The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States

“Not all nor nearly all of the murders done by white men, during the past thirty years in the South, have come to light, but the statistics as gathered and preserved by white men, and which have not been questioned, show that during these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution.”

Wells explains her methodology for her text, which includes using the testimonies of white men to explore this hypocrisy and the criminality of lynchings. She establishes that her sources are white newspapers and testimonies, which creates ethos in the text; she is citing sources her audience will find reliable. Finally, she explains her project: She is proving that lynch mobs enact murder, not justice.

“In considering the third reason assigned by the Southern white people for the butchery of blacks, the question must be asked, what the white man means when he charges the black man with rape. Does he mean the crime which the statutes of the civilized states describe as such? Not by any means.”

In this passage, Wells outlines three excuses used by white people to justify racist violence. The last excuse proves to be the most viable; white supremacists perpetuate a myth that Black men are a danger to white women. Most of the lynchings Wells discovers in public records are attributed to rape, but she challenges the meaning of the word in these cases, creating doubt by using a hypothetical question. By digging into how the term “rape” is applied in lynching cases, Wells uses Research and Testimony as Activism. Many might believe that rape is a justifiable cause for lynching, but Wells uncovers how the term is applied to any relationship between a Black man and a white woman, including both consensual and non-sexual encounters.