As an early activist in the civil rights movement and founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Ida B. Wells worked tirelessly to call attention to the rising number of lynchings, particularly of Black men, occurring in the United States, particularly in the South, at the close of the nineteenth century. Wells advocated for the congressional passage of laws that would allow the federal government to investigate lynchings and punish those found responsible for these heinous killings.