Speaker 1: Happy is Saturday, everybody. In light of what's been going
Speaker 1: on in the United States this week, we thought we
Speaker 1: would return to investigative journalist and activists. I to b
Speaker 1: Wells Barnett, who spent decades fighting against lynching and advocating
Speaker 1: for anti lynching legislation. Almost ninety years after her death,
Speaker 1: legislators are still trying to get legislation passed that would
Speaker 1: make lynching a federal crime, most recently with the Emmett
Speaker 1: Till Anti Lynching Act. That act passed the House in February,
Speaker 1: but it needs to be reconciled with a slightly different
Speaker 1: version passed by the Senate. In This episode originally came
Speaker 1: out on June four, Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
Speaker 1: History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry. I to b Wells Barnett, one of those
Speaker 1: figures who connects to a lot of our past episodes.
Speaker 1: She's mentioned in our podcast on Frederick Douglas, and the
Speaker 1: two of them were colleagues and friends. In our show
Speaker 1: In the Night of Terror at the Aquaquon Workhouse, we
Speaker 1: talked about her refusing to march in a segregated section
Speaker 1: of the nineteen thirteen Woman's Suffrage progression, instead saying and
Speaker 1: I am refusing to play by that racist rule and
Speaker 1: marching with the Illinois contingent with everyone else. She investigated
Speaker 1: the death of Robert Charles in New Orleans and nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred and the racist violence that surrounded that, and then
Speaker 1: the discussion of lynching, and our two partner on the
Speaker 1: Wilmington's queue of was also informed by her investigative reporting
Speaker 1: in her anti lynching campaign, I W. Wells Barnett fought
Speaker 1: against lynching for decades, and this on its own would
Speaker 1: be remarkable, but she also lived at a time when
Speaker 1: it was not common at all for a woman, especially
Speaker 1: a woman of color, to become a prominent journ list
Speaker 1: and speaker in this way, and then doing this work
Speaker 1: also meant that she had to speak out very candidly
Speaker 1: about violence and about rape. Discussing rape at all was
Speaker 1: a huge taboo, but it was especially taboo coming from
Speaker 1: a woman, and for a substantial part of her career
Speaker 1: she was an unmarried woman, so it was even more taboo.
Speaker 1: And that is all why we are talking about her today.
Speaker 1: Ida B. Wells Barnett was born Ida Bell Wells in
Speaker 1: Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July six, eighteen sixty two. She
Speaker 1: was the oldest child of James Wells, who was known
Speaker 1: as Jim, and Elizabeth Warrenton, who was known as Lizzie,
Speaker 1: and they were both enslaved, so Ida was enslaved from birth.
Speaker 1: Jim and Lizzie both worked for a man named Spiers Bawling.
Speaker 1: Jim was owned by another man, but had been hired
Speaker 1: out to Bawling for an apprenticeship in carpentry. The American
Speaker 1: Civil War was ongoing when Ida was a baby, and
Speaker 1: part of Mississippi, where she and her parents lived, was
Speaker 1: no stranger to raids and skirmishes. The Emancipation Proclamation was
Speaker 1: issued on January one of eighteen sixty three, and while
Speaker 1: it technically freed her family and everyone else who was
Speaker 1: enslaved in Mississippi, slavery persisted until Mississippi surrendered on May
Speaker 1: fourth of eighteen sixty five, and probably beyond that point
Speaker 1: really um as word reached more outlying areas of what
Speaker 1: had happened. Once they were able to do so, Jim
Speaker 1: and Lizzie Wells made their marriage legal. The young Ida
Speaker 1: Wells was too young to remember the earliest years of reconstruction,
Speaker 1: but in general life was really difficult for the freed people.
Speaker 1: It was also chaotic as politicians and social reformers tried
Speaker 1: to work out what to do about the formerly enslaved
Speaker 1: population and the social and economic conditions that slavery had caused.
Speaker 1: But the Wells Is had a couple of advantages. Jim's
Speaker 1: owner had also been his father, and Jim had no siblings,
Speaker 1: and being his own ER's only child came with some privileges,
Speaker 1: including an education. For a time after the end of
Speaker 1: the war, the Wells has continued to work for Spires Bowling.
