SOURCE: Boyd, Melba Joyce. “Canon Configuration for Ida B. Wells-Barnett.” Black Scholar 24, no. 1 (winter 1994): 8-13.

In the following essay, Boyd reviews two books and one film which have helped to revive interest in Wells-Barnett's life and works.

One hundred and one years ago, the Worlds Congress of Representative Women, a black women's organization, was founded in order for black Americans to levy some representation at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. As a response to another blatant act of racial discrimination, F. L. Barnett, J. Garland Penn, Frederick Douglass, and Ida B. Wells wrote and published The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition. The introduction was translated into French and German, and the pamphlet was distributed to patrons of the exposition.

“Lynch Law” by Ida B. Wells was included in the pamphlet, an essay that explains the racist psychology of American society...