The Red Record

The Red Record tabulates these instances of cruelty in clear, impartial figures. Ida B. Wells’ original goal for the brochure was to humiliate and shock the lethargic public-and spur change-alongside the total by describing actual instances of lynching and listing the common justifications for these arbitrary executions. The practice of lynching was so pervasive in the postbellum American South that the majority of Southern politicians and leaders chose to ignore it. This lethal brand of vigilante “justice” was really a thinly veiled racist justification for homicidal brutality. With charges ranging from “attempted stock poisoning” to “insulting whites,” more than 200 African Americans were killed in 1892 alone. In order to let the dreadful statistics speak for themselves. The anti-lynching movement in the US was led by investigative journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, later Wells-Barnett. A Red Record used mainstream white newspapers to document a resurgence of white mob violence, building on her ground-breaking exposé Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892), and discovered that more than 9,000 African Americans had been killed by lynching in the South between 1864 and 1894. The novel aimed to make space for one aspect of a crucial discussion about power, violence, and race in the US.