BLACK HISTORY: BIOGRAPHIES
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a
former slave who became a journalist and launched a virtual one-woman crusade
against the vicious practice of lynching. She died March 25, 1931.
Activist and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an early proponent of
civil rights. Editor and partial owner of her own newspaper, she published
articles on topics considered controversial at the time. One of her main
causes was fighting the practice of lynching, which she regarded as a horrific
form of racial prejudice that no decent human being could ignore or justify.
For years, the vicious practice of lynching had been widely used —
especially in the South after the Civil War — as a means of punishing
alleged criminals, although two-thirds of the victims were African American.
The word "lynching" dates back to the late 1700s, when a frontier
judge named Charles Lynch became known for dispensing with jury trials in
favor of speedy hangings. These came to be known as "lynchings,"
and they later evolved into acts of mob violence in which someone was put
to death, usually by hanging. Wells-Barnett waged her war against it in
the press as well as on the podium, earning a reputation for fearlessness
and determination despite numerous efforts to intimidate her, including
Ida B. Wells was born into slavery. Her mother, Lizzie Bell, had been bought
and sold by a number of owners, while her father, James Wells, had but one
master who was also his father and whose last name he took as his own. He
was raised as his master's companion and was later apprenticed to a carpenter
so that he could learn a trade. It was at the carpenter's home that James
met Lizzie, who worked there as a cook, and the two eventually married.
Ida, the first of their seven children, arrived during the summer of 1862
in Holly Springs, Mississippi, six months before Abraham Lincoln issued
the Emancipation Proclamation.
As was true of many former slaves, the Wells retained their old jobs even
after the South had been defeated in the Civil War. But their expectations
for their children had undergone a major change. It was very important to
both parents that their children receive an education. James, for example,
served on the first board of trustees for Rust College, a school founded
and run by Northern missionaries. His children received their schooling
there. Meanwhile, Lizzie also attended classes and learned to read the Bible.
Favoring Shakespeare as well as the Scriptures, Ida was well on her way
to completing high school when her parents and youngest sibling died along
with 301 other residents of Holly Springs in the 1878 yellow-fever epidemic.
Thus, at the age of only sixteen, Ida B. Wells became responsible for her
five younger siblings. Convincing the superintendent of a rural school some
five miles outside town that she was eighteen, she obtained a position as
teacher that paid her $25 a month. During the week, Wells lived near the
school and her family stayed with others until she returned on the weekend
to attend to chores such as washing and baking. In 1882, she and her two
sisters moved to their aunt's home near Memphis, while her brothers remained
behind in Holly Springs to work as carpenters' apprentices. Wells taught
in Shelby County, Tennessee, while studying for the exams she needed to
pass in order to teach in the city. Once she passed those exams, she secured
a position in one of Memphis's black schools.
On May 4, 1884, Wells purchased a first-class train ticket for a trip to
Nashville, Tennessee, where she was attending classes at Fisk University.
When she boarded the train, however, the conductor told her to move back
to the smoking car. Wells refused and bit him when he tried to force her
from her seat. With the assistance of the baggageman, the conductor then
ushered her out of the car to the cheers of many passengers. At the next
stop, Wells got off the train and made the return trip to Memphis, where
she filed suit against the railway company.
Wells won her case in circuit court and was awarded a $500 settlement,
only to see the decision reversed by the Tennessee Supreme Court on the
grounds that her intention had been to cause difficulty for the railway.
As she later wrote of the incident, "[I] firmly believed all along
that the law was on our side and would, when we appealed to it, give us
justice. I [felt] shorn of that belief and utterly discouraged."
Even though Wells was discouraged, she was not about to give up the fight.
Before long, the name "Iola" began appearing in black publications
as the author of articles about race and politics in the South. Wells had
been using the pseudonym for less than a year when, in 1887, she attended
the National Afro-American Press Convention and was named the most prominent
correspondent for the American black press. Convention delegates also elected
her assistant secretary of the organization.
