1.3 Bullock 1

Barak Bullock

Professor Roberts-Miller

RHE 321 FS12

4 November 2012

A Red Record: Taking ‘Strange Fruit’ Off The Market

A Red Record is a polemical pamphlet written by Ida B. Wells-

Barnett and published in 1895. Wells-Barnett’s case features

arguments against lynching and rebuttals to her opponents, as

well as tabulated statistics of lynchings (Wells-Barnett). In

contemporary times, A Red Record has been lauded for its smart use

of evidence, and is seen as “an insightful and sophisticated

analysis of the interrelationship of sex, race, and class”

(Campbell). Wells-Barnett herself has been praised as “a militant

thinker...whose essays, pamphlets, and books provide a

theoretical analysis of lynching,” and whose work “laid the

foundation for the modern civil rights movement” (DeCosta-

Willis). However, the reception of Wells-Barnett’s many efforts

against lynching, such as A Red Record, was very different in her

time.

1.3 Bullock 2

Between 1891 and 1892, Wells-Barnett was fired from her job

and later run out of her own city of Memphis as retaliation for

her scathing condemnation of white murderers in local newspapers

(Wells-Barnett 12). Critics destroyed her property and “vowed to

kill her if she returned to Tennessee,” making threats against

her life in public newspapers (DeCosta-Willis) (Wells-Barnett

12). The threats in question respond to this anonymous editorial

written by Wells-Barnett in 1892, concerning the rape of white

women by blacks:

Nobody in this section of the country believes the old

thread bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If

Southern white men are not careful, they will

over-reach themselves and public sentiment will have a

reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be

very damaging to the moral reputation of their

women. (Wells-Barnett 13)

According to Wells-Barnett, whites argued that black

empowerment had three major impacts which warranted white

intervention via lynching. These were the incursion of “race

riots,” “Negro domination,” and the wanton rape of white women

1.3 Bullock 3

(Wells-Barnett 8-16). The following responses by local newspapers

illustrate how the audience that would perpetuate these

contentions - her most hostile audience - would be more likely to

threaten her life than to consider her arguments. The Daily

Commercial retorted,

Those negroes who are attempting to make the lynching of

individuals of their race a means for arousing the

worst passions of their kind are playing with a

dangerous sentiment. The negroes may as well understand that

there is no mercy for the negro rapist and little

patience with his defenders. The fact that a black

scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and

repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the

wonderful patience of Southern whites. ("Ida B. Wells").

Additional comments were added by another publication, The Evening

Scimitar:

Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the

negroes themselves do not apply the remedy without

delay it will be the duty of those whom he has

attacked to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies to a

1.3 Bullock 4

stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts.,

brand him in the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him

a surgical operation with a pair of tailor's shears

("Ida B. Wells").

By simply restating that blacks rape white women and that

people who say otherwise should be murdered, it seems apparent

that these authors would be unconcerned with substantially

addressing Wells-Barnett’s arguments from A Red Record, released

only three years later. Either they sincerely believed that the

black rape of white women was truly a serious epidemic, or they

knowingly employed that rationale as a cover for another

motivation behind lynching. This contrast between the outrage

towards Wells-Barnett back then and today’s scholarly admiration

for her work prompts my central question: why did some audiences

dismiss or react negatively to Wells-Barnett’s seemingly well-

founded argument against lynching in the United States?

Possible explanations can be explored through a close

analysis of A Red Record and Wells-Barnett’s opposition,

interpreted through the rhetorical concepts of case construction

and stock issues. This analysis should answer questions such as:

1.3 Bullock 5

does Wells-Barnett’s case against lynching fall short as a

convincing, rational effort towards race equality? And were the

disagreements with Wells-Barnett’s case based on the merit of her

ideas, or on something else?

Wells-Barnett’s famous case against the “Lynch Law” is a

prime example of an Affirmative Needs Case. Her writing

establishes the unacceptable status quo by illustrating the

horrifying ills of lynching, as well as the larger ill of

allowing the established law to be circumvented with impunity.

She attributes the blame for these ills to specific groups and

social institutions, and then offers a workable solution to the

problem of lynching. Finally, Wells-Barnett argues that the

problem of lynching is structurally inherent in society (from the

“blame” section in Jasinski’s Stock Issues entry).

