Southern Horrors

Southern Horrors is a non-fiction book published in 2009 by the American author and professor Crystal Feimster. The book examines racial and sexual violence in the South during the Jim Crow era by pairing the stories of two women--the black anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells and the white pro-lynching advocate Rebecca Felton--who both fought for women's rights, but did so in vastly different ways.

In 1862, Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, though technically she was "freed" the following year after the Emancipation Proclamation. After the Civil War ended, Wells' father, James, started a successful carpentry business and was involved in local politics supporting Republican politicians. He was also a trustee at the historically black liberal arts college, Rust College, which Ida would later attend. In 1878, James and his wife Lizzie both died of a yellow fever epidemic in Holly Springs, which Ida avoided because she was visiting her grandmother at the time.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Felton's upbringing couldn't have been more different. Born in Decatur, Georgia in 1835, Rebecca's father was a planter who owned slaves and relied on their labor to support his prospering farm. After attending Madison Female College, Rebecca married Dr. William Harrell Felton, whose plantation also relied on slave labor. When the Civil War ended and the Feltons had to make a living that didn't involve forced labor, they opened a school called the Felton Academy in Cartersville, Georgia.



In the 1880s, both women began their careers as activists. In 1884, after moving to Memphis, Wells refused to give up her seat on a train after being asked to vacate the first-class ladies car. After being forcibly removed from the train car, she successfully sued the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad and was awarded a $500 settlement. But the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision and forced Wells to pay back various court fees. Amid these events, Wells began writing in a local church newspaper called The Living Way, criticizing the racism of Jim Crow Laws. As her journalistic profile increased, Wells became increasingly focused on anti-lynching activism, particularly in the wake of the lynching of her friend Thomas Moss, a local grocer. During this time, Wells would track down and interview witnesses and family members of lynching victims. This work was instrumental in shaping modern investigative journalism.

As Wells continued her investigations, she noticed that perhaps the most commonly-cited reasons for lynching involved allegations of sexual assault toward white women. She wrote an editorial seeking to expose  "that old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women," adding, "If Southern men are not careful, a conclusion might be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women." In the wake of that editorial, someone burned down her newspaper office, and Wells left Memphis for good.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Felton became closely involved with the Women's Christian Temperance Union (an organization that Wells was also heavily involved with) in the 1880s. Both women also shared a passion for the fight for women's suffrage. But the two activist’s views diverged dramatically when it came to the subject of race and lynching. For example, Felton argued that Georgia should stop spending money on public education for black youths because it would increase crime. She also proposed an exhibit at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition "'illustrating the slave period,' with a cabin and 'real colored folks making mats, shuck collars, and baskets—a woman to spin and card cotton—and another to play banjo and show the actual life of [the] slave—not the Uncle Tom sort.'" She added that she wanted people to see "the ignorant contented darky—as distinguished from Harriet Beecher Stowe's monstrosities."



On the topic of lynching, many of Felton's statements suggest a strong preference for lynching when there is even the slightest suggestion that a white woman may have been raped. In 1899, for example, Sam Hose was mutilated and killed by a white mob, even though there was no evidence to suggest he had raped anybody. Of Hose, Felton said she had less sympathy for him than she would for a rabid dog. Perhaps most startlingly, Felton once had this to say on the topic of rape and lynching:

"When there is not enough religion in the pulpit to organize a crusade against sin; nor justice in the court house to promptly punish crime; nor manhood enough in the nation to put a sheltering arm about innocence and virtue –if it needs lynching to protect woman's dearest possession from the ravening human beasts – then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary."

As the author is quick to point out, lynching was not something that was limited to men. Feimster writes that between 1880 and 1930, nearly 200 women were killed by Southern lynch mobs. She adds that an incalculable number of other black women were raped, tarred and feathered, or otherwise humiliated by white aggressors during the Jim Crow era with few if any legal repercussions.



By linking the lives and careers of two women's rights activists on either side of the lynching issue, Feimster portrays the tenuous, complex, and often contradictory alliances between those fighting to preserve equal treatment for vulnerable groups in America.