Speaker 1: But then Bawling told Jim to vote for the Democratic
Speaker 1: candidate in the upcoming election, and Jim had no intention
Speaker 1: of doing this. As we've talked about before, the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party at this point was mostly made up of wealthy
Speaker 1: white slave owners. He intended to vote for the radical
Speaker 1: Republican candidate. He came back from the polls to find
Speaker 1: that his employer had locked him out of the workplace.
Speaker 1: The fact that Jim and Lizzie Wells were skilled workers
Speaker 1: rather than manual laborers, made it easier for them to
Speaker 1: find other work. Lizzie and her children also enrolled in school.
Speaker 1: The family also became politically active, and Ida's father became
Speaker 1: a member of the board at Rust College, then known
Speaker 1: as Shaw College, where Ida would go on to study.
Speaker 1: Ida learned quickly, and she read voraciously, including reading the
Speaker 1: Bible all the way through, which was the only reading
Speaker 1: that was allowed in the Wells home on Sundays. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight, Idawell's life changed dramatically. She went to
Speaker 1: visit her grandparents on their farm, and while she was
Speaker 1: away from home, a yellow fever epidemic spread to Memphis.
Speaker 1: At first, when they heard about this outbreak, Ida and
Speaker 1: her grandparents weren't particularly concerned. Memphis had dealt with yellow
Speaker 1: fever before, and outbreaks had never made it as far
Speaker 1: from there as Holly Springs, which was roughly fifty miles
Speaker 1: or eight kilometers away. People also blamed yellow fever on
Speaker 1: miasmas or bad swamp air, so they thought Holly Springs
Speaker 1: was protected by being on the highest ground in the area.
Speaker 1: So instead of calling for a quarantine, officials in Holly
Speaker 1: Springs offered refuge to Memphis residents who were fleeing the illness.
Speaker 1: But yellow fever is really transmitted by mosquitoes, not by
Speaker 1: swamp vapor, so once people arrived in Holly Springs carrying
Speaker 1: the illness, it spread rapidly. Holly Springs had a population
Speaker 1: of about three thousand, five hundred people, and more than
Speaker 1: four hundred of them contracted the disease. More than three
Speaker 1: hundred people died. This included both of Ida's parents, and
Speaker 1: as soon as she and her grandparents learned what had happened,
Speaker 1: she took a freight train back to Holly Springs. She
Speaker 1: went against the advice of basically everyone. Everyone was telling
Speaker 1: her that it was way too dangerous. There were not
Speaker 1: even any passenger trains that were running, which was why
Speaker 1: she was on a freight train in the first place.
Speaker 1: But there was nobody else to look after her siblings,
Speaker 1: and by the time she got back home, her baby
Speaker 1: brother had also died. Ida's father had been a Mason,
Speaker 1: in his Masonic brothers came to the family's aid. They
Speaker 1: started talking about dividing up the Wells children, sending them
Speaker 1: to live with other families in ones and two's. Ida's sister,
Speaker 1: Eugenia was of special concern. She was paralyzed from the
Speaker 1: waist down due to severe scoliosis. Ida was in the
Speaker 1: room for this conversation, but she wasn't really consulted about
Speaker 1: these decisions, and she finally told her father's Masonic brothers
Speaker 1: that they were not going to send any of her
Speaker 1: siblings anywhere, that her parents would be spinning in their
Speaker 1: graves if they heard that their children had been split up.
Speaker 1: She said that if the Masons helped her find a job,
Speaker 1: that she would look after all of her siblings. With that,
Speaker 1: she became both the breadwinner and the head of household.
Speaker 1: She and her siblings had two legal guardians, but i'da
Speaker 1: got a job as a teacher so that she could
Speaker 1: raise and support her five younger siblings. She was only
Speaker 1: sixteen at this point. Ida b Wells kept up her
Speaker 1: studies while she worked as a teacher and raised her siblings.
Speaker 1: Her job was at a rural school, so she had
Speaker 1: to travel back and forth to it by mule. She
Speaker 1: also started taking college courses at Rust College. Although she
Speaker 1: was expelled from the school in eighteen eighty one or
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty two. The details of exactly why are not known,
Speaker 1: but she wrote about losing her temper with the teachers
Speaker 1: and speaking to them with hateful words. In eighteen eight one,
Speaker 1: when she was nineteen, one of Welles's aunts invited her
Speaker 1: and her two youngest sisters to move to Memphis. By
Speaker 1: this point, her brothers had both been placed in apprenticeships
Speaker 1: and Eugenia had gone to live with another aunt. And
Speaker 1: this offer gave the Wells sisters the chance to move
Speaker 1: to a bigger city with more opportunities, and it gave
Speaker 1: Item more freedom to pursue her own education and career
Speaker 1: since her aunt would be helping to look after her sisters.
