How the Murder of a Black Grocery Store Owner and His Colleagues Galvanized Ida B. Wells' Anti-Lynching Crusade

The 1892 People's Grocery murders are “what opened my eyes to what lynching really was,” Ida B. Wells later wrote. The MIT Press Reader Coppery like a penny, thick like bad molasses, even a little gamey like a possum. The white conductor’s blood in her mouth probably didn’t taste good, but it probably didn’t taste bad, either. Ida B. Wells sat firmly while the Memphis streetcar man gripped her body and tried to…