Hi, I'm Clint Smith, and this is Crash Course Black American History.
Today we’ll be discussing a hero of mine.
Somebody who used her writing, research, and unrelenting commitment to become one of the
most important anti-lynching advocates in American history.
We are talking about the one and the only Mrs. Ida B Wells-Barnett.
Her anti-lynching campaign brought international attention to the omnipresent threat of violence
plaguing Black Americans in the South—and in other parts of the United States.
Her career would also lead her to becoming one of the founding members of the National
Association of Colored Women and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People.
Her work was invaluable in the early struggle for Black American’s civil rights, and she
helped lay the groundwork for generations of activists and journalists who would come
after her.
Let’s start the show.
INTRO I want to note there will be mentions of physical
and sexual violence in this episode.
Wells was born enslaved in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Wells' father, James, was involved with the Freedmen's Aid Society and helped establish
a college for newly freed Black Americans in Holly Springs called Shaw University.
Renamed Rust College in 1892, this school would join the ranks of a growing number of
HBCUs (or Historically Black Colleges and Universities) formed during this period.
On a personal note, as the child and the grandchild and the nephew and the cousin and the husband
of people who all went to HBCUs, I can’t begin to express how important these schools
have been to the Black community.
Places that, for years, were the only institutions that Black people could count on for higher
education.
Given her father's work, Wells grew up around Black folks who were trying to build a better,
more just society for her people.
But, after losing both of her parents and one of her siblings to yellow fever, she became
the primary caregiver to her five brothers and sisters.
Wells found herself taking care of her siblings while also working as a teacher, AND attending
school at Rust College.
During this time, she discovered her passion for writing.
In 1882, Wells moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where her career as a journalist would begin.
She became co-owner of a local newspaper, where she wrote passionate editorials and
conducted in-depth investigative work to shine a light on the widespread acts of lynchings
in the South.
Lynching, or killing by way of mob without a trial, became a common form of retribution
in the South as a means of administering vigilante justice absent of due process.
These acts of violence took many forms, perhaps most infamously hanging a person from a tree.
These acts were designed to inspire fear and were used as an intimidation tactic against
African Americans to assert social, political and economic control.
And unfortunately, Black Americans in the South had to live with the looming threat
that such violence could happen to them or their family at any moment.
It’s important to remember also that this history wasn’t that long ago.
In my own book, How the Word Is Passed, I describe how my own grandfather, born in 1930
Mississippi, told me a story of how when he was a boy, a Black man in his small town of
just 1000 people, was kidnapped by night-riders, hung from a tree, and castrated.
And this sort of thing was happening all across the South.
Lynchings could and often did take place, without the victim having been charged with
any sort of crime.
And even if someone had been charged with a crime, a vigilante mob kidnapping someone
in the middle of the night and killing them, is not justice, no matter what the accusation
is.
As you can imagine, people were scared.
To speak out against lynching would put a target on your back.
And what’s remarkable about Ida B. Wells is that she knew this, and did it anyway.
And while Wells was brave, she was also strategic.
Wells’ editorials and investigative reporting angered local whites.
And while she wanted to make waves, she understood that to be effective, she needed to stay alive,
so she published many articles in Black newspapers and periodicals under the moniker "Iola"
Lynching was not the only cause Ida B Wells took a stand against.
She also sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company for discrimination.
As the story goes, she purchased a first-class train ticket for a ride from Memphis to Woodstock,
Tennessee.
But the train crew ordered her to move to the car reserved for African Americans.
But Wells did not leave the first-class car voluntarily.
The conductor, and some passengers, forcibly removed her and then kicked her off the train.
She won a $500 settlement in a circuit court case; but, the decision was later overturned
by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1887.
Following this train situation, Wells became even more impassioned to combat discrimination
against Black Americans in all areas.
For example while working as a journalist, Wells became a teacher at a segregated public
school in Memphis, Tennessee.
That first-hand experience led her to begin writing about educational inequality, and
this time under her own name.
As a result, in 1891, after publicly criticizing the lack of resources for Black-only schools
in the area, she was fired.
The following year, her efforts as a journalist refocused on the lynching problem in the South
after she lost three of her friends.
Calvin McDowell, Thomas Moss, and Will Stewart owned a store called The People's Grocery
in Memphis.
