With Michelle Duster the great granddaughter of Ida Bell Wells-Barnett at the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan, U.S.A during an event recognizing the UN declared "Decade for People of African Descent 2015-2024"
IDA BELL WELLS-BARNETT
By Murphy Browne ©
Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature
of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the
unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. The nineteenth century
lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and
distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd.” Ida
Bell Wells-Barnett, July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931. Ida Bell Wells
was born on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi to an
enslaved African couple, Elizabeth and James Wells. She was the first
born of eight children of Elizabeth and James Wells, who were freed
in 1865. Ida Bell Wells was born just two and a half years before
slavery was abolished in the USA on January 1, 1865. Following the
abolition of slavery, Elizabeth and James Wells, who were both
skilled (cook and carpenter) were able to find paid work to support
their family.
In the 2008 published book “Ida: A Sword Among Lions”
African-American historian, Paula J. Giddings, writes: “Her parents
were slaves at the time of her birth, and during her formative years
they made a remarkable transition as freedpersons. James was a
skilled carpenter who established his own business in 1867; and
Elizabeth became ‘a famous cook’ who ran the household in which
each child had assigned chores and attended Sunday school each week.
When Rust was established Elizabeth attended school alongside her
children in order to learn to read and write.” The Wells children
were orphaned in September 1878, when both parents and their
nine-month-old infant son were victims of a yellow fever epidemic
which swept through the Mississippi Valley. A group of community men
made plans to separate the surviving children, who were between two
and 14, by sending them to live with various families and they felt
that at 16 years old, Ida could fend for herself. She refused to
allow the separation of her siblings and appointed herself their
guardian. Elizabeth and James Wells had enough money saved and owned
their own house to allow their children to live together. Ida, as the
eldest and official guardian of her younger siblings, also found a
job as a teacher to augment the family’s finances.
In her autobiography, “Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of
Ida B. Wells” writing of her decision to become guardian of her
younger siblings Wells intimated that her parents would “turn over
in their graves to have their children scattered like that.” Since
Elizabeth Wells had been sold several times from the time she was
eight years old until slavery was abolished, it is not surprising
that Ida Bell Wells would know about her parents’ feelings
regarding scattering of the siblings. Refusing to have her siblings
scattered on the advice of a group of older men in the community may
have been the first time Wells “bucked authority” but it would
not be the last. On the afternoon of September 15, 1883, Wells, then
a 21-year-old teacher and university student, bought a first-class
train ticket in Memphis, Tennessee. In “Ida: A Sword Among Lions”
Paula J. Giddings wrote: “When Ida boarded the colored car and
bought her thirty-cent first class fare for the trip, she saw an
inebriated White man there and telltale curls of smoke. Exercising
her rights as a first class passenger, Ida headed for the ladies’
car where she intended to remain for the duration of the trip. When
the train got about a mile outside the station, the conductor,
William Murray, came into the ladies’ car to collect tickets. Wells
handed him hers. Murray returned the ticket and told Wells to leave
the coach, insisting it was for Whites alone. Wells told him that she
was not moving.” The conductor was determined to remove Wells from
the ladies’ car and force her into the car where White men wandered
through at will drunk, smoking, spitting and swearing. With Wells
defying his request to move: “The conductor attempted to physically
pull her out of the seat, tearing the sleeve off her dress in the
process. Ida, determined not to be taken, hooked her feet under the
seat in front of her, began scratching the conductor with her nails,
and then bit his hands deeply enough to draw blood. The conductor
asked for help from the passengers and they readily complied.”
Wells wrote in her autobiography: “I refused, saying that the
forward car (closest to the locomotive) was a smoker, and as I was in
the ladies’ car, I proposed to stay… (The conductor) tried to
drag me out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of my arm I
fastened my teeth in the back of his hand. I had braced my feet
against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had
already been badly bitten he didn’t try it again by himself. He
went forward and got the baggageman and another man to help him and
of course they succeeded in dragging me out.” Wells was eventually
forced off the train and made the return trip to Memphis, where she
filed suit against the railway company. She won her case on December
24, 1884, in the local circuit court and was awarded a $500
settlement. The railroad company appealed to the Tennessee Supreme
Court and the lower court’s ruling was reversed in 1887. In its
decision the Tennessee Supreme Court concluded: “We think it is
evident that the purpose of the defendant in error was to harass with
a view to this suit, and that her persistence was not in good faith
to obtain a comfortable seat for the short ride.” Wells was also
ordered to pay court costs. 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.”
In 1889, Wells became co-owner and editor of “Free Speech and
Headlight” an African-American newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee. In
1892, the “People’s Grocery Store” owned by three
African-American men, Thomas Moss, a friend of Ida B. Wells; Will
Stewart and Calvin McDowell, was perceived to be taking away a
substantial amount of business from a grocery store owned by a White
man. The White people were so incensed that a group of
African-Americans would dare compete with White men that they
attacked the store. The White mob was repelled by the armed
African-American owners, resulting in three White men being wounded.
The three African-American owners of the grocery store were arrested,
jailed and subsequently dragged out of jail and lynched by a White
mob. The lynching of her friend and his co-owners sparked Wells’
interest in investigative journalism about lynching. In 1892, Wells
published “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases” and in
1895 she published “A Red Record, 1892-1894” which documented the
lynching of African-Americans since the Emancipation Proclamation.
In 1893, Wells and other African-American leaders organized a
boycott of “The Chicago World’s Fair” to protest the lynching
of African-Americans. Wells was one of the founding members of the
National Association of Colored Women and the National Afro-American
Council, which lobbied for the passage of a federal anti-lynching
law. In 1895, Wells married Ferdinand Lee Barnett, attorney, writer,
lecturer and founder/editor of Chicago’s first African-American
newspaper, (January 1, 1878) the “Chicago Conservator.” She
wrote: “I was married in the city of Chicago to Attorney F. L.
Barnett, and retired to what I thought was the privacy of a home.”
She did not stay retired long and continued writing and organizing.
In 1906, along with William E. B. Du Bois and others she was one of
two African-American women to sign “the call” to form the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in
1909. Although Wells was one of the founding members of the NAACP,
she was among the few African-American leaders who opposed Booker T.
Washington and his philosophy of accommodation where
African-Americans should stop agitating for voting and civil rights
in exchange for economic gains and security. Booker T. Washington
felt that White people would stop lynching African-Americans if they
knew their place and kept in their place. As a result of disagreeing
with that position, Wells-Barnett was viewed as one the most radical
of the so-called “radicals” who organized the NAACP and she
marginalized from positions within its leadership. In 1930, she ran
for the Illinois state legislature, which made her one of the first
African-American women to run for public office in the United States.
A year later, on March 25, 1931, she passed away at age 69 after a
lifetime crusading for justice. Wells-Barnett had spent the last 30
years of her life working on urban reform in Chicago, Illinois. In
1990, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative postage
stamp in her honour. The Ida B. Wells Housing Project in Chicago is
named in her honour. In the 21st century, African-Americans may not
have to fear White mobs foaming at the mouth bent on lynching or as
Wells-Barnett wrote: “The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off
ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions
of the body as souvenirs among the crowd.” However in 2015,
African-Americans still have to be vigilant about their safety with
the Ku Klux Klan and your garden variety White supremacist terrorist
that will burn their churches or slaughter them as they worship in
what should be the sanctuary of their religious home.
Murphy Browne ©
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