After the 1919 Elaine race massacre, the men on death row looked to the investigative journalist to use the power of the pen to save them

Throughout the Red Summer of 1919 and beyond, no journalist did more to chronicle the lynchings and other forms of terror inflicted on Black people than Ida B Wells-Barnett. From East St Louis, Illinois, to Elaine, Arkansas, her pen was an instrument for justice.

The 12 Black men had been tortured, smothered with rags soaked in chemicals, strapped to electric chairs, beaten with whips by white mobs trying to wring “confessions” out of them. The men had been arrested after the Elaine Massacre, during the Red Summer of 1919, when white mobs “with blood in their eyes” descended on the cotton fields of Elaine, Arkansas, killing more than 800 Black people.

“Dear Mrs. Wells-Barnett,” he wrote. “This is one of the 12 mens which is sentenced to death speaking to you on this day and thanking you for your grate speech you made throughout the country in the Chicago Defender paper. So I am thanking you to the very highest hope you will do all you can for your collord race. Because we are innercent men, we Negroes. So I thank God that thro you, our Negroes are looking into this truble, and thank the city of Chicago for what it did to start things and hopen to hear from you all soon.”