Students carry on Ida B. Wells legacy

Over the last 16 years, Northwestern University students (in journalism and law) and their professors  were instrumental in proving the innocence of many prisoners in Illinois, several of whom had been sentenced to death. Their investigative journalism was far from perfect, but it ultimately sparked the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois in 2011.

Lynching prompted the classic Billie Holiday song,"Strange Fruit," which she recorded independently in 1939 -- getting around the objections of Columbia, her record company: "Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." It ultimately became her biggest selling record. Time magazine denounced the song as a "piece of musical propaganda." The song's lyrics were inspired by this photograph of a 1930 lynching in Indiana.

Re Legacy: I'm not aware of any high schools named after the many newspaper editors who ignored or apologized for racist lynchings. But Ida B. Wells has a high school named after her (school home page here) in San Francisco (just across the park from the famous "painted ladies" Victorian houses.)