Like journalists Jesse Duke and Ida B. Wells, Richmond Planet editor John Mitchell, Jr., had braved mob retaliation for defending an African American man from a rape charge, and challenged the increase in lynching actively. In 1894, for example, Mitchell organized a lecture for Isaac Jenkins, who was the lone survivor following mob violence against African Americans in Clifton Forge, Virginia, in 1891, and included a postcard from that lynching within the frame of the advertisement.