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Antilynching Crusader with the Family of a Lynching Victim

In 1892, Memphis, Tennessee, newspaper editor Ida B. Wells-Barnett revealed the role of local white businessmen in the lynching of three African American competitors. She is shown here standing with Betsy Moss and her two children, the widow and orphans of Memphis grocer Tom Moss, one of the murdered Black businessmen. A white mob destroyed Wells’s office, and she was forced to flee North, where her public lectures and writing brought lynchings to national attention.

Source: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf1-08643—Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Who Built America? An Open Educational Resource has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and funding from The Ford Foundation, Digital Scholar, and the City University of New York Central Office of Library Services. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Open Educational Resource, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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