Disturbed


       It is quite disturbing to sit back and take all of this in. To even picture lynching is disturbing, let alone actually having to witness it. If being there and witnessing it happen isn't disturbing enough, imagine sitting there and realizing that three of your friends being lynched. If you took a minute to try and imagine how horrific that is, you are now seeing Ida B. Wells's perspective. It took this great tragedy for Ida B. Wells to start a campaign in March of 1982 in Memphis, Tennessee. Lynching is a public murder, usually by hanging. This horrific scene is orchestrated by a mob and is not proceeded by a trial. It was pretty much like public torture, because they would torture the victim before and/or after the death of the victim in front of a public crowd. It is very humiliating and the worst part is no one was held accountable. In this specific case, there was some competition that arose that led to the lynching. The victims were entrepreneurs who opened a local grocery store that competed with a white owned store that at one point monopolized the trade within the area's black community. Of course, some racial incidents soon followed, and it resulted in some confrontation between a white mob and black grocers. The black grocers shot and wounded three men from the mob because they were barging into the store. The men were not seriously injured, but there was plenty of exaggeration. Resulting from the shooting, a large white mob of about 75-80 people, went to the jail where the three African American men were being held. The mob took charge of the three men and brutally murdered them. It is crazy to think that the mob had more power and authority than the police. It is quite easy to see how corrupt things where and why it was so necessary to start the campaign that Ida B. Wells's did.

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