Posted
on July 16, 2014
Today's
famous birthday is someone with a long list of accomplishments.
Ida
B. Wells was a teacher. She was a journalist. She was a wife and
mother. She was a public speaker. She helped found the NAACP. Her
careful research on lynching and her analysis of the reasons for this
horrifying practice cause some to call her a sociologist. She was a
newspaper editor. Most importantly, Wells was active in movements for
women's rights and suffrage, in the civil rights movement, and
especially in the movement against lynching.
Lynching
is a horrible thing in which a mob kills someone, often by hanging,
supposedly because that person committed a crime – but without a
trial, usually without even a shred of evidence....because usually
the crimes were non-existent!
Wells
wrote that one reason for lynchings was to control black people,
especially black men, so that they would not compete with white
people economically. She wrote that black economic progress
threatened white Southerners in an economic way, but it also brought
into question their firmly-held idea of black inferiority. With the
double-whammy of economics and ideology, Wells was skeptical that
white Southern society could give up the practice without being
shamed into doing so. She traveled in Europe, especially in Scotland
and England, trying to drum up support for her cause.
She
ended up being successful in starting several anti-lynching groups
that tried to exert pressure on the United States to guarantee the
safety of black people in the South.
I
found it interesting that Ida B. Wells started out life enslaved, the
child of an enslaved couple. About half a year after she was born in
Mississippi (on this date in 1862), President Abraham Lincoln freed
her and her family by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Wells's
father was a master carpenter who worked for the advancement of black
people, who involved himself in politics, and who even attended a
university. He had to drop out of college in order to help his
family.
Both
of Wells's parents and her youngest brother died of yellow fever when
she was just 16 years old, and she became a school teacher so that
she could keep her five younger siblings together as a family. She
attended the same university her father had attended, although she
was expelled after a confrontation with the school president!
I
didn't find out what that confrontation involved, but another
incident was spelled out clearly in the bios I read. Wells was
traveling by train from Memphis to Woodstock (a rural community
outside of Memphis), and she paid for the first-class ladies' car of
the train. When a conductor ordered her to move to the smoker car,
Wells refused to give up the seat she had paid for. She was forcibly
removed from the train.
Ah!
Shades of Rosa Parks and the bus-seat controversy—which happened
around 80 years later!
Wells
didn't take it lying down. She filed a lawsuit against the Chesapeake
and Ohio Railroad – and she won! Unfortunately, the Tennessee
Supreme Court soon overturned the decision.
Until
the train incident, Wells had spent most of her time rearing her
siblings and teaching school. After the incident, she began writing
and editing, speaking out and becoming an activist.
It's
amazing to me that so many people are able to transcend illness,
death of loved ones, lack of economic stability, prejudice, all
manner of hardships—and still manage to advance themselves, their
families, and—in cases like Ida B. Wells—all of society.
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