Over the last 15 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 controversial and 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 schools named after newspaper editors because they 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.)
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