Frederick Douglass's Women

Ida B. Wells -- Part One

 

Ida Wells was not one of Frederick Douglass’s wives, an alleged mistress, or a long-time co-worker.  She was, however, linked to him during the last three or four years of his life.  Wells was a remarkable black activist her entire, tumultuous adult time.  It had been her published newspaper articles and pamphlets that had drawn Douglass’s attention to her in 1892.  Most of their day-to-day association occurred in 1893 at Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition (the first World’s Fair), where, together, they had opposed blatant White disparagement of black American achievement.  I urge you to read two previous blogs (“At the Fair” January 24, 2018, and “Activist Fervor Revived” January 31, 2018 -- http://authorharoldtitus.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2018-02-24T13:11:00-08:00&max-results=7 -- to learn details of their collaboration at that event.

 

She was born into slavery on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi.  She and her slave parents -- James and Lizzie Wells -- were freed by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation almost six months later.  Her parents were active in the Republican Party during Reconstruction.  Her father was involved with the Freedman’s Aid Society.  He helped start Shaw University, a school for the newly freed slaves (now Rust College), and served on the first board of trustees.  Ida attended the university.

 

At the age of 16 (1878) yellow fever killed her parents and a sibling.  Suddenly she had five sibling younger than she to support.  Having convinced a nearby country school administrator that she was 18, she was hired to teach.

 

In 1882, Wells moved with her sisters to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with an aunt. Her brothers found work as carpenter apprentices. For a time, Wells continued her education at Fisk University in Nashville.

 

On one fateful train ride from Memphis to Nashville, in May 1884, Wells reached a personal turning point.  Having bought a first-class train ticket to Nashville, she was outraged when the train crew ordered her to move to the car for African Americans, and refused on principle.  As she was forcibly removed from the train, she bit one of the men on the hand.  Wells sued the railroad, winning a $500 settlement in a circuit court case.  However, the decision was later overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court (Biography 2).

 

The injustice caused Ida to begin to write about race and politics in the South.  Many of her articles were printed in black newspapers and periodicals.  She eventually became a part owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight.  She arranged for the Free Speech to come out on pink paper, which made it easier for people to recognize.  She successfully courted new subscribers; at one point during her tenure circulation climbed from 1,500 to 4,000 in less than a year.  She worked as a journalist and publisher and taught in a black public school.  She wrote in the Free Speech about the poor quality of the buildings in Memphis’s Negro schools.  She wrote about the education and morals of the teachers and school boards who administered them.  She was not rehired in 1891. 

She went to work for the newspaper full time, promoting the Free Speech from city to city, writing articles as she traveled.  About the lynching of a Georgetown, Kentucky, black man, Wells wrote an editorial in 1891 that advocated self-protection and retaliation.  The Memphis Daily Commercial Appeal had written that “two wrongs do not make a right; and that while white people should stick to the law, if they do not do so, the blacks can hope for nothing but extermination if they attempt to defend themselves.”  Wells’s answer had been “This is a cowardly argument.  Fundamentally men have an inherent right to defend themselves when lawful authority refuses to do it for them; and when a whole community makes itself responsible for a crime it should be held responsible . . .  The way to prevent retaliation is to prevent lynching” (Curry 4).

 

Many people at that time thought of lynching as an unfortunate and somewhat rare excess of race-hatred by frustrated Southern whites.  And many more saw it as a lawless but not entirely unjustified species of vengeance against black men who had raped white women.  But Wells would change all that.  In early 1892, three of Wells’ friends were lynched after a dispute between themselves and white owners of a rival business (Cools 2).

 

Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart had set up a grocery store.  Their new business had been drawing customers away from a white-owned store in the neighborhood.  The white store owner and his supporters and the three black men clashed several times.  One night, the three black owners, guarding their store, shot several white vandals.  They were arrested and brought to the jail.  A lynch mob took them from their cells and hung them.

 

Wells wrote articles decrying the lynching … and the wrongful deaths of other African Americans (Biography 6).  She wrote: “"There is therefore only one thing left that we can do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons" (Kettler 2).

She called for blacks to leave the city "which will neither protect our lives and property."  More than 6,000 black residents [about 20 percent of the city’s black population] left, and many others boycotted white businesses … (Fields-White 3).

 

Putting her life at risk, she spent two months traveling through the South, gathering information on other lynching incidents.  Combing through statistics and interviewing eyewitnesses, she conducted the first in-depth investigation into the real reasons behind the lynching of these black men — and many others who were mostly accused of allegedly raping a white woman.  She wrote about her tragic findings in a column for the New York Age newspaper (Fields-White 4) printed June 25, 1892.  The article, titled “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” was expanded and published as a pamphlet later in the year. 

 

Ida had discovered that “lynching was far from just vengeance for rape, it was inflicted for petty crimes, supposed insubordination or impertinence, drunkenness, competition, and so on.  She discovered that lynchings were not all that rare, either, and came to the conclusion that they consisted a form of social control, a replacement for the terrorism of the slave system” (Cools 4).

 

While she was In New York, enraged by her “Southern Horrors” editorial, a mob stormed the office of her Free Speech newspaper.  It destroyed all of her equipment.  She was warned that she would be killed if she returned to Memphis. 

Staying in New York City, she bought a pistol and wrote: “They had made me an exile and threatened my life for hinting at the truth."

She became part owner of the New York Age, and continued to write.  Energized by Wells’s writing and anti-lynching work, Frederick Douglass wrote an introduction to her Southern Horrors pamphlet.  He visited her several times.

 

Ida Wells had come to understand that “white civilization uses race as the stratagem

of order, and claims lynching to be that necessary practice that demarcates and forces the ‘Negro’ to stay in (his) place in society” (Curry 6).

 

 

Works cited:

 

Cools, Amy, “Happy Birthday, Ida B. Wells!”  Ordinary Philosophy.  July 16, 2017.  Media.  https://ordinaryphilosophy.com/tag/ida-b-wells/

 

Curry, Tommy J., “T. Thomas Fortune’s Philosophy of Social Agitation as a Prolegomenon to Militant Civil Rights Activism.”  TRANSACTIONS OF THE CHARLES S. PEIRCE SOCIETY, Vol. 48, No. 4 ©2012.  Indiana University Press.  Media. http://thomasfortunehouse.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/4/8/25484353/thefortuneofwells.pdf

 

Fields-White, Monee, “The Root: How Racism Tainted Women's Suffrage.”  Opinion Hosted by NPR.   March 25, 2011.  Media.  https://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/134849480/the-root-how-racism-tainted-womens-suffrage

 

“Ida B. Wells Biography.”  Biography.  The Biography.com Website.  A&E Television Networks.  January 19, 2018.  Media.  https://www.biography.com/people/ida-b-wells-9527635

 

Kettler, Sara, “6 Fascinating Facts About 'Crusader for Justice' Ida B. Wells.”  Biography.  July 15, 2017.  Media.  https://www.biography.com/news/ida-b-wells-biography-facts