- Women such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Jessie Daniel Ames played an important role in the U.S. anti-lynching campaign from its beginnings in the 1890s. After World War II, the crusade again intensified. In September 1946, demonstrations in Washington, D.C., protested brutal lynchings in Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Many women worked through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Women also joined the American Crusade to End Lynching, led by Paul Robeson, singer and political activist, and Mrs. Harper Sibley, president of the National Council of Church Women, among others. In separate meetings with President Truman, both coalitions requested legislative and educational programs to curb mass violence. To Truman’s displeasure, Mrs. Sibley noted the incongruity of U.S. leadership in the Page 18 →Nuremberg Trials when it was doing so little to fight racism at home. Although Truman never endorsed a federal anti-lynching law, in December 1946 he established the first President's Committee on Civil Rights.
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