Who Is Ida B. Wells Respond To Violence In The Gilded Age?

After the Civil War, the Republican party had a vision for America to thrive and prosper, but during the Gilded Age the country faced challenges that led to the abandonment of this vision. Freedmen and their families faced violence all throughout the South after Reconstruction ended. Three main groups worked to terrorize and disenfranchise black people and Southern Republicans: the Ku Klux Klan, Midnight Raiders, and Knights of the Golden Circle. Most of these lynchings were ignored – or dismissed by the police. Black men were killed and often falsely accused of rape by white women. Because of the violent natures in the Gilded Age, America needed a successful journalist and reformer like Ida B. Wells to use evidence based investigations to

Through Southern Horrors, Ida B. Wells debunks the stereotype that black men are sexually violent towards white women and holds the South accountable for their acts of lynching. Southern Horrors was one of Ida B. Wells' best attempts to reform the South; it contains various reports on lynchings and her specific investigations. In her chapter “The Offense,” Wells references J.C Duke’s book, The Herald, where he states, “Why is it that when white women attract negro men now more than in former days? There was a time when such a thing was unheard of. There is a secret to this thing, and we greatly suspect it is the growing appreciation of white Juliets for colored Romeos.” J.C Duke received a lot of backlash from this statement, but it begins to question why there was so much violence during the Gilded Age.

Wells traveled around the country even to Great Britain to speak out against lynchings. She has made various speeches in her time, one in particular “Lynching, Our National Crime” highlights the hypocrisy of the Southerners and calls on the nation to find a solution. Wells questions the nation's “Christian values” and the excuse that lynchings happen to protect women. Wells said in her speech, “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.” Throughout the South, Wells was able to discover that in most cases there was never a violent act towards a white woman and it was simply an excuse for murder. By communicating this message with factual evidence she was able to spread the anti-lynching campaign and raise more attention for the cause. Without her investigations and speeches lynchings could have easily been sweeped under the rug and a cycle of violence could’ve continued across the