Speaker 1: It was in Memphis that she really started to become
Speaker 1: politically active, which we will talk about after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: After moving to Memphis, I had to be Wells continued
Speaker 1: to work as a teacher. She had a job in Woodstock, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: which was not all that far away. She traveled back
Speaker 1: and forth to it by train. She was very carefully
Speaker 1: trying to build a middle class life for herself and
Speaker 1: her sisters, stretching her teacher's pay to cover things like
Speaker 1: ice dresses, in a comfortable place for them to live,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that she spent her money
Speaker 1: on was on first class tickets in the Ladies car.
Speaker 1: Whenever she traveled by train. The ladies car was more
Speaker 1: comfortable than the second class cars, which were called smokers.
Speaker 1: The Lady's car was quieter and it had more comfortable seats,
Speaker 1: and since she was a young, petite, attractive woman traveling alone,
Speaker 1: it was also just safer. She had been going back
Speaker 1: and forth from Memphis to Woodstock for two years without
Speaker 1: incident in the ladies car, and then in three she
Speaker 1: was traveling back to Memphis from Holly Springs on the Chesapeake,
Speaker 1: Ohio and Southwest Railroad. The conductor came to take her
Speaker 1: ticket and told her that she would have to move
Speaker 1: to the smoker's car. Wells refused. She had bought a
Speaker 1: ticket and she was, as was clear by her dress,
Speaker 1: her demeanor, and behavior, a lady. The conductor insisted that
Speaker 1: she would have to move, and even went so far
Speaker 1: as to move her luggage and belong longings into the
Speaker 1: forward car, expecting her to follow them. When she stayed
Speaker 1: where she was, he came back and attempted to remove
Speaker 1: her bodily from her seat. She once again refused to move.
Speaker 1: She was, as we said, a petite woman. She braced
Speaker 1: herself against the seat to keep this man from dragging
Speaker 1: her away, and when he kept man handling her, she
Speaker 1: bit him. Ultimately, Wells was forcibly removed from the train
Speaker 1: with both sleeves torn out of her linen duster, and
Speaker 1: when she got back to Memphis, she filed suit against
Speaker 1: the railroad. She was removed from the ladies car a
Speaker 1: second time before that suit had even been settled, so
Speaker 1: she filed another one. This is kind of on a
Speaker 1: cusp of segregation by race on railroads, Like it was
Speaker 1: a lot more common to have a ladies car that
Speaker 1: women could pay additional you know, in an upgraded fair
Speaker 1: to sit in, and all the cars were all the
Speaker 1: other cars were just kind of a mix, and it
Speaker 1: was becoming more formalized to instead have have trained cars
Speaker 1: segregated by race. Since this was sort of in the
Speaker 1: interim of that that changeover happening. So a circuit court
Speaker 1: found in I. Toby Wells favor under the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Act of eighteen seventy five, and she was awarded five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in the first case and two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: in the second case. But the railroad appealed the decision
Speaker 1: and the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned that ruling in seven.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court's assertion was that Wells had only filed
Speaker 1: the suit in the first place to harass the train company,
Speaker 1: and that her actions were quote not in good faith
Speaker 1: to obtain a comfortable seat for a short ride. That
Speaker 1: is infuriating. Uh. Wells was devastated, and it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the loss of the case, it was what that law signified,
Speaker 1: especially since she had been taking this legal action pretty
Speaker 1: much on her own, without the help of any civil
Speaker 1: rights organizations or the greater Black community of Memphis. Her
Speaker 1: case wound up being one of the ones on the
Speaker 1: road to Plessy versus Ferguson, which we have covered on
Speaker 1: the show before, in which the U. S. Supreme Court
Speaker 1: ruled that racial segregation was constitutional. This whole experience inspired
Speaker 1: Wells to become more politically vocal. While she was still
Speaker 1: working as a teacher, she started working as a journalist
Speaker 1: as well, under the pen name of Iola. She wrote
Speaker 1: about civil rights, and she wrote about social issues, and
Speaker 1: she was eventually nicknamed Iola Princess of the Press. By
Speaker 1: the end of the eighteen eighties, Wells had already written
Speaker 1: a prolific body of newspaper columns. She also purchased a
Speaker 1: one third share in the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty nine, and eventually she and one of
Speaker 1: the other co owners, J. L. Fleming, bought out their
Speaker 1: third partner and they owned and ran the Free Speech together.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety one, Wells wrote an article that was
Speaker 1: critical of the Memphis School Board, and her teaching contract
Speaker 1: was not renewed. She then turned her attention to journal
Speaker 1: is um full time, and soon the focus of her
Speaker 1: journalism turned to lynching. The catalyst was the May nine
Speaker 1: lynching of Calvin McDowell, Thomas Moss, and Henry Stewart in Memphis.
