Throughout his career, Carmack was known to use his newspapers to attack rivals. During Carmack's tenure with the "Appeal", his editorials began an interesting dialogue with another famous Tennessee journalist, Ida B. Wells. Wells, known as the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement", was also not one to withhold her opinions and spoke out about the plight of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction era in the South. Memphis in the 1890s was a hotbed of racial tension, and lynching crimes were commonplace. Wells launched an anti-lynching campaign in her newspaper, "Memphis Free Speech and Headlight".