Excerpt from Ida B. Wells’s Southern Horrors, 1894
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 Clarksville, Ga., the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket—the new alarm about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter.
Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rpe white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.
Use the excerpt from Ida B. Wells’s Southern Horrors to answer the question.
In this excerpt, Wells is proposing that false charges of rpe were being used to
A.
legitimize violence against African Americans.
B.
suppress African Americans’ right to free speech.
C.
enforce the “separate but equal” doctrine.
D.
sully the reputations of minority business owners.