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During the 1890s, Ida Wells-Barnett began documenting lynching in the United States. Her findings, which were based on frequent claims that lynchings were reserved for black criminals only, were published in articles and through her pamphlet called Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases. Wells exposed lynching as a barbaric practice of whites in the South used to intimidate and oppress African Americans who created economic and political competition-and a subsequent threat of loss of power-for whites. While her work contains extensive documentation of lynchings, Wells-Barnett's work is also notable for its real-time reporting on the prevalent incendiary propaganda about Black rape that was used to justify the practice. A white mob destroyed her newspaper office and presses as her investigative reporting was carried nationally in Black-owned newspapers. Subjected to continued threats, Wells left Memphis for Chicago. She married Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1895 and had a family while continuing her work writing, speaking, and organizing for civil rights and the women's movement for the rest of her life. Outspoken in her beliefs as a Black female activist, Wells-Barnett faced regular public disapproval-some of which came from other leaders within the civil rights and/or women's suffrage movements. She was active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. A skilled and persuasive speaker, Wells traveled nationally and internationally on lecture tours. In 2020, Wells was posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize special citation "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."

An important historical work, "The Red Record" is also a horrifying account of African American lynchings after the Civil War. Black Americans lost their lives for such offenses as offending a white person in some way, proposing marriage to a white woman, providing information to someone who asked, introducing smallpox, "conjuring," and/or writing a letter to a white woman. In some cases, committing no offense at all (other than being Black) was also enough to "trigger" a lynching. The pre-lynching tortures described in this book are nothing short of stomach-turning. Worst of all, lynchings were a sort of town-wide, social event that even children attended. Many of them were carried out prior to inquiries as to who actually committed the crime, and whether the crime had actually been committed in the first place. ¿After several incidents of lynching prior to judgement in which the person had been found entirely innocent, town officials would exclaim something like, "Someone had to pay for the crime." In "The Red Record," Ida Wells-Barnett provided a grim account of the multiple historic failures of justice in the United States. Although her goal was to prevent more of these travesties by educating the public about them, the practice of lynching continued into the 20th century.

My Bondage and My Freedom, by escaped slave Frederick Douglass, is a classic that should be mandatory reading for every high school student. The lessons tucked within its pages, which are honest and deep, reveal the harrowing, brutal and heart-breaking nature of slvery.A slave for the first two decades of his life, Frederick Douglass escaped the horrors of that institution through a combination of determination, luck and (most likely) divine intervention. After his escape, Douglass dedicated the rest of his life to helping with the abolition movement as he spoke throughout Britain and the U.S. against the institution of slavery.Some of the most powerful parts of this book are the records of the speeches Douglass made to the British Parliament. Speaking to Parliament members, Douglass laid out his case as to why slavery should be obliterated from the earth. The stories Douglass told, and the things he said, are nothing short of shocking-even today. The saddest part is that everything he said was true.