July 16, 2020 • 10 mins
Journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born on this day in 1862. / On this day in 1854, Elizabeth Jennings was forcefully removed from a segregated streetcar in New York.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. We're doubling up today with two
events in history, one from me and one from former
host Tracy V. Wilson on with the show. Welcome to
this day in History Class. It's July six. Idabe Wells
Barnett was born on this day in eighteen sixty two,
(00:20):
and let me tell you, Ida b Wells Barnett never
gave up. She was enslaved from birth, born to enslaved parents,
and marriages between enslaved people weren't legally recognized. But after
the end of the Civil War, her parents got their
marriage formalized. They made sure that Ida and her siblings
got an education that was incredibly important to both of them.
(00:44):
Her mother actually enrolled in school as well, so that
she could educate herself, give herself the education she had
not been allowed while enslaved. But then, when she was sixteen,
both of Idabe Wells parents died in a yellow fever epidemic.
She was away visiting her grandparents at the time, everybody
tried to stop her from going back home. There weren't
(01:04):
even any passenger trains running because the epidemic was so bad.
She took a freight train back to her hometown of
Holly Springs, Mississippi, to look after her surviving siblings. Her
baby brother had actually also died by the time she
got there, and when she heard her father's brothers from
the Masonic Lodge talking about how they were going to
(01:24):
split up the children and take them in groups of
ones and two's I to be well, said no, they
were not. She refused to let them do that. She
said that if her father's brothers from the Masonic Lodge
helped her find a job, she would take care of
all of her siblings. She was sixteen years old, she
got a job as a teacher. She didn't give up
(01:45):
pursuing her own education, though she kept up with that
while she was studying. After a while, she moved to
Memphis with her two youngest sisters. That was one and
she kept working as a teacher. She had to commute
back and forth by train for this job, and after
doing this for about two years without incident, she was
on her way back from a trip to Holly Springs
one day when a conductor told her she would have
(02:05):
to leave the ladies car. She refused she had paid
for a first class ticket on the Ladies car. The
conductor insisted, and she refused again, so he took her
baggage to the forward car, expecting that she would follow
her stuff if he moved it, but she did not.
She again refused to move, so he tried to remove
her bodily from her seat. She dug in and then
(02:28):
bit him. Ultimately, she was removed from the train by force,
and she wound up filing not one, but two lawsuits
about it. The first one wasn't even settled when she
was taken off the train again. This is one of
the things that led her to become more politically active.
She started a career in journalism under the pen name
of Iola, and then three men that she knew were
lynched in Memphis. They had been trying to defend their
(02:50):
grocery store against a white mob. She started focusing a
lot of her writing and a lot of her investigative
journalism on lynching. She was calling attention to how many
black men were being murdered for alleged crimes totally outside
of the law. A lynch Bob actually formed to come
after her and the co owner of the newspaper that
she was running. She was actually out of town at
(03:11):
the time. She did not even go back to Memphis
to try to get her belongings after this happened, but
once again she did not back down. Investigating lynching became
the work that she would pursue for the rest of
her life. She mounted a huge anti lynching crusade that
involved multiple trips across the Atlantic Ocean to the United Kingdom.
(03:32):
Even though Southern legislators blocked several attempts to pass federal
anti lynching legislation, she never abandoned this work and she
kept it going after she married Ferdinand Lee Barnett on June.
Although her work did slow down a little bit as
she had and raised children, it didn't stop. People had
criticized her for not being married before she got married.
(03:55):
She was thirty two at the time of her marriage,
and now they criticized her for getting married. Based was
saying that she had important work to do and she
didn't need to be wasting time on a marriage and children.
But number one, she wanted to get married and have children.
Number Two, she and her husband had found in each
other someone who could help them with the work that
(04:16):
they were doing and actually make it more possible for
them to be able to do it. Late in Wells
Barnette's life. She went to a Negro History Week event
where the speaker had written a book on the subject.
The field of Negro history was just forming and would
of course later become Black history. This book did not
mention her or her anti lynching campaign at all, so
she once again refused to give up and got to
(04:37):
work writing her own autobiography so that there would be
a record of what she had done. Her daughter edited
this book and had it published after her death. It
came out in nineteen seventy. Idobe Wells died on March twenty,
nineteen thirty one, at the age of sixty nine. And
you can learn more about Idob Wells Barnett on the
Stuff He Missed in History Class episode from June four.
