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Running head: THE WORK-WELLS LEGACY

The Work-Wells Legacy: Lynching Quantified
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THE WORK-WELLS LEGACY

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Lynching can be defined as a type of ferocity whereby one group undertakes public
execution without a trial by the pretext that they are administering justice (Smangs, 2017). The
extrajudicial killings are often targeted towards black people who are the presumed offenders.
The purpose of lynching is to punished the presumed or a convicted transgressor and to
intimidate them. Notably, lynching can also be an extreme way of social control for informal
groups whereby the punishment is displayed to the public to intimidate the group. For instance,
the transgressor can be hanged in front of a group.
The start of lynching in America was at the beginning of the 1830s and became a
widespread occurrence until the 1960s during the civil rights movement era (Hilk, 2021).
Initially, the white Southerners were predominantly the first victims of lynching but after the
American Civil war, about four million imprisoned African-Americans became the main targets
of lynching. This was during the reconstruction era. The effects of lynching were the
terrorization of the black community that allowed the white people to maintain control.
Ida B. Wells, a black journalist, is known for leading an antilynching crusade during the
1890s. She was the first writer to report lynching before Monroe would publish his National
work counts twenty years later. During the reconstruction era, Wells utilized existing news
stories and first-hand investigation to reveal lynching truths. Wells published lynching reports
about lynching, such as the Lynch Law in Georgia, driven by her three friends' demise in
Tennesse, which brought forth international awareness about the weight of the matter (Cook et
al., 2018). Her fearless efforts to expose the extrajudicial kill...