The Nexus Archive
Investigative Journalism and Civil Rights · Essay
Mob Rule in New Orleans
by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Featuring Ida B. Wells
Wells's 1900 pamphlet on Robert Charles, mob violence in New Orleans, public terror, and national lynching statistics.
- Intermediate
- 1900
- ~1 hr 30 min read
- 4 chapter guides
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the A City Under Mob Rule guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
Witness Against Mob Rule
Ida B. Wells-Barnett dated her introduction to Mob Rule in New Orleans in Chicago on September 1, 1900, with the violence still recent. She argues that an unlawful police assault on Robert Charles set off a manhunt, his death, and days of attacks on Black residents. Wells writes under the pressure of an emergency: before rumor can harden into public memory, she means to put the record in order.
The pamphlet is investigative journalism, political argument, and archive at once. Wells quotes the city's leading newspapers at length, then reads their own accounts against their labels and excuses. Words such as desperado, order, and self-defense become contested claims as she asks who receives the protection of law and who is declared killable before any trial.
The scale keeps widening. A street encounter becomes a city under mob power; the story of Charles opens onto burnings elsewhere; the closing table turns eighteen years of lynching into a national indictment. Wells credits the newspapers’ calls for law and order while challenging their portrayals of Charles. Testimony, contradiction, and enumeration give force to her demand that protection and fair judgment extend to Black people.
The opening pages
Shot an Officer
SHOT AN OFFICER
The bloodiest week which New Orleans has known since the massacre of the Italians in 1892 was ushered in Monday, July 24, by the inexcusable and unprovoked assault upon two colored men by police officers of New Orleans. Fortified by the assurance born of long experience in the New Orleans service, three policemen, Sergeant Aucoin, Officer Mora and Officer Cantrelle, observing two colored men sitting on doorsteps on Dryades street, between Washington Avenue and 6th Streets, determined, without a shadow of authority, to arrest them. One of the colored men was named Robert Charles, the other was a lad of nineteen named Leonard Pierce. The colored men had left their homes, a few blocks distant, about an hour prior, and had been sitting upon the doorsteps for a short time talking together. They had not broken the peace in any way whatever, no warrant was in the policemen's hands justifying their arrest, and no crime had been committed of which they were the suspects. The policemen, however, secure in the firm belief that they could do anything to a Negro that they wished, approached the two men, and in less than three minutes from the time they accosted them attempted to put both colored men under arrest. The younger of the two men, Pierce, submitted to arrest, for the officer, Cantrelle, who accosted him, put his gun in the young man's face ready to blow his brains out if he moved. The other colored man, Charles, was made the victim of a savage attack by Officer Mora, who used a billet and then drew a gun and tried to kill Charles. Charles drew his gun nearly as quickly as the policeman, and began a duel in the street, in which both participants were shot. The policeman got the worst of the duel, and fell helpless to the sidewalk. Charles made his escape. Cantrelle took Pierce, his captive, to the police station, to which place Mora, the wounded officer, was also taken, and a man hunt at once instituted for Charles, the wounded fugitive.
In any law-abiding community Charles would have been justified in delivering himself up immediately to the properly constituted authorities and asking a trial by a jury of his peers. He could have been certain that in resisting an unwarranted arrest he had a right to defend his life, even to the point of taking one in that defense, but Charles knew that his arrest in New Orleans, even for defending his life, meant nothing short of a long term in the penitentiary, and still more probable death by lynching at the hands of a cowardly mob. He very bravely determined to protect his life as long as he had breath in his body and strength to draw a hair trigger on his would-be murderers. How well he was justified in that belief is well shown by the newspaper accounts which were given of this transaction. Without a single line of evidence to justify the assertion, the New Orleans daily papers at once declared that both Pierce and Charles were desperadoes, that they were contemplating a burglary and that they began the assault upon the policemen. It is interesting to note how the two leading papers of New Orleans, the Picayune and the Times-Democrat, exert themselves to justify the policemen in the absolutely unprovoked attack upon the two colored men. As these two papers did all in their power to give an excuse for the action of the policemen, it is interesting to note their versions. The Times-Democrat of Tuesday morning, the twenty-fifth, says:
Chapter guides · 4
A City Under Mob Rule
The Story Becomes a City
The pursuit of one man becomes permission to attack an entire population.
What just happened
The police pursuit of Robert Charles has widened into mob rule. Crowds search streetcars, chase Black residents, invade homes, and kill people with no connection to Charles. Wells then exposes the city's moral priority: influential citizens mobilize decisively only when disorder begins to threaten public credit.
Why it matters
Wells connects the violence to the people who permit or resist it. The jailkeeper refuses to surrender Leonard Pierce, and a citizens’ posse eventually mobilizes, but crowds have already attacked Black residents in streets and homes. The threat to property and public credit receives a forceful response that endangered people had not received.
The neighbors’ silence
The section ends with the attack on Hannah Mabry in her home. Police and volunteers arrive and pursue the gunmen, yet capture none. The Times-Democrat reports that neighbors gave no information, and some quietly jeered at the volunteers searching for the mob. That final silence shows how a community can shield attackers even when a rescue is attempted.
Brutality in New Orleans
The Survivors Speak
Hospital accounts show people attacked while working, traveling, or staying at home.
What happened
Wells reprints the Picayune's accounts from the Charity Hospital, where more than a score of people were treated after the attacks. Alex Ruffin, a Pullman porter visiting his sick son, is beaten and shot after boarding a streetcar. Watchman George Morris is chased and wounded at his workplace; other victims are attacked outside their homes or while sitting in a bar. These are attacks on Black people encountered in ordinary life.
Rescue amid the violence
Ruffin credits a man who intervened, Morris says police got him away from the crowd, and a policeman rescues Dan White. Such help matters within a record of widespread brutality. The survivors’ testimony also reveals how suddenly the danger arrived: several had no idea that the crowd was pursuing every Black person it could find.
The hospital’s final contrast
The section closes with people who had accompanied the rioters and were hurt by stray bullets or scuffles. Their injuries are slight; after treatment they leave again. Beside the wounded residents who remain in hospital, that short report exposes how differently the same night falls on those joining the crowd and those it targets.
Died in Self-Defense
A Life Against the Label
Wells answers the charge of a criminal life with pamphlets, business correspondence, and testimony.
Lynching Record
Statistics Become an Indictment
The final record turns repeated violence into a national pattern.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read Mob Rule in New Orleans?
- About 1 hr 30 min in total.
- How difficult is Mob Rule in New Orleans?
- Intermediate. A mid-length essay; about 2 hours of reading.
- Can I read Mob Rule in New Orleans for free?
- Mob Rule in New Orleans is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and two chapter guides on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- 4 chapter guides, written by the Nexus editors. Two open in full here; the rest show their opening line.
About Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells was a journalist, activist, and anti-lynching crusader whose investigations exposed racial terror and the false narratives used to justify it. Her work combines moral courage, data, journalism, and political resistance.
“What happens when a society hides murder behind respectable lies?”
Wells gives Nexus a model of evidence under threat. She shows how truth-telling can become a form of resistance.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. Mob Rule in New Orleans is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.