The Red Record is an 1895 pamphlet by Ida B. Wells-Barnett. It presents statistics and testimony about lynching in the United States and scrutinizes the stated justifications for it. It is valuable as a historical record and a work of anti-lynching advocacy.
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Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States By Ida B. Wells-Barnett 1895 [Transcriber's Note: This pamphlet was first published in 1895 but was subsequently reprinted. It's not apparent if the curiosities in spelling date back to the original or were introduced later; they have been retained as found, and the reader is left to decide. Please verify with another source before quoting this material.] PREFACE HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS'S LETTER DEAR MISS WELLS: Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool,
painstaking fidelity, and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves. Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If the American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half Christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame, and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read. But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and Heaven—yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the power of a merciful God for final deliverance. Very truly and gratefully yours, FREDERICK DOUGLASS Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C. CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 The Case Stated CHAPTER 2 Lynch-Law Statistics CHAPTER 3 Lynching Imbeciles CHAPTER 4 Lynching of Innocent Men CHAPTER 5 Lynched for Anything or Nothing CHAPTER 6 History of Some Cases of Rape
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