(04:59):
And you can subscribe up to the Stay in History
Class on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts and whatever else you
get your podcasts. Tune in tomorrow for a famous mass execution.
Greetings everyone, welcome to this day in History Class, where
(05:21):
we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.
The day was July six, eighteen fifty four. On her
way to church, Elizabeth Jennings attempted to board a street
car that did not allow black passengers on it, which
(05:42):
was permitted sometimes. When no passengers objected, so the conductor
said he would not allow her to board, she insisted
that she board. The standoff between Elizabeth and the conductor
ended with the conductor and the driver forcefully removing her
from the street car. This incident and the child that
followed became news across the United States, and the railroad
(06:03):
company that operated the street cars began integrating them. Elizabeth
Jennings was from a middle class family in New York.
Her parents were engaged in their communities. Her father, Thomas Jennings,
was the first black man to receive a patent. He
helped found philanthropic organizations like the Wilberforce Society and the
New York African Society for Mutual Relief. He helped establish
(06:26):
the first black owned and operated newspaper in the US.
Elizabeth's mother, also named Elizabeth, was active in the Female
Literary Society of New York. Young Elizabeth and her siblings
were well educated, despite the limited access black children had
to schooling in New York at the time. Elizabeth grew
up in a segregated New York at a time when
(06:48):
slavery was still legal in the United States, but her
parents activism influenced her early on. She was a teacher
and a church organist. On July sif before, Jennings was
running late on her way to the first Colored American
and Congregational church, where she was the organist. The street
cars were segregated and the cars for black people came
(07:11):
less frequently than the ones for white people, so Elizabeth
tried to board the whites only Third Avenue street car,
but the conductor refused to let her board. Elizabeth told
the conductor she was trying to get to church on time.
When the conductor stuck to his refusal, she said she
would wait on that car until the next one that
took black passengers came. The next car was full, so
(07:35):
Elizabeth stayed, but the driver was tired of waiting, so
Elizabeth was allowed to board. Elizabeth commented that she was
quote a respectable person born and erased in New York,
and told the conductor that he was quote a good
for nothing, impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while on
their way to church. This set the conductor over the edge.
(07:57):
He pulled Elizabeth's friend Sarah off the street car and
physically forced Elizabeth out. She tried to hold onto a
window sash as the conductor and driver dragged her from
the car to the platform. Determined to ride, Elizabeth got
back onto the car. The conductor told the driver to
drive until they got to an officer or police station.
They found an officer who listened to the conductor's account
(08:19):
of what happened, but not Elizabeth. Elizabeth ended up walking home.
She wrote down what happened, and her father took what
she wrote to leaders in the community, including Frederick Douglas.
People helped raise money so Elizabeth could get an attorney.
Just three days after Elizabeth was removed from the street car,
(08:40):
the New York Daily Tribune ran a story on the incident.
Chester A. Arthur, who had only been practicing law for
a little over a month, was hired to be Elizabeth's attorney.
He fouled a suit on behalf of Elizabeth Jennings in
the State Supreme Court seeking damages from the conductor, driver,
and Third Avenue Railway Company. In February of eighteen fifty five.
(09:02):
She was awarded two and twenty five dollars in damages
plus ten percent for court costs. The judge said that
the company was quote bound to carry all respectable persons,
that colored persons, if sober, well behaved, and free from disease,
had the same rights as others. Companies in New York
began desegregating their street cars, largely because of the potential
(09:24):
for lawsuits if they didn't. Racial discrimination on public transportation
wasn't outlawed in New York City until the Civil Rights
Act of eighteen seventy three went into effect. Tester Arthur,
Elizabeth's lawyer, became the President of the United States in
eighteen eighty one after James Garfield was assassinated. Elizabeth Jennings Graham,
(09:44):
as she was called after she married in eighteen sixty,
later opened the first free kindergarten for black children in
New York. She died in nineteen o one. I'm Eve
Jeff Coote, and hopefully you know a little more about
history today than you did yes your day. And if
you'd like to learn more about Elizabeth Jennings, you can
listen to an episode of stuff you missed in history
(10:06):
class called Elizabeth Jennings Graham. The link is in the description.
