I imagine you're talking about her time and writings with the Atlanta Journal (now part of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, or AJC), where she started working in 1899 - the same year Sam Hose was lynched in Cowetta, Ga (about 35 miles SW of Atlanta) after being accused of murdering his landlord in a dispute. Based on unfounded rumors, the Atlanta papers - including the Journal - printed that he had assaulted the dying man's wife (sexually) and infant (non-sexually) in front of him after attacking him with an axe. This started (or continued but greatly increased, rather) a snowball that would include the Atlanta Race Riot in 1906 where as many as 15,000 white citizens roamed the streets indiscriminately beating, shooting, stabbing, and killing black citizens for the rape of four seperate white women, according to four special editions of Atlanta's [Evening Post] (http://sweetauburn.us/rings/riot/newspaper2.jpg).
The owners of the papers, who were also aspiring politicans, had fueled the flames. Hoke Smith owned the Journal at that time and in 1906 successfully ran for governor on a platform of preventing blacks from voting to, as he put it, "keep them in their place." His primary opponent, Clark Howell (who ran the paper Atlanta Constitution), claimed Smith wasn't racist enough to be Governor. Their goal (as well as many others over the previous 20 or so years) was total segregation (and subjugation) of blacks in the "New South."
Other stories in the numerous Atlanta papers (and even some other papers throughout the south) ran stories claiming that [pictures of nude white women had been found posted on walls in black businesses] (https://m.georgiaencyclopedia.org/sites/default/files/styles/article-gallery-mobile/public/m-8870.jpg), featured cartoons of attacks on proper white women by stereotyped black men, or featured [op-ed style pieces about the dangers of the black men to white women] (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6b/6e/4f/6b6e4f981fa4f377a648c9166e72ecd3.gif). The idea of the "Negro Brute" stalking white women was widely spread by those in power as well. Atlanta's mayor Woodward had anwered the NY Times about the Atlanta riots;
The best way to prevent a race riot depends entirely upon the cause. If your inquiry has anything to do with the present situation in Atlanta then I would say the only remedy is to remove the cause. As long as the black brutes assault our white women, just so long will they be unceremoniously dealt with.
Dec 1906 Teddy Roosevelt said in his State of the Union;
The greatest existing cause of lynching is the perpetration, especially by black men, of the hideous crime of rape—the most abominable in all the category of crimes, even worse than murder.
He was calling for an end to lynching and each man to be treated as an individual under the law despite what color he may be (to add some context), but the sentence speaks for itself in the presumption of facts.
While there were undoubtedly some instances of white women being attacked by black men, there are also others of white women (believed by historians) to be having consensual sexual relationships with black men and claiming rape upon being caught by other whites in the act. Other times stories or actual attacks were believed to be cooked up by folks like Smith just to run stories, feeding the fire of fear to gain support in segregating and subjugating blacks and the "uppity negroes" listening to W.E.B. DuBois, who had stayed in Atlanta after the Sam Hose lynching to bridge the racial divide by showing blacks could be equals in intelligence and station (unlike Booker T Washington who had given the Atlanta Compromise a few years earlier accepting white social and political rule in exchange for black education opportunities and equal treatment under the law - mainly a promise of recieving due process). Other times blacks near crime scenes were rounded up and accused of crimes with virtually no evidence other than proximity, continuing belief in the claim they were "brutish" or dangerous.
I wrote of a terribly horrible event that followed all of this in which the black residents of a county 30 miles north of Atlanta were literally purged in 1912 and it remaining an all white county for 75 years. It details some of the horrible and graphic details of the violent lynching of Sam Hose, the Atlanta Riot, the Forsyth lynchings, the purge, and the update to today. It is very nsfw, graphic, and a heartwrenching story of insane and deplorable hate and violence. It can be found [here] (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/hbj8xb/what_happened_to_the_black_community_in_forsyth/).
The narrative was started before the Atlanta incidents but that's where it peaked in many ways. As always, happy to answer followups this may create.
