Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Simone W. Davis

Critical Essay by Simone W. Davis

SOURCE: Davis, Simone W. “The ‘Weak Race’ and the Winchester: Political Voices in the Pamphlets of Ida B. Wells-Barnett.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 12, no. 2 (1995): 77-97.

In the following essay, Davis examines the anti-lynching activities of Ida B. Wells-Barnett through the texts of Wells-Barnett's anti-lynching pamphlets, Southern Horrors and A Red Record.

In her powerful anti-lynching pamphlets of the 1890s, Black activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) taught her contemporaries how to read politically. Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases and A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States, 1892-1893-1894 each present a savvy, ultimately challenging manipulation and exposé of the dominant ideologies enmeshing then-contemporary race, class, and gender issues. Throughout, Wells-Barnett instructs her readers about the shaping power of printed words, both her own and those of her opponents in the Southern press. Collaging a great patchwork...
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