The Return of Strange Fruit: Is it Suicide or Lynching?

This workshop discusses the truth and facts presented by African American journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who bravely reported on the scourge of white supremacist violence that had personally impacted her own life and work. Her reporting in “Southern Horrors and the Red Record” offers an extensive account of the lynching, cruelty, and hate that African Americans faced in the early years of the Jim Crow South. ​

• She was unafraid of the opposition.​
• She also delved into the social, sexual, and political oppression of women as no one had before.​
• This progressive and courageous work made her the most famous Black woman in the country. ​
• With an incredible prescience and a frank, clear-eyed tone, Wells-Barnett’s outrage – often indicated by the simple enumeration of names, dates, and statistics – resonates just as powerfully now as it did then. ​
• Her call for justice is a call that we still need to hear today with the return of lynching in the United States. ​