Speaker 1: They had been arrested and charged with maintaining a public
Speaker 1: nuisance while trying to defend themselves and a grocery store
Speaker 1: called the People's Grocery from an armed white mob. McDowell
Speaker 1: was the store's manager, Stewart was the clerk, and Moss
Speaker 1: was the president of the joint stock company that owned
Speaker 1: the store. This incident started with a group of black
Speaker 1: and white children playing marbles near the store. A fight
Speaker 1: broke out after a black child won all the marbles.
Speaker 1: A white man came out and beat the child who
Speaker 1: had won the game, and a group of black men
Speaker 1: attempted to intervene. A white mob formed in retaliation bent
Speaker 1: on destroying the people's grocery. One of the white instigators
Speaker 1: actually owned a competing grocery store. Yeah, they definitely had
Speaker 1: it in their minds to run a grocery store out
Speaker 1: of business and to hurt or kill its owners. So
Speaker 1: after McDowell, Moss, and Stewart were jailed on the public
Speaker 1: nuisance charged, an armed militia of black men tried to
Speaker 1: stand guard outside of the jail. Was a known risk
Speaker 1: if a black man was in jail for something that
Speaker 1: a white mob could come and take him out of
Speaker 1: that jail and harm him, so they were standing guard,
Speaker 1: but eventually the sheriff ordered them to disperse and confiscated
Speaker 1: all of their weapons. After they were gone, a crowd
Speaker 1: of white men, as they had feared, came to the jail.
Speaker 1: They took McDowell, Moss, and Stewart to a field outside
Speaker 1: of town and shot all of them. Wells knew all
Speaker 1: of these men. She was friends with Tom Moss, and she,
Speaker 1: along with the rest of the black population, was terrified,
Speaker 1: especially since the sheriff secured a court order authorizing him
Speaker 1: to shoot any black person who seemed to be causing
Speaker 1: trouble on site, even though men this had passed a
Speaker 1: law banning the sale of firearms to its black population.
Speaker 1: Wells bought a pistol, and she carried it in her purse.
Speaker 1: But she also recognized that that pistol was only going
Speaker 1: to go so far to defend her and the pages
Speaker 1: of the Free Speech. She became one of the many
Speaker 1: black voices urging the rest of the black population to
Speaker 1: leave Memphis. There was actually a mass exodus out of Memphis,
Speaker 1: was big enough that it's set off an economic crisis
Speaker 1: as black business owners and laborers fled the city. After
Speaker 1: this incident, Wells began researching, investigating, and writing about lynching.
Speaker 1: This was the work that she would pursue for most
Speaker 1: of the rest of her life. Almost immediately this work
Speaker 1: led to Wells being threatened with lynching herself. On two
Speaker 1: she published an article in The Free Speech that started
Speaker 1: out with a statement that eight men had already been
Speaker 1: lynched in the span of just a week. Five of
Speaker 1: them had been accused of rape. She went on to write, quote,
Speaker 1: no but in this section of the country believes the
Speaker 1: old threadbare lie that negro men rape white women. If
Speaker 1: Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves,
Speaker 1: and public sentiment will have a reaction. A conclusion will
Speaker 1: then be reached which will be very damaging to the
Speaker 1: moral reputation of their women. This was basically the same
Speaker 1: argument that would appear in the Wilmington's Daily Record in
Speaker 1: that these rape allegations were stemming from consensual relationships between
Speaker 1: black men and white women. That was the article that
Speaker 1: was used as justification for the Wilmington's coup and the
Speaker 1: mass racist violence that followed it, and Wells's article sparked
Speaker 1: similar outrage, although it did not launch a massacre. A
Speaker 1: few days later, a white paper called the Daily Commercial
Speaker 1: responded to wells article, and here's a quote quote. The
Speaker 1: fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and
Speaker 1: utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is of volvolume of
Speaker 1: evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites. But
Speaker 1: we have had enough of it. Similar sentiments ran in
Speaker 1: other papers, and a mob of people convened at the
Speaker 1: Cotton Exchange Building in Memphis intending to lynch both co
Speaker 1: owners of the Free Speech but Wells had gone to
Speaker 1: Philadelphia to attend the African Methodist Episcopal Churches General Conference,
Speaker 1: and from there she went on a trip to New
Speaker 1: York rather than returning to Memphis. J. L. Fleming had
Speaker 1: also left town for fear of his life. While Wells
Speaker 1: and Fleming survived, the Free speech didn't. The mobs sacked
Speaker 1: its offices and destroyed all of their equipment and furniture.