Four lynchings out of Wells-Barnett’s dozens of expositions

adequately summarize the ills present in the status quo she

argues against, namely thievery, murder, torture, and the

corrosion of the law’s power to enforce justice. The first

example is the murder of Hamp Biscoe, his wife and one of his

children. Following a property dispute, Biscoe and his family

1.3 Bullock 6

were arrested, only to be met by a mob of “perhaps twelve or

fifteen men” that night and killed (Wells-Barnett 26). Biscoe’s

thirteen-year old son recounted the shooting, stating

when they came in and shot [my] father, [I] attempted to run

out of the doors and a young man shot [me] in the

bowels and I fell. [I] saw another man shoot [my]

mother and a taller young man...shoot [my] father. After

they had killed them, the young man who had shot

[my] mother pulled off her stockings and took

$220...she had hid there. (Wells-Barnett 27)

Murder as well as thievery transpired in this lynching, and those

responsible “have never been arrested” (Wells-Barnett 28).

The second lynching is the torture and death of Henry Smith

in Paris, Texas, who was unscrupulously accused of assaulting and

murdering a little girl (Wells-Barnett 29). The emphasis on its

ghastly cruelty create revulsion and incredulity in the reader,

crucial for their acceptance of Wells-Barnett’s need to change

the status quo.

Every groan from the fiend, every contortion of his body was

cheered by the thickly packed crowd of 10,000

1.3 Bullock 7

persons...After burning the feet and legs, the hot

irons -- plenty of fresh ones at hand -- were rolled up

and down Smith’s stomach, back and arms. Then

the eyes were burnt out and irons were thrust down

his throat. (Wells-Barnett 34)

Although some blacks that were lynched had committed a crime, the

persecution of innocent blacks such as Meredith Lewis also

happened. In 1894, “Lewis was arrested...[and] found...not guilty

of the crime of murder wherewith he stood charged” (Wells-Barnett

41). But regardless of the decision rendered, Meredith was

“seized and...hanged by the neck for the murder of a women of

which a jury had said he was innocent” (Wells-Barnett 42).

Another lynching of an innocent man demonstrated the mob’s

ability to literally overpower the law. In Roanoke, Virginia, a

confrontation erupted between state troops and a lynch mob over a

man named Smith. Smith was held and guarded by a “military

company...under orders to protect the prisoner whose life the mob

so eagerly sought” (Wells-Barnett 53). Before long, “a crowd of

excited men made a rush for...the jail...[and] the

company...poured a volley of bullets into...the mob” (Wells-

1.3 Bullock 8

Barnett 53). As the crowd regrouped to “wreak vengeance upon

them,” both the soldiers and the mayor fled the city, and left

Smith indefensible to the mob (Wells-Barnett 54).

As a local paper described, “a squad of twenty men took the

negro Smith from three policemen...and hanged him to a hickory

limb” (Wells-Barnett 54). The fact that a lynch mob physically

battled the state over an innocent victim and won paints Wells-

Barnett’s status quo as one that assumes itself “an absolute

supremancy [sic] over the law of the land” - meaning that

ultimately anyone is at risk, even the innocent (Wells-Barnett

24). This precedent of disregard for the law - like in the case

of Meredith Lewis and the unnamed Smith - theoretically

endangered not only blacks, but anyone who expected the law to

protect them.

Wells-Barnett also draws attention to the status quo by

making lynching a worldwide issue, and one that blemishes the

United States’ image in the eyes of the world. Wells-Barnett

writes, “Lynching is no longer ‘Our Problem,’ it is the problem

of the civilized world” (Wells Barnett 83). By expanding the

issue of lynching to the world, Wells-Barnett adds scrutinizing

1.3 Bullock 9

pressure by viewers that are too “civilized” to share the same

violent tendencies as America: “the entire American people now

feel, both North and South, that they are objects in the gaze of

the civilized world and that for every lynching humanity asks

that America render its account to civilization and itself”

(Wells Barnett 81). The ills introduced by Wells-Barnett’s gritty

accounts of Southern lynchings and her appeal to the larger world

both work to establish the status quo as one that is

unsustainable for a democratic country that claims to value human

dignity and justice.

For the ills of the status quo previously discussed, Wells-

Barnett does not hesitate to place blame on the shoulders of

overzealous citizens, complicit police enforcement and authority

figures, and a lack of national attention, all predicated by a

system of white domination. In doing so, Wells-Barnett also

attributes structural inherency to the causes of lynching.

