Ida B. Wells Launches Anti-Lynching Crusade

After the lynching of her friend Thomas Moss in Memphis, journalist Ida B. Wells began a systematic investigation into lynching across the South, publishing 'Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.' Her meticulous documentation demolished the myth that lynching was punishment for crime, exposing it as a tool of racial terror. Wells's campaign made her the foremost anti-lynching activist of the era and laid the groundwork for decades of civil rights advocacy.