Speaker 1: After this incident, Wells followed her own advice and she
Speaker 1: left Memphis. She didn't even go back to try to
Speaker 1: get her belongings. We will talk about her life after
Speaker 1: leaving Memphis after a sponsor break. Even though I to
Speaker 1: B Wells left Memphis behind, she did not back down
Speaker 1: in her writing against lynching. After all of this happened,
Speaker 1: she published a response to what had happened in the
Speaker 1: New York Age on June nine two, and then a
Speaker 1: lot of that response became her pamphlet, Southern Horrors Lynch
Speaker 1: Law in all its phases. This pamphlet is one of
Speaker 1: the most well known of her many many written works.
Speaker 1: It started with a letter of praise from Frederick Douglas
Speaker 1: saying of his own efforts related to lynching quote, I
Speaker 1: have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison to
Speaker 1: quickly recamp. Lynching is the extra judicial murder of someone
Speaker 1: who has been accused of a crime or other wrongdoing.
Speaker 1: Between eighteen eighty two and nineteen sixty eight, there were
Speaker 1: more than four thousand recorded lynchings in the United States.
Speaker 1: More than seventy percent of the victims were black, and
Speaker 1: many of the white victims were civil rights workers or
Speaker 1: other people who tried to defend black citizens. Most of
Speaker 1: these happened in the South, and they were away to
Speaker 1: terrorize the black community and violently reinforced white supremacy. By
Speaker 1: the time Ida B. Wells started her anti lynching work,
Speaker 1: a false idea had been well established within the white community,
Speaker 1: and that idea was that black men were raping white
Speaker 1: women and that lynching was necessary to discourage these rapes.
Speaker 1: Wells tackled this idea head on, countering that there were
Speaker 1: consensual relationships between black men and white women like we
Speaker 1: alluded to before the break. She wrote, quote, hundreds of
Speaker 1: such cases might be cited, but enough have been given
Speaker 1: to prove the assertion that there are white women in
Speaker 1: the South who love the Afro Americans company, even as
Speaker 1: there are white men notorious for their preference for Afro
Speaker 1: American women. She also documented multiple instances of the same pattern,
Speaker 1: a black man at used of a crime, then removed
Speaker 1: from his jail cell by a white mob who murdered
Speaker 1: him and desecrated his body. She wrote about the disenfranchisement
Speaker 1: of the black population in the South through racist voting
Speaker 1: laws and how that was contributing to the problem, and
Speaker 1: she picked apart how white newspapers were participants in this
Speaker 1: violence as well, repeating the same unproven and sometimes completely
Speaker 1: fabricated allegations about the victims of lynching as though they
Speaker 1: were fact, often using racist and sensationalized language to do it,
Speaker 1: and Southern horrors. Wells also wrote about the need for
Speaker 1: the black community to protect itself since no one else
Speaker 1: was willing to do it, writing quote, the lesson this teaches,
Speaker 1: and which every Afro American should ponder well, is that
Speaker 1: a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in
Speaker 1: every black home, and it should be used for that
Speaker 1: protection which the law refuses to give. She made the
Speaker 1: point that this wasn't about the law. The people carried
Speaker 1: out these lynchings were not interested in punishing all alleged
Speaker 1: rapists only the black ones. Lynch mobs weren't operating within
Speaker 1: any kind of legal framework, and they were celebrating the
Speaker 1: murders they committed with things like postcards depicting the hanged
Speaker 1: and desecrated bodies of the victims. After the publication of
Speaker 1: Southern Horrors, Wells spent some time in New York City,
Speaker 1: and then she went to the United Kingdom for an
Speaker 1: anti lynching lecture tour. She wrote about her travels in
Speaker 1: a dispatch called inter Ocean, including how, for the first time,
Speaker 1: en route to Britain, white passengers treated her with quote
Speaker 1: the courtesy they would have offered to any lady of
Speaker 1: their own race. But she also remarked that some of
Speaker 1: them seemed to be courteous to her in order to
Speaker 1: shock the other white people around them. Wells returned from
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom to take part in a boycott and
Speaker 1: protest of the World's Colombian Exposition in eight three, also
Speaker 1: known as the Chicago World's Fair. As we've talked about
Speaker 1: on the show before, these fairs were celebrations of a
Speaker 1: very particular aspect of American progress, that being white progress.
