Lynch Law in Georgia & Other Writings

Ida B. Wells was a teacher, journalist, and newspaper editor who led the most dynamic anti-lynching campaign 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 institutionalised 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 organised themselves for emancipation. Published by On Our Own