Many of Wells-Barnett’s accounts of Southern lynchings

feature a group of these citizens who take it upon themselves to

administer their own justice to blacks. However, in a smaller

number of these incidents the law enforcement acted in collusion

1.3 Bullock 10

with the mobs, either by turning a blind eye, delivering the

victim(s), or by taking part in the murder all the same.

Such was the case of Roselius Julian, who after escaping a

mob, prompted his “mother, three brothers and two sisters...[to

be] arrested...by the police and taken to...jail...because of the

belief that they were succoring the fugitive.” Later, a group of

twenty-five men hung all three brothers, along with a fourth

completely unrelated stranger (Wells-Barnett 38-39). Another

instance of police collusion involves the case of “CJ Miller...

[who] was given to a mob by this sheriff at Sikeston, who knew

that the prisoner’s life depended on one man’s word.” Miller was

hung by a log chain the next day. (Wells-Barnett 48) A third

conspiracy involved the massacre of six blacks that police

officers had “chained together...in a wagon and deliberately

driven into an ambush...of lynchers. At the...chosen spot...the

wagon was halted and the mob fired upon the six manacled men,

shooting them to death...” (Wells-Barnett 81-82)

In an especially grotesque case of collaboration between

authority figures and lawless mobs, the governor of South

Carolina condemned John Peterson -- a man who had fled to him for

1.3 Bullock 11

protection -- to die by a mob. Wells-Barnett writes, “Governor

Tillman, who had during his canvass for re-election...declared

that he would lead a mob to lynch a Negro that assaulted a white

woman, gave Peterson up to the mob...and he was hung, and his

body riddled with 1,000 bullets” (Wells-Barnett 73).

Beyond noting the failure of authorities to protect victims

of lynching, Wells-Barnett blames the lack of national attention

for perpetuating the violence:

No matter how heinous the act of the lynchers may have been,

it was discussed only for a day or so and then

dismissed from the attention of the public. In one of two

instances the governor has called attention to the

crime, but the civil processes entirely failed to bring

the murderers to justice. (Wells-Barnett 81)

Commenting on the failure of the “civil processes” to prosecute

the mobs, Wells-Barnett criticizes the justice system for its

structural inequality bent in favor of white domination:

The entire system of the judiciary of this country is in the

hands of white people. To this add the fact of the

1.3 Bullock 12

inherent prejudice against colored people, and it will be

clearly seen

that a white jury is certain to find a Negro prisoner

guilty, if there is the least evidence to warrant such a

finding. (Wells-Barnett 41)

These two quotes, as well as the documented conspiracies between

the law enforcement and lawless mobs, give form to Wells-

Barnett’s argument of structural inherency in the problem of

lynching. The evidence that Wells-Barnett has amassed exposes not

only the vile nature of the lynchings themselves, but their

corruption of the justice system designed to protect all

citizens.

Wells-Barnett concludes with a simple, yet seemingly

revolutionary call to action. Aptly titled “The Remedy,” all that

Wells-Barnett asks of of America is that all citizens receive “a

fair trial by law for those accused of crime, and punishment by

law after honest conviction. No maudlin sympathy for criminals is

solicited, but we do ask that the law shall punish all alike”

(Wells-Barnett 107). With this request, both the solvency and the

workability of her case are spoken for, under the two assumptions

1.3 Bullock 13

that the United States indeed has a system of law, and that it

can take punitive power from the mobs. Interestingly, Wells-

Barnett’s solution is almost overshadowed by the immediate

realization that the ability to end the horror of lynching sits

so easily within the power of the United States government to

enforce.

A Red Record has all the qualities of a well-argued and

balanced Affirmative Case. Wells-Barnett shows the status quo,

argues for the need to remedy its ills, attributes the blame for

said ills, and then offers a solution. Its overall message is

based upon compassion and fairness, with no real negative

consequences apparent in its implementation. Is it irrefutable?

Perhaps not by an argument of white domination and social

inequality. But given the modern praise of her style and

influence, can the quality of her arguments be a reason why it

was dismissed by so many 19th century readers? I say no. In that

case, what else can explain the ineffectiveness of A Red Record to

certain audiences?

