Chapter Chronology

Quiz for Documenting the American Promise: “Ida B. Wells and Her Campaign to Stop Lynching”

Select the best answer for each question. Click the “submit” button for each question to turn in your work.

Question

1. Which of the following is a technique Ida B. Wells used try to raise public awareness about lynching in the South in the 1890s?

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Correct. The answer is d. Wells raised public awareness about the lynching epidemic that plagued the South in the 1890s by publishing editorials and especially pamphlets, which gave detailed descriptions of lynchings and also analyzed how black sources and white sources reported on lynchings differently. The purpose of these comparisons was to demonstrate how the white southern media was not telling the public the truth about lynching.
Incorrect. The answer is d. Wells raised public awareness about the lynching epidemic that plagued the South in the 1890s by publishing editorials and especially pamphlets, which gave detailed descriptions of lynchings and also analyzed how black sources and white sources reported on lynchings differently. The purpose of these comparisons was to demonstrate how the white southern media was not telling the public the truth about lynching.

Question

2. The fact that Ida B. Wells’s three lynched friends owned a successful grocery business illustrates how white violence in the late nineteenth century often targeted black Southerners who

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Correct. The answer is c. Wells mentions that both her three friends and Barrett—the man who lynched them—owned grocery stores in a suburb of Memphis, and that the two grocery stores were located on opposite corners. She describes her friends’ store as “a flourishing grocery business,” suggesting that Barrett was at least partially motivated by the competition between their two stores—a competition Wells’s description suggests her friends were winning. This description demonstrates how financial success could make a black Southerner a target for white violence in the decades after Reconstruction.
Incorrect. The answer is c. Wells mentions that both her three friends and Barrett—the man who lynched them—owned grocery stores in a suburb of Memphis, and that the two grocery stores were located on opposite corners. She describes her friends’ store as “a flourishing grocery business,” suggesting that Barrett was at least partially motivated by the competition between their two stores—a competition Wells’s description suggests her friends were winning. This description demonstrates how financial success could make a black Southerner a target for white violence in the decades after Reconstruction.

Question

3. When, in Ida B. Wells’s reporting, white men in the 1890s said that they had to lynch black men to teach them a lesson, for what reason did they claim such a lesson was deserved?

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Correct. The answer is a. In Wells’s editorial in the Free Press, she quoted the white men who lynched her friends: “The Negroes are getting too independent, we must teach them a lesson.” Wells argued that this “lesson” was “the lesson of subordination,” demonstrating how southern whites who committed acts of violence against black men claimed that such violence was justified because the black men were not acting subordinate toward the whites, as the whites demanded they do.
Incorrect. The answer is a. In Wells’s editorial in the Free Press, she quoted the white men who lynched her friends: “The Negroes are getting too independent, we must teach them a lesson.” Wells argued that this “lesson” was “the lesson of subordination,” demonstrating how southern whites who committed acts of violence against black men claimed that such violence was justified because the black men were not acting subordinate toward the whites, as the whites demanded they do.

Question

4. Which constitutional right did Ida B. Wells argue was being denied to black men who were victims of lynching at the turn of the twentieth century?

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Correct. The answer is d. In her pamphlet The Red Record, published in 1894, Wells argued that lynching denied black men their constitutionally guaranteed right to a trial by a jury of their peers. Instead, any black man accused of a crime could be punished with death by a lynch mob, whether he was guilty or not, and before he was ever tried.
Incorrect. The answer is d. In her pamphlet The Red Record, published in 1894, Wells argued that lynching denied black men their constitutionally guaranteed right to a trial by a jury of their peers. Instead, any black man accused of a crime could be punished with death by a lynch mob, whether he was guilty or not, and before he was ever tried.

Question

5. As Ida B. Wells argued in her reporting, how were black and white men treated differently by courts and the police in the South at the turn of the twentieth century?

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Correct. The answer is b. Wells’s pamphlet Mob Rule in New Orleans demonstrates how unequally southern law enforcement treated black and white men. White men who murdered black men during a riot in New Orleans bragged openly about their crimes, but were still not arrested. By contrast, black men who had not committed any crimes were beaten by police, jailed, and fined. Unequal justice was one brutal reality for black Southerners at the turn of the twentieth century.
Incorrect. The answer is b. Wells’s pamphlet Mob Rule in New Orleans demonstrates how unequally southern law enforcement treated black and white men. White men who murdered black men during a riot in New Orleans bragged openly about their crimes, but were still not arrested. By contrast, black men who had not committed any crimes were beaten by police, jailed, and fined. Unequal justice was one brutal reality for black Southerners at the turn of the twentieth century.