When the Haitian Revolution finally and completely ended in 1809, approximately ten thousand people left the island and came to New Orleans. This number included slaveholders, the enslaved, and free people of color (as they were called), those who were often mixed-race and of a higher status than their more African counterparts. Over the next few y

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Wells was best known as a journalist for exposing the lies behind the justification for lynching. Negroes charged with recklessly eyeballing a White woman, or worse, were often people who had found prosperity and respect despite the constraints of Jim Crow. The lynchings put them back in their place. Wells nearly met a similar fate, but escaped as

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But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an air-tight cage of p

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No civil rights legislation of any type was passed by the federal government after 1875. The national laws were replaced by state laws that allowed segregation—that in fact required segregation. As Richard Kluger wrote in his monumental book Simple Justice, the Supreme Court had “flashed the green light,” and the eleven southern—and several border—

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