First, it’s important to identify the specific audiences

that took issue with Wells-Barnett’s case against lynching, and

1.3 Bullock 14

the staunchest critics of Wells-Barnett were unsurprisingly

white. That is not to say that all or even most whites disagreed

or spoke out against Wells-Barnett, but given the historical

context, being white was a reliable predictor of vocal opposition

against any advancement for blacks, or conversely, the

condemnation of white oppression. But what was it that white

people perceived that rationalized their fears and actions

against the social enhancement of blacks?

Some of the first ideas that appear in A Red Record that

Wells-Barnett poses are rebuttals to the three specific arguments

mentioned earlier that whites offered for their treatment of

blacks, these being “race riots”, “Negro domination”, and the

rampant rape of white women. Wells-Barnett argues that each one

is an excuse, made to portray the uprising of blacks as a

significant threat to order and civility, and that all three

excuses reflect a desire to repress free blacks in the wake of

Emancipation (Wells-Barnett 8-16).

With blacks newly liberated from slavery, the fear that

their freedom would manifest into disorderly “race riots” was the

first justification for violence against blacks. Wells-Barnett

1.3 Bullock 15

refutes this argument by demonstrating, “No insurrection ever

materialized; no Negro rioter was ever apprehended and proven

guilty, and no dynamite ever recorded the black man’s protest

against oppression and wrong” (Wells-Barnett 9). And yet, the

nonexistence of these riots did nothing to prevent “hundreds of

colored men and women [from being] mercilessly

murdered...the...invariable reason assigned was that they met

their death by being alleged participants in an insurrection or

riot” (Wells-Barnett 9). Eventually, Wells-Barnett suggests, the

lack of any riots to show for moved Southerners to create a new

threat.

Following Reconstruction, blacks were given the right to

vote, which to some signaled the impending advent of “Negro

domination”. This was the second pretext which resulted in

“countless massacres of defenseless Negroes, whose only crime was

the attempt to exercise their right to vote” (Wells-Barnett 10).

Needless to say, the danger of voting left blacks “voiceless in

the councils of those whose duty it was to rule,” and the

prevention of “Negro domination” was complete, exhausting the

second threat to established order (Wells-Barnett 10).

1.3 Bullock 16

The last, and most indicting charge brought upon blacks, was

that they were serial rapists, and a menace to white women

everywhere. Wells-Barnett considers this the most insidious of

the three, as there was “no possible excuse more harmful to the

Negro and more unanswerable if true in its sufficiency for the

white man” (Wells-Barnett 11). In addition to maintaining that

this accusation was the most damning, she considered it to be the

most demonstrably false. There are four aspects to her rebuttal:

1) Southerners considered it “impossible for a voluntary

alliance to exist between a white woman and a colored man, and

therefore, the fact of an alliance is a proof of force” (Wells-

Barnett 12).

2) No trend of rape occurred when white men left their women

and children at home to fight in the Civil War: “While the

master was away fighting to forge the fetters upon the slave,

he left his wife and children with no protectors save the

Negroes themselves. And yet during those years of trust and

peril, no Negro proved recreant to his trust and no white man

returned to a home that had been despoiled” (Wells-Barnett 13).

1.3 Bullock 17

3) No trend of rape occurred during the period of alleged “race

riots” and “Negro domination”: “Likewise during the period of

alleged ‘insurrection,’ and alarming ‘race riots,’ it never

occurred to the white man, that his wife and children were in

danger of assault. Nor in the...‘Negro Domination’ was there

any thought that the domination would...strike to death the

virtue of womanhood” (Wells-Barnett 13).

4) When white men claimed to “be the most sensitive concerning

the honor of their women -- their mothers, wives, sisters, and

daughters”, they apparently didn’t mean the white women who

became teachers and missionaries for the benefit of newly freed

blacks (Wells-Barnett 13): “No chivalrous white man doffed his

hat in honor or respect. They were ‘Nigger teachers’ --

unpardonable offenders in the social ethics of the South, and

were insulted, persecuted and ostracized, not by Negroes, but

by the white manhood which boasts of its chivalry toward women”

(Wells-Barnett 15).

In addition, Wells-Barnett includes instances of rape of

colored women by white men who were often acquitted or at least

not lynched (Wells-Barnett 76-79). Her first example cites an

1.3 Bullock 18

incident in Baltimore, Maryland where “a gang of white ruffians

assaulted a respectable colored girl who was out walking with a

young man of her own race...the case went to the courts and they

were acquitted” (Wells-Barnett 77). One rapist went on to hold a

position in law enforcement even after being convicted: “There

was a white man, Pat Hanifan, who outraged a little colored

girl...He was jailed for six months, discharged, and is now a

detective in that city” (Wells-Barnett 77). Overall, Wells-

Barnett’s thorough rebuttals succeeded in exposing the shallow

pretenses for black suppression, and provide rigorous support for

her already powerful case.

