How did Ida B. Wells dispute the popular view of lynching?

In parts of the country where lynching was common (particularly the South) the practice was often justified on a number of grounds. The most common of these was that lynching was a necessary means of preventing sex crimes carried out by black men against white women. Over time, a disturbing narrative had taken hold of the  consciousness of white America, one in which old-fashioned ideas of womanly virtue were combined with racist hysteria.

It was widely believed that respectable white women were in constant danger of having their honor violated by the insatiable sexual urges of savage black men. Lynching, it was held, was a trusted, time-honored method of keeping those urges in check. The prevailing prejudice was that any kind of racial mixture would be disastrous, leading to the impurity of the white race and the undermining of the dominant culture.

However, it was not just the yellow press or white supremacist politicians who used this spurious justification for acts of racist murder; it was also widely believed by scientists who used what are now considered pseudoscientific theories to back up the prevailing prejudice that black people were racially inferior.

Against this background, the tireless crusading of Ida B. Wells-Barnett is especially important. She went right to the heart of the matter, cutting through all the various justifications for lynching used by its apologists to get at the truth. She disputes the all-too popular view of lynching by appealing to facts, morality, and the rule of law.

In her speech to the National Negro Conference in 1909, Wells-Barnett meticulously sets out the statistics for lynching throughout the whole of the United States. In doing so, she ably demonstrates that there is no link whatsoever between the lynching of black men and the protection of white womanhood. In fact, as she points out, the vast majority of lynchings occurred for no discernible reason. The implication is that they were little more than violent eruptions of racial hate; crude, barbarous attempts to maintain white supremacy.

The practice of lynching is not just inherently wrong, it also undermined respect for the law. It is to the law that we must turn, she insists, to stem the rising tide of racial hatred. However, this cannot be a matter for the states. Many state authorities, especially those in the South, not only ignored lynching but actively condoned it. White supremacist governors and state legislators simply could not be trusted to put an end to this barbaric practice. Federal laws were needed to protect the civil rights of African Americans. Lynching was no longer just a regional problem; it was a national problem, and, as a result, it had to be dealt with on a national basis by the United States government.