The Red Record by Ida B. Wells

The statistics as gathered and preserved by white men, and which have not been questioned, show that during these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution. And yet, as evidence of the absolute impunity with which the white man dares to kill a Negro, the same record shows that during all these years, and for all these murders only three white men have been tried, convicted, and executed.

I'm not sure if this is really a book. It's less than 100 pages long and the last chapter is guidance on how to distribute the work. But I doubt anyone reading it is going to be itching for more by the time they reach the end.

The Red Record was written by Ida B. Wells in the late 1800s as part of her crusade against the lynchings of black men, women, and children that were taking place across the US in the aftermath of the Civil War and emancipation. And the numbers are indeed staggering--at least 10,000 by the records available, a number which is certainly missing many of the murders that were committed with no fanfare.

Most of the content is statistics and then expansion on those numbers. The chapters have names like "Lynching of Innocent Men" and "Lynched for Anything or Nothing". They open with breakdowns of lynchings for various "crimes":

INCENDIARISM
Jan. 26, Patrick Wells, Quincy, Fla.; Feb. 9, Frank Harrell, Dickery, Miss.; Feb. 9, William Filder, Dickery, Miss. 

ATTEMPTED RAPE
Feb. 21, Richard Mays, Springville, Mo.; Aug. 14, Dug Hazleton, Carrollton, Ga.; Sept. 1, Judge McNeil, Cadiz, Ky.; Sept. 11, Frank Smith, Newton, Miss.; Sept. 16, William Jackson, Nevada, Mo.; Sept. 19, Riley Gulley, Pine Apple, Ala.; Oct. 9, John Davis, Shorterville, Ala.; Nov. 8, Robert Kennedy, Spartansburg, S.C.

After the statistics, Wells includes firsthand accounts by participants in the lynchings, white reporters and, in a couple instances, herself. These recountings are stomach-churning: shootings (shooting corpses with literally hundreds of bullets was a popular activity), hangings, rapes, mutilations, torture, branding, decapitation, and I could go on. And some of these accounts do, telling the stories of the victims who weren't given a chance to speak for themselves. And Wells doesn't play for cheap sympathy. Whether lynching is for no reason, or because "someone has to hang", or suspicion of actual crimes, she consistently says the same thing: that Black people are entitled to the same due processes as white people. The number of people in these stories that were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time is staggering, as is the number of police, judges, mayors, and governors who either turn a blind eye or are actively involved in the lynchings.

I'm hesitant to include the most horrific excerpts here, since it's so easy for recounting violence against black bodies to turn into pornographic spectacle, but here's an example:

He said when they came in and shot his father, he attempted to run out of doors and a young man shot him in the bowels and that he fell. He saw another man shoot his mother and a taller young man, whom he did not know, shoot his father. After they had killed them, the young man who had shot his mother pulled off her stockings and took $220 in currency that she had hid there. The men then came to the door where the boy was lying and one of them turned him over and put his pistol to his breast and shot him again. This is the story the dying boy told as near as I can get it.

Of course, it's impossible to read Wells' work at this time in history, when protests are still happening across the US in response to George Floyd's murder by the police, and when all of us can run off a list of 25 lynchings that we watched happen on camera, often at the hands of law enforcement. Much faster to list the names of those held accountable for their crimes. And the penultimate chapter, which recounts issues Wells had when presenting her case to various women's organizations shows how little the responses of white people have changed, as person after person passes the buck ("not our fault"), feigns offense at being lumped in with those who are ACTUALLY complicit, and both-sides lynching with, say, Prohibition. It's a depressing, upsetting read. Inspiring that Wells was able to do the work she did to end 1890s-style lynching; depressing to see how racism and hatred have morphed into the racially-motivated violence we still see daily. The Red Record captures a moment Wells tried to bring to an end. Sadly, it often seems like we're still living in it.