Time as a Place in Wells-Barnett

When Ida B. Wells-Barnett discussed lynching in "Lynch Law in America", she looked at the time in which a crisis was, in her mind, evident in the extreme. She saw the crisis in the state of lawlessness and vigilantism prevalent in certain sectors of society when applied against other sectors (white lynchers vs blacks, mainly civilians), and saw the fork in the road at which society stood. 

As Killingsworth says, "The appeal to time as a crisis or time as a journey involves a metaphorical connection with time and place. The past becomes where we have been, the present, the spot where we stand now; the future, the land to which we go." (50) Wells-Barnett applies this appeal literally and obviously when she compares the lack of order vis a vis lynching to a past time, stating, "... some life must pay the penalty, with all the horrors of the Spanish Inquision and all the barbarism of the Middle Ages." (Wells-Barnett 2). Applying Killingsworth's idea, the Middle Ages and the Spanish Inquisition are places (in time) we have been in the past; Wells-Barnett sees this as a reversion to a previous place, a sort of trip backward, when the society should be moving forward, towards equality.