The Red Record Summary

Ida B. Wells created a crusade against lynching in 1895, The Red Record. The reason she chose to use a provocative title such as The Red Record was to illustrate the brutal, inhumane and ignored murders of Blacks specifically in the South. “Red” embodied the blood being shed by the Blacks who were murdered by the white supremacists. “Record” signified the thousands of lives lost due to these hate crimes. The overall pamphlet discussed the maltreatment and racism Blacks endured during this period and show the senseless reasoning behind it. Wells included fourteen pages of statistics of lynching cases that took place from 1892-1895 as well as graphic images displaying some of the lynchings. Those statistics and images confirmed that this is occurring,

White men had three reasons for executing these acts. The first reason was a claim that Blacks were having a rebellion, so they had to use the force of killings to overpower Blacks from following through with the plans. Since these rebellions were false predictions, they had to find a better reason to eliminate the Black population. Blacks were now being given the right to vote, which placed fear in the White men that Blacks would take over so groups such as the Ku Klux Klan formed to attack Blacks and kill Blacks. The government deserted Blacks because they thought since Blacks were given freedom then they were fine, but in actuality, they needed to be secured too. The third reason, Whites claimed that they needed to protect White women from Black men because Black men were “alleged” raping White women. White men did not believe that a consensual relationship could occur between a white woman and a black man and always assumed of rape. Many other lynchings occurred and might not have been recorded. The Whites had no good reason for these unjust acts and just did them because they knew they could and were just vicious