What Wells did with this realization is what makes her extraordinary. Wells had, at that point, been run out of Memphis for investigating the death of her friends. She lived in the North, effectively under neo-Confederate fatwa. But Wells returned to the South—sometimes with pistol in hand—and spent a significant part of her career investigating and exposing lynchings. To put this differently, having seen her own fault, she rededicated herself to the self-education, to hard study, and publicizing the truth.
When we think of the fight against lynching today, very few people think of the words of Kelly Miller, Francis Grimké, or William J. Edwards. We think of Ida B. Wells because of her unrepentant fight against the barbarism of white supremacy. This version of history is a mistake. It allows the Charles Barkleys of the world and the racists who undoubtedly will approvingly quote him to pretend that they are exposing some heretofore arcane bit of knowledge. In fact they are employing two of the most disreputable traditions in American politics—false equivalence and an appeal to respectability. This is the black tradition that believed that “brutes” were partially responsible for lynching in 20th century, and believes that those some brutes are partially responsible for the “achievement gap” in the 21st.
Thinking people have a decision to make. Will they follow a tradition that half-apologizes when powerful people commit awful crimes? Or will they follow the tradition of Ida B. Wells, of study and investigation, of trying to understand, no matter how horrible that understanding may ultimately seem to be?
Article Appeared @http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/charles-barkley-and-the-plague-of-unintelligent-blacks/382022/?single_page=true