Read the following excerpt from Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s address 'Lynching, Our National Crime' (1909):
'The federal government has crept into its shell of state’s rights, declaring that it cannot protect the lives of its own citizens within the borders of the states... If the federal government has the power to protect the lives and property of foreigners in our midst, it surely has the power to protect the lives and property of its own citizens.'
Based on the excerpt, which of the following best explains how Wells-Barnett’s argument reflects the political strategy of the anti-lynching movement during the early twentieth century?
- AIt asserts that the Reconstruction Amendments had already fully resolved states' rights conflicts, leaving no legal barriers to local prosecution of mob leaders.
- BIt supports the belief that lynchings were primarily non-political, local law enforcement issues that could only be resolved by reforming southern state courts.
- It highlights the movement's effort to secure federal intervention by exposing the constitutional hypocrisy of states' rights arguments used to shield perpetrators from justice.Cevap
- DIt advocates for the complete abandonment of federal legislative lobbying in favor of immediate emigration to West Africa to escape racial terror.
Cevap
The correct answer highlights the anti-lynching movement's effort to secure federal intervention by exposing the constitutional hypocrisy of states' rights arguments used to shield perpetrators from justice.
The correct option is correct because the early anti-lynching movement relied on exposing how southern states used the legal defense of 'states' rights' and local jurisdiction to allow extrajudicial violence to go unpunished. By demanding that the federal government protect Black citizens just as it protected foreign nationals, Wells-Barnett highlighted the federal government's constitutional obligation to enforce equal protection, which laid the groundwork for decades of lobbying for a federal anti-lynching bill.
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Racial Terror and the Anti-Lynching Movement
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