How did Ida B. Wells dispute the popular view of lynching?

In parts
of the country where lynching was
common (particularly the South) the practice was often
justified on a number
of grounds. The most common of these was that lynching was a necessary
means
of preventing sex crimes carried out by black men against white women. Over time,
a
disturbing narrative had taken hold of the  consciousness of white America,
one in which
old-fashioned ideas of womanly virtue were combined with racist
hysteria.

It
was widely believed that respectable white
women were in constant danger of having their honor
violated by the
insatiable sexual urges of savage black men. Lynching, it was held, was a

trusted, time-honored method of keeping those urges in check. The prevailing prejudice
was that
any kind of racial mixture would be disastrous, leading to the
impurity of the white race and
the undermining of the dominant
culture.

However, it was not just the yellow
press or
white...