Although white moderates and progressive southern governors seeking to establish a more humane system of Jim Crow segregation might have been frustrated by [Ida B.] Wells’s agitation and British moral interference, reducing the effectiveness of law-and-order campaigns might also have had benefits. By disrupting the rhetorical link between lynching and black criminality, Wells undermined romantic notions of lynching as an expression of justice. Consequently, local communities began to see an association with lynching as undesirable. The application of the term lynching became a social and economic liability as Wells’s activism increased international scrutiny of American race relations. In response, the number of instances in which the term was used fell steadily through the first half of the twentieth century. In essence, local communities became less willing to advertise their tolerance of mob violence.
Black Woman Reformer: Ida B. Wells, Lynching, and Transatlantic Activism, by Sarah Silkey ’96, University of Georgia Press, 2015