A collection of often neglected anti-lynching pamphlets by Ida B. Wells, the most outstanding anti-lynching activist in American History. Wells’s work exposes how the public murder and mutilation of Black bodies by mob justice stood side by side with a degrading culture based on racial stereotypes and strict gender roles that institutionalized fear in everyday life. In doing so, Wells challenged the intersection of white supremacy, patriarchy, and the meaning of civilization in the early 20th century.
Newly edited and introduced by Matthew Quest, Lynch Law in Georgia & Other Writings is a selection of Wells’s anti-lynching pamphlets that shifts how we have come to understand this great activist thus far. These pamphlets reflect a transition from seeing lynching and race riots as responses to Black middle class aspirations toward viewing them as attacks on the potential of insurgent Black workers who defended and organized themselves for emancipation.