Public-domain ebook
Language: en4,607 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Crime Nonfiction·African American Writers·History - American
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #14977.
Ida B. Wells‑Barnett’s The Red Record is a meticulously compiled statistical expose that documents the brutal reality of lynching in the United States during the post‑Reconstruction era. The work opens with a fervent thank‑you to a correspondent for a “faithful paper on the lynch abomination,” framing the book as a response to contemporary testimony and evidence. From the outset, Wells‑Barnett presents a series of numbered chapters that promise a systematic analysis, ranging from raw figures on lynch‑law statistics to case studies of alleged crimes such as rape, while interweaving a broader historical narrative that traces the evolution of white violence from slavery through emancipation, Reconstruction, and the rise of racially motivated murder. The introductory passage asserts that over ten thousand Black lives were taken without trial, and that only three white perpetrators faced execution, establishing the book’s purpose as both a record of atrocities and a moral indictment of a society that permits them.
Written in the impassioned, polemical style of late‑19th‑century activist journalism, the text combines rigorous data collection with vivid moral argumentation. Wells‑Barnett’s voice is unflinching and direct, employing a blend of factual enumeration and rhetorical urgency that reflects the period’s reformist literature. Readers with an interest in African‑American history, the sociology of racial violence, or the origins of civil‑rights advocacy will find this work compelling. Scholars of American legal history, gender studies, and those exploring the roots of systemic injustice will appreciate the book’s detailed tables and its relentless challenge to the prevailing narratives of its time.
The opening · free to read
Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity, and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.
Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If the American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half Christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame, and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.
But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and Heaven--yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the power of a merciful God for final deliverance.
Very truly and gratefully yours, FREDERICK DOUGLASS Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C.
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