Speaker 1: The Chicago World's Fair left black Americans almost entirely out
Speaker 1: of its exhibitions, and what representations there were were demeaning. Also,
Speaker 1: apart from janitors, porters and laborers, the fair only had
Speaker 1: two black employees, both of them were clerks. So I. T. B. Wells,
Speaker 1: Frederick Douglas, F. L. Barnett, and Jay Carlin Penn published
Speaker 1: a pamphlet called The Reason Why the Colored American Is
Speaker 1: Not in the World's Columbian Exposition, which was basically an
Speaker 1: explainer written for fair attendees with an introduction in English, French,
Speaker 1: and German. It walked through the many social and political
Speaker 1: issues affecting the black population, and then it detailed a
Speaker 1: lengthy back and forth with organizers, basically going back and
Speaker 1: forth about including black people in the fair that showed
Speaker 1: discrimin nation against the black community at every step. Ferdinand
Speaker 1: Lee Barnett, co author of this pamphlet, attorney and founder
Speaker 1: of Chicago's first black newspaper, would go on to be
Speaker 1: Wells's husband. It's not clear exactly when they met or
Speaker 1: how their courtship began. Wells had from her teenage years
Speaker 1: had lots of suitors, and by her thirties she was
Speaker 1: frustrated that she was not yet married. And the fact
Speaker 1: that she wasn't caused a lot of suspicion about her morals.
Speaker 1: Black women were heavily stereotyped as promiscuous, and Wells's work
Speaker 1: meant she was often in the company of men, so
Speaker 1: she had to constantly defend herself against malicious gossip. Some
Speaker 1: of this was like malicious gossip published in newspapers as fact,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just people talking about her behind her back.
Speaker 1: For a time, this courtship was long distance. Wells returned
Speaker 1: to the UK and eighteen ninety four to continue her
Speaker 1: anti lynching tour. She was really finding a much more
Speaker 1: receptive audience to her work in the UK than in
Speaker 1: the US. She helped found the British Anti Lynching Committee,
Speaker 1: which started launching other anti lynching groups and working with
Speaker 1: British clergy to get their American colleagues on board. Ida B.
Speaker 1: Wells and Ferdinand Barnett married on June when Wells was
Speaker 1: thirty two. She was so well known by this point
Speaker 1: that The New York Times mentioned her wedding in a
Speaker 1: small feature at the bottom of the front page. That's
Speaker 1: suspicion and criticism of her personal life that had been
Speaker 1: going on while she was single. Didn't really stop after
Speaker 1: Wells Barnett's marriage, though other activists, including Susan b. Anthony,
Speaker 1: criticized her for getting married. Susan b Anthony basically told
Speaker 1: her she shouldn't be messing around with some man when
Speaker 1: she had important work to do. But unlike a lot
Speaker 1: of the white women who were activists and were choosing
Speaker 1: not to marry, Wells Barnett did not come from money
Speaker 1: or have other family to help support her in her work.
Speaker 1: She also just wanted to be married and to have children.
Speaker 1: She and Frederick had each found in one another a
Speaker 1: partner that they could trust and who could work with
Speaker 1: and support the other and the civil rights work that
Speaker 1: they were both doing, and their marriage was not exactly conventional.
