Accountability and the Banality of Evil

Ida B. Wells begins Southern Horrors: Lynch law in All Its Phases (1892) by quoting a piece she wrote in the May 21, 1892, edition of the Free Speech, a Black newspaper in Memphis. In the piece, she lists recent acts of racial violence across the United States. She writes, “Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the ‘Free Speech’ one at Little Rock, Ark. last Saturday morning where the citizens broke (?) into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one near New Orleans; and three at Clarkesville, Ga., the last three for killing a white, man, and five on the same racket — the new alarm about raping white women.” I had read that passage before, and the city names just flew by because I thought, “One incident among many.” However, I recently picked up Southern Horrors again when someone pointed out that Wells mentions Clarkesville, a town near me. That one mention drove home, as my research into the Bossier Massacre did, the racial violence perpetrated in the space where I reside.

From what I understand, five Black men were arrested for shooting a white man in a nearby town. They were brought to the jail in Clarkesville, and one of the men, denied any involvement but said he saw the shooting. Jim Redmond’s statement led to the release of two of the men. A lynch mob of “one hundred to five hundred” came to the prison demanding that the sheriff give the…