Black woman reformer

During the early 1890s, a series of shocking lynchings brought unprecedented international attentionto racially motivated American mob violence. This interest created an opportunity for Ida B. Wells, an African American journalist and civil rights activist from Memphis, to travel to England to cultivate British moral indignation against American lynching. Wells adapted race and gender roles established by African American abolitionists in Britain to legitimate her activism as a "black lady reformer" - a role American society denied her - and to assert her right to defend her race from abroad. Black Woman Reformer by Sarah Silkey explores Wells's 1893-94 antilynching campaigns within the broader contexts of nineteenth-century transatlantic reform networks and debates about the role of extralegal violence in American society. Through her speaking engagements, newspaper interviews, and the efforts of her British allies, Wells altered the framework of public debates of lynching in both Britain and the United States. As British criticism of lynching mounted, southern political leaders desperate to maintain positive relations with choose weather to publicly defend or decry lynching. Although British moral pressure and media attention did not end lynching, the international scrutiny generated by Well's campaigns transformed our understanding of racial violence and made American communities increasingly reluctant to embrace lynching. -- from dust jacket.