Eventually, Wells purchased partial interest in a black newspaper, the
Memphis Free Speech and Headlight (later renamed Free Speech), and became
its editor. In addition to her writing, she continued to teach, using her
time off in the summer to travel in the South soliciting subscribers and
Wells did not shy away from controversy in the pages of Free Speech. A
turning point in her career occurred when she wrote an article that was
very critical of Memphis's separate but not-so-equal schools. The anonymous
piece described the rundown buildings and teachers who had received little
more education than their students. Such revelations did not sit well with
members of the local Board of Education. Along with everyone else who had
heard of Free Speech, they knew that Wells was the one who had written the
article. They also took issue with her claim that a member of the all-white
board was having an affair with an African American teacher. The uproar
cost Wells her teaching job.
Free to dedicate herself full time to the newspaper, Wells was soon earning
enough to purchase a half-share of Free Speech. While her partner, J.L.
Fleming, handled business matters, she took charge of the editorial and
subscription departments, and under her leadership circulation increased
from 1,500 to 4,000. Readers continued to rely on Free Speech to tackle
the most controversial subjects, even when that meant speaking out against
African Americans as well as whites — and even when it meant challenging
a widely-accepted practice such as lynching.
Wells was in Natchez, Mississippi, when word reached her that her friend
Tom Moss, the father of her goddaughter, had been lynched. Until that time,
Wells, like most other people, knew that there were usually two reasons
why a black man was lynched — because he had raped a white woman or
killed a white man. Moss's only crime, however, was successfully competing
with a white grocer, and for this he and his partners were murdered. Wells
then came to the realization that lynchings were not being used to weed
out criminals but to enforce white supremacy. So, in a series of scathing
editorials in Free Speech, she urged African Americans to boycott Memphis's
new streetcar line and move out west if possible.
African Americans heeded Wells's pleas and began leaving Memphis by the
hundreds. Two pastors of large black churches took their entire congregations
to Oklahoma, and others soon followed. Those who stayed behind boycotted
white businesses, creating financial hardships for commercial establishments
as well as for the public transportation system. The city's papers attempted
to dissuade blacks from leaving by reporting on the hostile American Indians
and dangerous diseases awaiting them out west. To counter their claims,
Wells spent three weeks traveling in Oklahoma. Upon her return she published
a firsthand account of the actual conditions. Fast becoming a target for
angry white men and women, she was advised by friends to ease up on her
editorials. Instead, Wells decided to carry a pistol. "[I had] already
determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked," she
later recalled. "I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would
even up the score a little bit."
Wells spent two months after the murders of Moss and his partners investigating
other lynchings across the South. Traveling from Texas to Virginia, she
interviewed both whites and blacks to discern truth from rumor. As Margaret
Truman wrote in Women of Courage, "To call this dangerous work is an
understatement. Imagine a lone black woman in some small town in Alabama
or Mississippi, asking questions that no one wanted to answer about a crime
that half the whites in the town had committed." During the course
of her investigation, Wells learned that rape was far from being the only
crime lodged against victims of lynch mobs. Indeed, men had been lynched
for "being saucy." In Mississippi, one victim of a lynch mob was
accused of raping a seven-year-old girl. Wells discovered that the real
story was that an adult white woman had gone to a black man's cabin of her
own accord. The woman's father then led the lynch mob to safeguard his daughter's
On May 25, 1892, two months after Moss's death, an article appearing in
Free Speech stated that "nobody in this section believes the old thread-bare
lie that Negro men assault white women. If Southern white men are not careful
they will over-reach themselves and a conclusion will be reached which will
be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women." Many white
citizens of Memphis did not appreciate the implication that some of their
women might prefer the company of black men, and the editor of the newspaper
declared that the "black wretch who had written that foul lie should
be tied to a stake at the corner of Main and Madison Streets, a pair of
tailor's shears used on him, and he should then be burned at the stake."
Wells, who was on her way to New York City at the time, was unaware of
the impact of her latest editorial until reaching her destination. It was
fellow African American journalist T. Thomas Fortune, editor of the New
York Age, who informed her that a mob of white men had marched into the
Free Speech offices, demolished the printing press, and set fire to the
building. Fleming, Wells's partner, had escaped just before the attack and
was in hiding. The angry group had promised that both editors would be lynched
if they ever again set foot in Memphis. Over the next few days, Wells received
telegrams and letters from friends begging her not to return. They told
her that there were instructions to kill her on sight, and a gunman had
been spotted at the station whenever a train from the North was due to arrive.
