History's Toughest Heroes: Ida B. Wells and the Red Recorder

History's Heroes

BBC

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.8 • 704 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With lynchings of Black Americans on the rise, a reporter begins documenting the crimes, sending her on a dangerous journey through the violence of the Jim Crow South.

In History's Toughest Heroes, Ray Winstone tells ten true stories of adventurers, rebels and survivors who lived life on the edge.

After a humiliating standoff with a train conductor in the American South, the young Ida B Wells decided to make a stand. Racism was rife, and Lynchings of Black people were increasingly common. A talented writer at a time when most people were unable, or too afraid to speak out, she used journalism to expose the horrible truth of the violence and injustices being perpetrated. It put a target on her own back. A BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Producer: Michael LaPointe Executive Producer: Paul Smith Written by Imogen Robertson Commissioning editor for Radio 4: Rhian Roberts

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:07.0	They call themselves Evil Corps, a cybercrime gang accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars.
0:13.8	And at the center of it all, one of the FBI's most wanted.
0:17.6	They ran their operations out of the back of an Italian restaurant in Moscow.
0:22.0	How does a man hunted by the world's top law enforcers still manage to grow an empire?
0:26.6	These guys were going to town on small businesses across America.
0:30.9	They anger, the frustration, the fear.
0:33.5	Cyberhack, evil core. Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:37.8	It all began with a game of marbles. Two boys, one black, one white, played in the dust outside
0:45.7	people's grocery. Then a fight started. This was Memphis in 1892, deep in the American South, where racial tensions quickly rose to violence.
1:00.9	An older white man got involved and started to beat the black kid.
1:04.6	One of the black shopkeepers comes out of the grocery store and says, stop doing that.
1:08.4	Leave that kid alone. He's not yours. He's one of ours.
1:11.9	Black and white citizens joined the fight. Fist flew. The clash turned into a brawl. In the
1:19.7	confusion, a white man called William Barrett got clubbed. He claimed the man who hit him was
1:26.1	Will Stewart from the people's grocery store.
1:30.2	Barrett has an axe to grind because he has a grocery store a couple blocks away, and he feels that this people's grocery store is a problem.
1:39.5	Once, Barrett had no competition in the area. Not anymore. The black owned grocery was getting popular.
1:47.0	A good number of black people were doing well for themselves.
1:50.0	Now slavery was over.
1:53.0	But some whites saw that success as a threat.
1:56.0	People like Barrett.
	...

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