Judging from the nature of the three major arguments for

black suppression, and the newspaper reactions to Wells-Barnett’s

statement, I don’t think we can conclude that defenders of

lynching valued nothing more than maintaining social order, or

female health. While that may be what they say, the collective

results of their claims against blacks show warrantless strife,

persecution, and death in every instance. These events severely

disrupted social order, and definitely damaged female health when

a colored woman was involved. And as Wells-Barnett has shown,

1.3 Bullock 19

these claims were literally fabricated in order to create a

threat that justified retaliation. If these are truly the lines

along which the critics of Wells-Barnett thought and acted, what

does this say about the negative audience of Wells-Barnett’s work

in general?

I think it says that they shared an attitudinally inherent

set of values that didn’t conform to evidence, but rather

appealed to the desire to dominate other human beings, black or

white, man or woman. As pro-slavery, pro-lynching, anti-civil

rights, and later anti-integration advocates throughout the 18th

and 19th century, these people seemed concerned only with

maintaining rights that they deprived others of, and pursued this

with the vigor of a moral obligation. But the modern praise for

A Red Record, as well as the absence of lynching in America today,

both indicate a shift in values that reveals a silhouette of

overt racism and bigotry left behind by this group and their

attitudes.

Of course, it is entirely possible that none of these are

the proper answer as to why Wells-Barnett’s A Red Record was not

accepted by some readers. However, if the true reason(s) for this

1.3 Bullock 20

could be inferred, the one exception to this inference that

remains is the merit of Wells-Barnett’s case itself. For an

audience that valued compassion and evidence, and who did not

indulge the attitudes of human domination, malice, and

selfishness inherent to other groups, the affirmative

construction of A Red Record was not a rhetorical device that led

to its abandonment by some members of the readership. For Wells-

Barnett’s critics, it was the experience of having their values

confronted by stark evidence, and presented in assertive prose

that made them reject her words.

1.3 Bullock 21

Works Cited

Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. "Style and Content in the Rhetoric of

Early Afro-American Feminists." The Quarterly Journal of

Speech 72.4 (1986): 434-445. MLA International

Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 05 Nov. 2012.

DeCosta-Willis, Miriam. "Ida B. Wells." The Concise Oxford Companion

to African American Literature. Oxford University Press, Inc.,

2001, 2002. Answers.com. Web. 05 Nov. 2012.

"Ida B. Wells." Wikipedia. Web. 30 Sep 2012.

1.3 Bullock 22

Wells-Barnett, Ida B. A Red Record. Chicago: Donohue &

Henneberry, 1895. Print. 06 Nov. 2012.

Works Consulted

Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. "Style and Content in the Rhetoric of

Early Afro-American Feminists." The Quarterly Journal of

1.3 Bullock 23

Speech 72.4 (1986): 434-445. MLA International

Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 05 Nov. 2012.

"Cognitive Dissonance." Web. 1 Oct 2012.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Cognitive_dissonance

DeCosta-Willis, Miriam. "Ida B. Wells." The Concise Oxford Companion

to African American Literature. Oxford University Press, Inc.,

2001, 2002. Answers.com. 05 Nov. 2012.

“Ida B. Wells." Wikipedia. Web. 30 Sep 2012.

Jasinski, J. Sourcebook on rhetoric. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2001.

Print.

Schechter, Patricia. "Ida B. Wells." http://dig.lib.niu.edu/.

Portland State University, 2007. Web. 19 Sep 2012.

<http://dig.lib.niu.edu/gildedage/idabwells/pamphlets.html>.

Wells-Barnett, Ida B. A Red Record. Chicago: Donohue &

Henneberry, 1895. Print. 06 Nov. 2012.

"Wells-Barnett, Ida B. - Introduction." Twentieth-Century

Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec Project Editor. Vol.

125. Gale Cengage, 2003. eNotes.com. 19 Sep, 2012

1.3 Bullock 24

<http://

www.enotes.com/ida-b-wells-barnett-criticism/wells-barnett-

ida-b/introduction>