Realizing that it was too dangerous for her to go back to Memphis, Wells
remained in New York and accepted a job from Fortune. Among the first stories
she wrote for the Age was a front-page spread detailing names, dates, and
locations of several dozen lynchings. In many cases, the lynchers were prominent
members of society who could have easily gone through proper legal channels
had there been evidence of their victims' guilt.
Even though that particular issue of the Age sold 10,000 copies, it reached
a predominantly black audience — not the northern white progressives
Wells knew she needed to move to action if she wanted the lynchings to stop.
In 1893, therefore, she set out on a speaking tour of the British Isles
and Europe, where she found the white community was more receptive to what
she had to say. With the help of various newspaper editors and organizations
such as the London-based Anti-Lynching Committee and the Society of Brotherhood
of Man, Wells's message eventually made its way back to the United States.
Nevertheless, American newspapers continued to attack Wells, referring to
her as the "slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress." Not only
did Wells face opposition from conservative whites, but she also came under
fire from upper-class African Americans who feared any threat to the security
of their positions.
After returning from her speaking tour later in 1893, Wells moved to Chicago
and began working for the Conservator, a black newspaper founded and edited
by lawyer Ferdinand Barnett. When African Americans were banned from participating
in the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition (held in Chicago), she teamed up
with Barnett and Frederick Douglass to compile a booklet entitled "The
Reason Why the Colored American Is Not Represented in the World's Columbian
Exposition." Some 10,000 copies of it were distributed during the fair.
That same year, Wells published A Red Record, which recounted three years
of American lynchings. In order to avoid any charges of bias, she gathered
all of her data from white sources, primarily the Chicago Tribune.
In 1895, Wells married Barnett, who shared her passion for civil rights.
They settled in Chicago, where Wells changed her name to Wells-Barnett and
divided her time between raising her four children and working on various
causes of interest to her. She continued to crusade against lynching, for
example, and was active in the women's club movement, which encouraged African
American women to become involved in civic affairs at the local and national
level. She also helped establish the first kindergarten in the black district
of Chicago and joined noted reformer Jane Addams in a successful protest
against a plan to segregate the city's schools.
Wells-Barnett spoke out against discrimination in other ways as well, denouncing
the restriction of African Americans to the backs of buses and theater balconies
and their exclusion from religious organizations such as the Women's Christian
Temperance Union. When she exposed the segregationist policies of the Young
Men's Christian Association (YMCA), several wealthy donors withdrew their
support from that group and gave nearly $9,000 to the establishment of the
Negro Fellowship Reading Room and Social Center. On two occasions, Wells-Barnett
went all the way to the White House with her concerns — once in 1898
when she led a delegation to President William McKinley to protest the lynching
of an African American postmaster, and again in 1913 as a representative
of the National Equal Rights League, which asked President Woodrow Wilson
to end discrimination in government jobs.
In 1909, Wells-Barnett attended the conference of radical activists that
led to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP). She resigned not long afterwards, however, convinced that
the organization was not committed enough to militant action. Some years
earlier, she had quit the Afro-American Council in protest against Booker
T. Washington and his conservative policy of accommodation.
In the last twenty or so years of her life, Wells-Barnett devoted most
of her time and energy to various civic and political activities in Chicago.
From 1913 until 1916, for instance, she worked as an adult probation officer.
She also remained busy with club work and founded the first African American
women's suffrage organization. She even ran for state senator in the 1930
elections but was easily defeated.
Had Wells-Barnett been able to see the future, she might have been able
to appreciate how much she influenced the civil rights movement of the 1960s
with her own fearless battles against discrimination decades earlier. But
she herself would not live to witness a new era of race relations. On March
25, 1931, Wells-Barnett died of kidney disease at the age of sixty-nine.
Today, she is still honored as a woman who risked her own life so that the
truth could be known and justice served.
Reprinted by permission of The
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