Speaker 1: Wells Barnett hyphenated her last name rather than taking her husband's,
Speaker 1: and her work and travel did slow down a little
Speaker 1: bit as she raised children. She and Ferdinand had four
Speaker 1: kids together, and he had too from his marriage to
Speaker 1: his late first wife, but she did not stop working,
Speaker 1: and sometimes she traveled to speaking engagements with the babies
Speaker 1: and a nurse. Wells Barnett continued her anti lynching campaign
Speaker 1: for much of the rest of her life, and she
Speaker 1: also advocated for other causes. She called for a kindergarten
Speaker 1: in Chicago that would enroll black children. She was part
Speaker 1: of the movement for women's suffrage, and in addition to
Speaker 1: investigating and spreading awareness of the lynching of black men,
Speaker 1: she did the same for lynching, ray and sexual assault
Speaker 1: of black women. She also butted heads with a lot
Speaker 1: of other leaders in these spaces. She was described as difficult, headstrong, stubborn, temperamental,
Speaker 1: and prickly. She helped found multiple civil rights organizations, but
Speaker 1: she often didn't become an ongoing member. In the face
Speaker 1: of these personality conflicts, many of which were likely due
Speaker 1: to the fact that she was not behaving as was
Speaker 1: expected of a woman. Gets pretty well agreed upon that
Speaker 1: if she had been a man, a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that people criticized her for would have instead been
Speaker 1: seen as assets. She also called out both black and
Speaker 1: white activists for their complicity or their missteps. This included
Speaker 1: ongoing disagreements with Booker T. Washington, whose work was a
Speaker 1: lot more focused on the idea of giving black citizens
Speaker 1: the tools and education to help themselves, not on advocating
Speaker 1: for changes to the law or aggressively fighting back against injustice.
Speaker 1: She really saw his approach as to conciliatory and too
Speaker 1: tolerant of white racism, and she finally cut ties with
Speaker 1: him after he refused to denounce a particularly horrifying lynching.
Speaker 1: She also called out past podcast subject Jane Adams. On
Speaker 1: January third, nineteen o one, Adams published an essay in
Speaker 1: The Independent called Respect for the Law. This essay clearly
Speaker 1: and definitively condemned lynching, but it also gave the people
Speaker 1: perpetrating these crimes a lot of the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1: She wrote, quote, let us assume that the Southern citizens
Speaker 1: who take part in and a bet the lynching of
Speaker 1: negroes honestly believe that it is the only successful method
Speaker 1: of dealing with a certain class of crimes. And later
Speaker 1: she went on to write, quote, let us give the
Speaker 1: Southern citizens the full benefit of this position, and assume
Speaker 1: that they have set aside trial by jury and all
Speaker 1: processes of law because they have become convinced that this
Speaker 1: brutal method of theirs is the most efficient method in
Speaker 1: dealing with a peculiar case of crime committed by one
Speaker 1: race against another. Jane Adams, in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: when it came to to to racism and racial discrimination,
Speaker 1: like a lot. In a lot of ways she was
Speaker 1: really progressive, and this was not a case where she
Speaker 1: was really progressive, and you know, I'd be Wells Barnett
Speaker 1: knew her and worked with her they were both living
Speaker 1: in Chicago. She published a rebuttal on May sixt So
Speaker 1: Wells Barnett started out by praising Jane Adams and saying
Speaker 1: that she was reluctant to diminish the impact of what
Speaker 1: Adams had done. Adams was a well known, well respected
Speaker 1: white woman who was condemning lynching, and she was doing
Speaker 1: so with a dispassionate and logical argument. So this just
Speaker 1: was not something that most white leaders in the United
Speaker 1: States were doing. So Wells Barnett made it clear that
Speaker 1: if every white activist wrote a similar essay, the nation
Speaker 1: would be in a much better place. But from there,
Speaker 1: Wells Barnett directly criticized the assumption that Adams had rested
Speaker 1: her argument on. She pointed out that giving the perpetrators
Speaker 1: of lynching the benefit of the doubt, as quote doing
Speaker 1: what was best, was dangerous and damaging. She also picked
Speaker 1: apart once again the idea that the victims of lynching
Speaker 1: had committed rape, using the Chicago Tribunes annual lynching statistics
Speaker 1: to back up what she was saying. Wells Barnett was
Speaker 1: present at the founding of the Double A c P
Speaker 1: and at its first meetings she gave a talk called
Speaker 1: Lynching Our National Crime, which incorporated her, at that point,
Speaker 1: almost twenty years of research and advocacy. To sum it up, quote, first,
Speaker 1: lynching is color line murder. Second, crimes against women is
Speaker 1: the excuse, not the cause. And third, it is a
Speaker 1: national crime and requires a national remedy. So, although she
Speaker 1: did continue to participate in the Double A CPS work
Speaker 1: at various points, she wasn't listed as an official founder,
Speaker 1: and she eventually distanced herself from that organization. In spite
Speaker 1: of Wells Barnett's lifelong work, there was no national remedy
Speaker 1: for lynching. Although some states passed laws against lynching, Southern
Speaker 1: Democrats blocked efforts to pass laws at the national level.
