MAY 21, 1892

Crusading journalist Ida B. Wells published a column exposing the lynchings of African-American men and denouncing claims that the lynchings were meant to protect white women.

Her anti-lynching campaign came after a mob killed three of her friends, who had reportedly opened a grocery store that competed with a white-owned store in Memphis.

Upset by Wells' writings, a white mob destroyed her presses and threatened to kill her if she ever published again. She left Memphis for Chicago, but she continued to expose lynchings, calling for national legislation to make lynching a crime.

In 1898, she took her protest to the White House.

“Nowhere in the civilized world save the United States of America do men, possessing all civil and political power, go out in bands of 50 and 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hang or burn to death a single individual, unarmed and absolutely powerless,” she wrote. “We refuse to believe this country, so powerful to defend its citizens abroad, is unable to protect its citizens at home.”

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, which opened in 2018, features a reflection space in honor of her.

Congress finally passed an anti-lyncing law in the 2021-22 session. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act defines lynching as a federal hate crime.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

MAY 20, 1961

A white mob of more than 300, including Klansmen, attacked Freedom Riders at the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Alabama. Future Congressman John Lewis was among them. 

“An angry mob came out of nowhere, hundreds of people, with bricks and balls, chains,” Lewis recalled. 

After beating on the riders, the mob turned on reporters and then Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who was beaten unconscious and left in the street after helping two riders. 

“Then they turned on my colleagues and started beating us and beat us so severely, we were left bloodied and unconscious in the streets of Montgomery,” Lewis recalled. 

As the mob headed his way, Freedom Rider James Zwerg said he asked for God to be with him, and “I felt absolutely surrounded by love. I knew that whether I lived or died, I was going to be OK.” 

The mob beat him so badly that his suit was soaked in blood. 

“There was nothing particularly heroic in what I did,” he said. “If you want to talk about heroism, consider the Black man who probably saved my life. This man in coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said ‘Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital.” 

To quell the violence, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent in 450 federal marshals.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Edward Ellington talks with Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender about former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy's speech at the University of Mississippi less than four years after the riots that occurred after the integration of the school. Ellington, who at the time headed the Ole Miss Speaker's Bureau as a law school student, recalls the controversy leading up to the speech.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.