During the last ten years a new statute has been added to the “unwritten law.” This statute proclaims that for certain crimes or alleged crimes no negro shall be allowed a trial: that no white woman shall be compelled to charge an assault under oath or to submit any such charge to the investigation of a court of law. The results is that many men have been put to death whose innocence was afterward established; and to-day, under this reign of the “unwritten law,” no colored man, no matter what his reputation, is safe from lynching if a white woman, no matter what her standing or motive, cares to charge him with insult or assault.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett “Lynch Law in America” 1900