Ida B. WellsBarnett

During the early decades of the twentieth century, Ida B. Wells-Barnett became involved with several issues that affected the lives of her fellow black citizens. The issue that received most of her attention was lynching—the execution without trial of black citizens accused of serious crimes. She became a tireless speaker and writer on this issue, meeting with and petitioning politicians to prevent an atrocity that took the lives of thousands of innocent blacks during the first three decades of the twentieth century. In this excerpt from her posthumously published life story, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, Wells-Barnett describes her successful effort to remove from office the sheriff of Cairo, Illinois, for not preventing a lynching in his district.

Directly after the Springfield riot, at the next session of the legislature, a law...