Paula Giddings, professor of Afro-American Studies at Smith College, discusses the history and origins of lynching. She explains that lynching came about during the Revolutionary War as a system of extralegal justice. Initially, lynching was applied equally to whites and blacks, but eventually became racialized in the late 1800s. Giddings details the rise of lynchings as a response to accusations of rape of white women by black men, and describes how Ida B. Wells, a black female investigative journalist, attempted to disprove the accusations and threatened some of the entrenched ideals of the South. - Facing History and Ourselves