlis (ed), 1995. Beacon Press, pp. 179-
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 2002a “Red Record” in On Lynching , Prometheus Books, pg 55-152. Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 2002b “Southern Horrors” in On Lynching , Prometheus Books, pg 25-54. Wells-Barnett, Ida B., and Louis P. Le Vin. 1899. Lynch Law in Georgia: A Six-weeks' Record in the Center of Southern Civilization, as Faithfully Chronicled by the" Atlanta Journal" and the" Atlanta Constitution": Also the Full Report of Louis P. Le Vin, the Chicago Detective Sent to Investigate the Burning of Samuel Hose, the Torture and Hanging of Elijah Strickland, the Colored Preacher, and the Lynching of Nine Men for Alleged Arson. Available online: https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/ service/rbc/lcrbmrp/t1612/t1612.pdf Zackodnik, Teresa. 2005. "Ida B. Wells and ‘American Atrocities’ in Britain." Women's Studies In- ternational Forum. Vol. 28. No. 4. pg. 259-
