Evaluating an Argument:Ida B. Wells-Barnett
"Mob Murder in a Christian Nation"Essay Prompt: Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) was a teacher, journalist and activist who was known for her courageous anti-lynching editorials and speeches. Reprinted in community newspapers across the country, Wells-Barnett's columns prompted thousands of blacks to move North and helped inspire legal action within the modern civil rights movement. Read the following speech to the National Negro Conference in 1909. Then write a carefully reasoned essay that evaluates the effectiveness of Barnett' persuasion.
The lynching record for a quarter of a century merits the thoughtful study of the American people. It presents three salient facts: First, lynching is color line murder. Second, crimes against (white women) is the excuse, not the cause. Third, it is a national crime and requires a national remedy.
Proof that lynching follows the color line is to be found in statistics for the past 25 years. While frontier lynch law existed, the executions showed a majority of white victims. Later, however, as authorized judiciary extended into the far West, lynch law rapidly abated and its white victims became few and far between.
Just as the lynch law regime came to a close in the West, a new mob movement started in the South. This was wholly political, its purpose being to suppress the colored vote by intimidation and murder. Thousands of assassins, banded together under the name of Ku Klux Klans, "Midnight Raiders," etc., spread a reign of terror by beating, shooting and killing colored people by the thousands. In a few years, the purpose was accomplished and the black vote was suppressed. But mob murder continued.
From 1882, when 52 were lynched, down to the present, lynching has been along the color line. Statistics show that 3,284 men, women and children have been put to death in this quarter of a century .Ý.Ý.Ý. Twenty-eight human beings also burned at the stake, one of them a woman and two of them children, is the awful indictment against American civilization -- the gruesome tribute which the nation pays to the color line.
Why is mob murder permitted by a Christian nation? What is the cause of this awful slaughter? This question is answered almost dailyóalways the same shameless, falsehood that "Negroes are lynched to protect womanhood." This is the never varying answer of lynchers and their apologists. All know that it is untrue. The cowardly lyncher revels in murder, then seeks to shield himself from public execration by claiming devotion to woman. But truth is mighty and the lynching record discloses the hypocrisy of the lyncher as well as his crime.
Is there a remedy, or will the nation confess that it cannot protect its protectors (own) at home as well as abroad? Various remedies have been suggested, but year after year, the butchery of men, women and children continues .Ý.Ý.Ý. Education is suggested as a preventive, but it is as grave a crime to murder an ignorant man as it is a scholar.
Agitation, though helpful, will not alone stop the crime. Statistics are published, meetings are held, resolutions are adopted and yet lynchings go on. Public sentiment does measurably decrease the sway of mob law, but irresponsible bloodthirsty criminals .Ý.Ý. were not deterred from their heinous crimes by either education or agitation.
The only certain remedy is an appeal to law. Lawbreakers must be made to know that human life is sacred and that everyone is first a citizen of the United States and secondly a citizen of the state in which he belongs .Ý.Ý.Ý. The strong arm of the government must reach across state lines whenever unbridled lawlessness defies the law. Federal protection of American citizenship is the remedy for lynching .Ý.Ý.Ý. It would be a beginning in the right direction if this conference can establish a bureau for the investigation and publication of the details of every lynching; make it a duty to give the widest publicity to the facts in each case. Secure expressions of opinion all over the country against lynching. Lastly, try to influence the daily papers of the country to refuse to become accessory to mobs.
Time was when lynching was sectional (regional), but now it is national -- a blight upon our nation, mocking our laws and disgracing our Christianity. "With malice toward none but with charity for all" let us undertake the work of making the law effective and supreme upon every foot of American soilóa shield to the innocent and to the guilty punishment swift and sure.