The presence of this moderately successful Black-owned business sparked anger and unrest
among the local white community.
Many store owners even complained that these men were taking some of their customers.
On March 3, 1892, a group of white men, including a sheriff’s deputy, went to the People’s
Grocery to confront McDowell, Moss, and Stewart.
This led to an altercation, and by the time it was over, some of the white men had been
injured.
As a result, McDowell, Moss, and Stewart were arrested.
And some Memphis newspapers referred to the men’s efforts to defend themselves and their
store as an armed rebellion by the Black men in Memphis.
Just a few days later, at 2:30 in the morning, a mob of 75 masked men broke into the jail
and kidnapped McDowell, Moss, and Stewart.
They were brought to the edge of the town and they were lynched.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Wells launched an extensive investigation on lynching and
used her publications to openly denounce the practice.
Her articles led to her newspaper being destroyed by a mob while she was out of town, and, in
an act of cruel irony, she was threatened with lynching should she return.
She traversed the southern states for two months to gather information on other acts
of lynching.
And in October of 1892, she published a pamphlet entitled "Southern Horrors," which detailed
all of her findings.
Wells stayed in the North and never returned to Memphis.
But that did not keep her from writing about the horrors of lynching in the South.
Wells also took her research and anti-lynching campaign across the Atlantic, specifically
to Great Britain during the 1890s.
She helped establish the British Anti-Lynching Society in 1894.
And her work on the trans-Atlantic anti-lynching circuit demonstrates the ways African American
women activists internationalized social justice work.
This built on the work of earlier abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and William Wells
Brown who also traveled to England to promote the abolitionist cause.
In 1895, Wells published The Red Record, which outlined the horrors of lynching to a northern
audience whom Wells did not think was fully aware of everything that was going on in the
South, writing that thousands of Black people had “been killed in cold blood...without
the formality of judicial trial and legal execution.”
She also used the pamphlet to challeng the "rape myth" that whites used to justify the
lynching of African American men.
See, a significant component of the culture of lynching was the idea of protecting white
womanhood from Black men who were stereotyped as being oversexulized and always waiting
for their chance to sexually attack a white woman.
Countless Black men were lynched after being wrongfully accused of raping, assaulting,
eyeing, or even speaking to a white woman.
Wells' research, however, revealed that many victims of lynchings had not committed any
crimes at all; but had rather challenged white supremacy.
Challenging white supremacy could include anything from being a Black person simply
leading a successful life as a business owner, to refusing to cross the street when passing
a white person.
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, more than 4000 Black Americans were lynched
in the South alone, between 1877 and 1950.
And this is only the numbers that we know, there is every reason to believe that the
numbers could be even higher than that.
Wells had completed much of her life's work before marrying in 1895, to an attorney and
newspaper editor Ferdinand L. Barnett.
The couple would have four children.
Still, even after starting a family, Wells believed the work was not done.
In 1896, Wells was among the founding members of the National Association of Colored Women.
The founding convention was held in Washington, DC and other founding members included Harriet
Tubman, Frances EW Harper, and Mary Church Terrell.
And I don’t know about y’all but that’s basically like the Avengers.
And she kept going.
In 1898, Wells took her anti-lynching campaign to the White House.
She led a protest in Washington, D.C., calling for President William McKinley to make reforms.
And she called for President Woodrow Wilson to end discriminatory hiring practices in
government jobs.
And throughout the remainder of her life, she was incredibly active in the fight for
women’s suffrage.
A determined woman in every respect, Ida B. Wells is one of America's greatest heroes.
She had the determination and the bravery required to stand up against one of the darkest
elements of America's past and in many ways helped lay the groundwork for both the civil
rights movement of the mid 20th century and the Black Lives Matter Movement of today.
Her life's work was dedicated to stopping the unjust murdering of Black Americans in
the South, a practice that, due to the widespread, profoundly entrenched influence of the Klan,
was often protected by law enforcement and legal policies.
Wells died of kidney disease on March 25, 1931, at the age of 68, in Chicago, Illinois.
Her legacy is a remarkable one.
She did so much, for so many.
And used her gifts and determination, to help build a better world.
Thanks for watching.
I'll see you next time.
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