The book opens with a letter written by social activist Frederick Douglass to Ida B. Wells. In the letter, Douglass commends Wells for collecting testimonies about lynching and drawing attention to the violent practice. He admires how Wells uses research and evidence to root out the truth: “You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity, and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves” (15). Douglass claims that any one person with a conscience who reads her work will feel a call to action.

Wells opens by explaining that the year in which she writes—1894—represents a period of social awakening as the United States begins to recognize how illegal white violence against Black citizens in the American South has been allowed to expand unrestricted. After Emancipation, white people continued to seek unfettered power over Black people through brutality and violence. The prevalence of lynching and racist targeting caused the larger population to become desensitized to racist violence.

Although enslavers brutalized Black people, white enslavers had a personal stake in keeping Black enslaved laborers alive for work. As such, Wells argues that slavery created a framework that offered some protection to enslaved people.