Keep up with us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at
t d I h C podcast. Thanks again for listening,
and we'll see you tomorrow. For more podcasts from I
(10:30):
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. We're doubling up today with two
events in history, one from me and one from former
host Tracy V. Wilson on with the show. Welcome to
this day in History Class. It's July six. Idabe Wells
Barnett was born on this day in eighteen sixty two,
(00:20):
and let me tell you, Ida b Wells Barnett never
gave up. She was enslaved from birth, born to enslaved parents,
and marriages between enslaved people weren't legally recognized. But after
the end of the Civil War, her parents got their
marriage formalized. They made sure that Ida and her siblings
got an education that was incredibly important to both of them.
(00:44):
Her mother actually enrolled in school as well, so that
she could educate herself, give herself the education she had
not been allowed while enslaved. But then, when she was sixteen,
both of Idabe Wells parents died in a yellow fever epidemic.
She was away visiting her grandparents at the time, everybody
tried to stop her from going back home. There weren't
(01:04):
even any passenger trains running because the epidemic was so bad.
She took a freight train back to her hometown of
Holly Springs, Mississippi, to look after her surviving siblings. Her
baby brother had actually also died by the time she
got there, and when she heard her father's brothers from
the Masonic Lodge talking about how they were going to
(01:24):
split up the children and take them in groups of
ones and two's I to be well, said no, they
were not. She refused to let them do that. She
said that if her father's brothers from the Masonic Lodge
helped her find a job, she would take care of
all of her siblings. She was sixteen years old, she
got a job as a teacher. She didn't give up
(01:45):
pursuing her own education, though she kept up with that
while she was studying. After a while, she moved to
Memphis with her two youngest sisters. That was one and
she kept working as a teacher. She had to commute
back and forth by train for this job, and after
doing this for about two years without incident, she was
on her way back from a trip to Holly Springs
one day when a conductor told her she would have
(02:05):
to leave the ladies car. She refused she had paid
for a first class ticket on the Ladies car. The
conductor insisted, and she refused again, so he took her
baggage to the forward car, expecting that she would follow
her stuff if he moved it, but she did not.
She again refused to move, so he tried to remove
her bodily from her seat. She dug in and then
(02:28):
bit him. Ultimately, she was removed from the train by force,
and she wound up filing not one, but two lawsuits
about it. The first one wasn't even settled when she
was taken off the train again. This is one of
the things that led her to become more politically active.
She started a career in journalism under the pen name
of Iola, and then three men that she knew were
lynched in Memphis. They had been trying to defend their
(02:50):
grocery store against a white mob. She started focusing a
lot of her writing and a lot of her investigative
journalism on lynching. She was calling attention to how many
black men were being murdered for alleged crimes totally outside
of the law. A lynch Bob actually formed to come
after her and the co owner of the newspaper that
she was running. She was actually out of town at
(03:11):
the time. She did not even go back to Memphis
to try to get her belongings after this happened, but
once again she did not back down. Investigating lynching became
the work that she would pursue for the rest of
her life. She mounted a huge anti lynching crusade that
involved multiple trips across the Atlantic Ocean to the United Kingdom.
(03:32):
Even though Southern legislators blocked several attempts to pass federal
anti lynching legislation, she never abandoned this work and she
kept it going after she married Ferdinand Lee Barnett on June.
Although her work did slow down a little bit as
she had and raised children, it didn't stop. People had
criticized her for not being married before she got married.
(03:55):
She was thirty two at the time of her marriage,
and now they criticized her for getting married. Based was
saying that she had important work to do and she
didn't need to be wasting time on a marriage and children.
But number one, she wanted to get married and have children.
Number Two, she and her husband had found in each
other someone who could help them with the work that
(04:16):
they were doing and actually make it more possible for
them to be able to do it. Late in Wells
Barnette's life. She went to a Negro History Week event
where the speaker had written a book on the subject.
The field of Negro history was just forming and would
of course later become Black history. This book did not
mention her or her anti lynching campaign at all, so
she once again refused to give up and got to
(04:37):
work writing her own autobiography so that there would be
a record of what she had done. Her daughter edited
this book and had it published after her death. It
came out in nineteen seventy. Idobe Wells died on March twenty,
nineteen thirty one, at the age of sixty nine. And
you can learn more about Idob Wells Barnett on the
Stuff He Missed in History Class episode from June four.
