Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Mob Rule in New Orleans is Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s searing investigative account of the 1900 lynching of Robert Charles and the violent wave of racial terror that swept across New Orleans in its aftermath.

The bloodiest week New Orleans has known since the massacre of the Italians in 1892 was ushered in Monday, July 24 by the inexcusable and unprovoked assault upon two colored men by police officers of New Orleans....

In 1892, investigative journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett published a pamphlet with unflinching and honest descriptions of the cruelties being enacted against Black Americans in the South by their White neighbors....

On a New Orleans morning in 1900, a young Black man named Robert Charles dared to fight back after an unprovoked assault by three white officers. The officers had first approached Charles on the grounds that he looked “suspicious” in a predominantly white neighborhood....

In the United States at the turn of the nineteenth century, crusading African American journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett bravely reported on the scourge of white supremacist violence that had personally impacted her own life and work. Her reporting exposed and riled the South....