Thomas H. Moss

On a cool night in March of 1892, an angry mob broke into a Memphis, Tenn., jailhouse and herded Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart to a vacant field. Moss and his companions were black; their attackers were white.

The mob beat, shot and lynched Moss and his companions. However, moments before he was shot, one of Moss’ attackers asked if he had any final words.

“Tell my people to go West . . . ” Moss told a handful of journalists who were summoned to witness the murders. “. . . there is no justice for them here.”

Operating People’s Grocery

No one was ever arrested or convicted of the murders, and the only “crime” Moss committed, according to townspeople, was operating People’s Grocery, a small but successful store that siphoned business from nearby white merchants.

The violent nature of the deaths sparked outrage, not only in the south but nationally. It also drew the attention and ire of Ida B. Wells, a friend of Moss and an accomplished journalist who co-owned the Memphis Free Speech newspaper.

Wells was stunned at the senselessness of the killings and wrote a series of stinging articles about Moss, the murders and the perpetrators. "A finer, cleaner man than he never walked the streets of Memphis,” Wells wrote of Moss. “He was well liked, a favorite with everybody; yet he was murdered with no more consideration [than] if he had been a dog. . .The colored people feel that every white man in Memphis who consented in his death is as guilty as those who fired the guns which took his life."

Wells’ articles appeared in her newspaper while she was out of town. When white Memphis residents read her words, riots broke out and mobs destroyed the newspaper’s offices. Wells was warned that she would be killed if she ever returned to Memphis; she never did.

Rioters also looted and nearly destroyed Moss’ grocery store. It was later sold for one-eighth its cost to William Barrett, one of the white merchants whose business suffered from Moss’ thriving store.

Wells continued to research and write about Moss’ death and lynchings throughout the south, and used Moss’ dying words to spark national outrage among blacks and whites.

Tom Moss, Wells wrote, knew there was no justice for blacks in the south and should “leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons."

Moss’ final words and Wells’ articles led to a movement that saw approximately 6,000 blacks leave Memphis for western territories.

Wells was later one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and continued to write about racial injustice until her death in 1931 at age 69.