Speaker 1: The protections Wells Barnett was fighting for we're finally included,
Speaker 1: at least on paper, in the Civil Rights Act of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. By that point, Wills Barnett had been
Speaker 1: dead for more than thirty years. She died on March
Speaker 1: thirty one, at the age of sixty nine. At the
Speaker 1: time of her depths, she had been working on her autobiography,
Speaker 1: which she started on about three years before. She was
Speaker 1: motivated in part to write this autobiography by attending a
Speaker 1: Negro History Week event in Chicago. They were discussing a
Speaker 1: book by Carter G. Woodson, who was one of the
Speaker 1: first scholars of black history like that was becoming a field,
Speaker 1: and he's recognized as one of the first people doing
Speaker 1: this work. His book that he had written on a
Speaker 1: topic made no mention of her anti lynching work at all,
Speaker 1: and she realized that if she wanted her life and
Speaker 1: work to be documented, she was going to have to
Speaker 1: do it herself. Her youngest daughter, ALFREDA. Duster, edited this autobiography,
Speaker 1: which is called Crusade for Justice, and it was published
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy and the book came out just as
Speaker 1: there was an increasing focus on both black history and
Speaker 1: women's history in the United States. It helped bring Wells
Speaker 1: Barnet's work and accomplishments back to the forefront of the
Speaker 1: national consciousness. Yeah and those decades between her death and
Speaker 1: when the book came out, she she kind of faded
Speaker 1: in the background. She wasn't included in a lot of
Speaker 1: discussion about black history. Today, there is an Ida B.
Speaker 1: Wells Barnett Museum at the Spirous Bowling House. The IDB.
Speaker 1: Wells Barnett House in Chicago is a private residence, but
Speaker 1: it's also a National Historical Landmark. And the National Memorial
Speaker 1: for Peace and Justice, which is a memorial to the
Speaker 1: victims of lynch, ng and racist terror, opened on April
Speaker 1: teen in Montgomery, Alabama. And we will end with a
Speaker 1: quote that sums up both what made her such a
Speaker 1: force to be reckoned with and why people describe her
Speaker 1: with words like prickly. That makes me angry, but I
Speaker 1: also know that people describe me with words like prickly,
Speaker 1: So I feel like a tiny bit of kinship with her,
Speaker 1: although she is far beyond my abilities Anyway. In nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine, a man had been lynched in Cairo, Illinois,
Speaker 1: and according to a nineteen o four Illinois in Illinois law,
Speaker 1: a sheriff whose prisoner was lynched had to be removed
Speaker 1: from his position and then he had to apply for reinstatement.
Speaker 1: So the sheriff who was involved with this lynching. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he was directly involved, but the man
Speaker 1: had been taken from his jail while he was the
Speaker 1: person in charge. UH he had applied for reinstatement, and
Speaker 1: Wells Barnett went to Cairo and successfully got that application
Speaker 1: for reinstatement denied. So the Springfield Forum had this to
Speaker 1: say on December eleven of that year. Quote, Ida Wells
Speaker 1: Barnett is to be highly lauded for her courage and magnanimity.
Speaker 1: She towers high above all of her male contemporaries and
Speaker 1: has more of the aggressive qualities than the average man.
Speaker 1: It belittles the men to some extent to have a
Speaker 1: woman come forward to do the work that is naturally
Speaker 1: presumed to be that of men. But Mrs Barnett never
Speaker 1: shrinks or evades. She is a heroine of her age,
Speaker 1: and the nation is better off for her having lived
Speaker 1: in it. Long live Mrs Ida b Wells Barnett. I
Speaker 1: love that quote. Thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 1: today for this Saturday classic. If you have heard any
Speaker 1: kind of email address or maybe a Facebook you are
Speaker 1: l during the course of the episode that might be
Speaker 1: obsole leap. It might be doubly obsolete because we have
Speaker 1: changed our email address again. You can now reach us
Speaker 1: at history podcasts at i heart radio dot com, and
Speaker 1: we're all over social media at missed in History, and
Speaker 1: you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts,
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.