The Red Record

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An important historical work, The Red Record is also a horrifying account of African American lynchings after the Civil War. Black Americans lost their lives for such offenses as offending a white person in some way, proposing marriage to a white woman, providing information to someone who asked, introducing smallpox, conjuring, and/or writing a letter to a white woman. In some cases, committing no offense at all (other than being Black) was also enough to trigger a lynching.

The pre-lynching tortures described in this book are nothing short of stomach-turning. Worst of all, lynchings were a sort of town-wide, social event that even children attended. Many of them were carried out prior to inquiries as to who actually committed the crime, and whether the crime had actually been committed in the first place.

After several incidents of lynching prior to judgement in which the person had been found entirely innocent, town officials would exclaim something like, Someone had to pay for the crime.

In The Red Record, Ida Wells-Barnett provided a grim account of the multiple historic failures of justice in the United States. Although her goal was to prevent more of these travesties by educating the public about them, the practice of lynching continued into the 20th century.