Wells and DuBois

Essay by harrisddUniversity, Bachelor'sA, August 2014

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Africans Americans had gone through a rough uphill battle for their equal rights. After being freed, African Americans believed there was only moving up from there but sadly that was not the case. The reconstruction seemed to promise integration with the race that oppressed them for hundreds of years. This integration did not happen and it seemed that problems of African Americans had only increased. During the 19th century it took the determination and voices of African American leaders such as Ida Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois to bring about the change that African Americans. They both were influential leaders that each forged their own way to continue their own way of improving African Americans lifestyle and bringing about harmony between races that have never been on the same page.

Ida B. Wells emerged in the 1890s and was the leading the voice standing against the lynching of African Americans.

Her reasoning for joining this cause was the lynching of three of her friends, who were accused of raping three white women. Ida Wells owned an editorial in a newspaper called Memphis free speech and with it she spread the word of anti-lynching in America. In "Lynching Law in America" she declared lynching as a national crime and that the country contributed to this issue and that they need to take responsibility for this horrific crime. It all started in the west where there was no law to protect anyone. "The thief who stole a horse, the bully who "jumped" a claim, was a common enemy. If caught he was promptly tried, and if found guilty was hanged to the tree under which the court convened" (Lynch Law in America, Wells). This mentality was spread to the south, where it became the "unwritten law" in which people spoke of taking...