(04:59):
And you can subscribe up to the Stay in History
Class on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts and whatever else you
get your podcasts. Tune in tomorrow for a famous mass execution.
Greetings everyone, welcome to this day in History Class, where
(05:21):
we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.
The day was July six, eighteen fifty four. On her
way to church, Elizabeth Jennings attempted to board a street
car that did not allow black passengers on it, which
(05:42):
was permitted sometimes. When no passengers objected, so the conductor
said he would not allow her to board, she insisted
that she board. The standoff between Elizabeth and the conductor
ended with the conductor and the driver forcefully removing her
from the street car. This incident and the child that
followed became news across the United States, and the railroad
(06:03):
company that operated the street cars began integrating them. Elizabeth
Jennings was from a middle class family in New York.
Her parents were engaged in their communities. Her father, Thomas Jennings,
was the first black man to receive a patent. He
helped found philanthropic organizations like the Wilberforce Society and the
New York African Society for Mutual Relief. He helped establish
(06:26):
the first black owned and operated newspaper in the US.
Elizabeth's mother, also named Elizabeth, was active in the Female
Literary Society of New York. Young Elizabeth and her siblings
were well educated, despite the limited access black children had
to schooling in New York at the time. Elizabeth grew
up in a segregated New York at a time when
(06:48):
slavery was still legal in the United States, but her
parents activism influenced her early on. She was a teacher
and a church organist. On July sif before, Jennings was
running late on her way to the first Colored American
and Congregational church, where she was the organist. The street
cars were segregated and the cars for black people came
(07:11):
less frequently than the ones for white people, so Elizabeth
tried to board the whites only Third Avenue street car,
but the conductor refused to let her board. Elizabeth told
the conductor she was trying to get to church on time.
When the conductor stuck to his refusal, she said she
would wait on that car until the next one that
took black passengers came. The next car was full, so
(07:35):
Elizabeth stayed, but the driver was tired of waiting, so
Elizabeth was allowed to board. Elizabeth commented that she was
quote a respectable person born and erased in New York,
and told the conductor that he was quote a good
for nothing, impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while on
their way to church. This set the conductor over the edge.
(07:57):
He pulled Elizabeth's friend Sarah off the street car and
physically forced Elizabeth out. She tried to hold onto a
window sash as the conductor and driver dragged her from
the car to the platform. Determined to ride, Elizabeth got
back onto the car. The conductor told the driver to
drive until they got to an officer or police station.
They found an officer who listened to the conductor's account
(08:19):
of what happened, but not Elizabeth. Elizabeth ended up walking home.
She wrote down what happened, and her father took what
she wrote to leaders in the community, including Frederick Douglas.
People helped raise money so Elizabeth could get an attorney.
Just three days after Elizabeth was removed from the street car,
(08:40):
the New York Daily Tribune ran a story on the incident.
Chester A. Arthur, who had only been practicing law for
a little over a month, was hired to be Elizabeth's attorney.
He fouled a suit on behalf of Elizabeth Jennings in
the State Supreme Court seeking damages from the conductor, driver,
and Third Avenue Railway Company. In February of eighteen fifty five.
(09:02):
She was awarded two and twenty five dollars in damages
plus ten percent for court costs. The judge said that
the company was quote bound to carry all respectable persons,
that colored persons, if sober, well behaved, and free from disease,
had the same rights as others. Companies in New York
began desegregating their street cars, largely because of the potential
(09:24):
for lawsuits if they didn't. Racial discrimination on public transportation
wasn't outlawed in New York City until the Civil Rights
Act of eighteen seventy three went into effect. Tester Arthur,
Elizabeth's lawyer, became the President of the United States in
eighteen eighty one after James Garfield was assassinated. Elizabeth Jennings Graham,
(09:44):
as she was called after she married in eighteen sixty,
later opened the first free kindergarten for black children in
New York. She died in nineteen o one. I'm Eve
Jeff Coote, and hopefully you know a little more about
history today than you did yes your day. And if
you'd like to learn more about Elizabeth Jennings, you can
listen to an episode of stuff you missed in history
(10:06):
class called Elizabeth Jennings Graham. The link is in the description.
Keep up with us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at
t d I h C podcast. Thanks again for listening,
and we'll see you tomorrow. For more podcasts from I
(10:30):
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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