July 2, 2019 • 26 mins
From 1882 to 1968, more than 4,700 people were lynched in the United States, most of them Black. They were lynched for attempting to vote. Lynched for seeming suspicious. Basically, it didn’t take much for a mob to deem the murder of a Black person necessary, and the lynching itself was often the white community’s idea of a good old-fashioned gathering.
Ida B. Wells, an investigative journalist and activist born in the South, used words to break down the myths that white people used to justify lynching and exposed the brutal practice for what it truly was – racial terrorism designed to spread fear and limit Black power.
Wells died less than a century ago. The importance of her research, organizing, and activism can’t be overstated, especially considering the profound and detrimental effect lynching has left on law enforcement, criminal justice, race relations, and Black lives in the United States.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Just a quick warning before we start the show. There
is sensitive content in this episode about racial terrorism and lynching,
so if there are young ears around, please take that
into consideration. My partner, my friend, and I drove over
to Montgomery, Alabama to visit the Legacy Museum and the
(00:25):
National Memorial for Peace and Justice, or as it's better known,
the National Lynching Memorial. As we walked through the memorial,
America's legacy of racial terrorism and extra judicial murder literally
hung over our heads like a dark cloud. We passed
beneath the names of thousands of black people in America
(00:47):
who died as victims of lynching, the memory of their
lives engraved on still sculptures that seemed so heavy, so monumental,
that they could fall on us at any moment, but
they weren't going to the United States has a tendency
not to reckon with the horrors of its past. There's
a good chance the lynching epidemic will continue to be
(01:09):
thought of as a stain on the fabric of American
history or a fortunate part of America's past, depending on
your perspective, rather than an institutional, ill and shape shifting
social monster that remains part of our national consciousness. Somehow
people think lynching should be left in the past, and
(01:30):
that having a lynching memorial is just pouring salt on
old wounds. Yet we're still having conversations about whether Confederate
statues need to be taken down anyway. What these critics
fail to realize, or what they choose to ignore, is
that lynching continued into the twenty one century, though numbers
(01:52):
have decreased. I'm only about three generations removed from the
time when lynching was at its peak in the United
States at the end of the eighteen hundreds, and the
extra judicial killing of black people persists to this day.
Lynching was just declared a federal hate crime in I
(02:13):
will not be the one to pretend that mob violence
and mandated murder based on race has no effect on
the American psyche and systems. And that's not to mention
how many black people had their futures ripped away from
them and lost their ability to build families because lynching
black people for doing things like standing around was just
(02:35):
how it was. There is no justification for these murders
that could stand up to a test of logic or justice.
White folks gathered to watch black bodies hang, gazing in
glee and reveling in white supremacy as they watched the
life drain out of adults and children alike, their limp
corpses swaying gently from a tree branch. Sometimes victims were
(03:02):
dragged behind cars. Sometimes the lynched were castrated before they
were killed. Mothers, police officers, teachers, and other supposedly upstanding
members of the community attended lynching parties. When Henry Smith
was accused of raping and murdering a white girl in
three he was paraded around town on a float, then
(03:25):
tortured with hot irons soaked with kerosene, then set on
fire in front of a crowd of thousands. After he died,
people grabbed pieces of his burned body as keepsakes, and
photographs of the lynching were sold as postcards. If you
live in the United States, you might already know the
(03:46):
history of the country's lynchings. If you don't, you may
be familiar with a history of extra judicial punishment and
murder present in your country's history. But I give you
these brutal images to remind you how normal and it
accepted it was in America to lynch black people, to
inspire fear in their hearts, maintain a system of racial
(04:07):
supremacy and inferiority, and rich society of perceived undesirables. I
cannot downplay the horrifying regularity of unjust killings based on
skin color, and how often they were committed for petty
crimes or no crimes at all. To stand against lynch
(04:28):
ings and to call attention to the injustice of white
mob violence was to oppose with the oppressive majority considered
right and fair. But as journalists and anti lynching activists,
Ida Bell Wills Barnett once wrote, the way to right
wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
(04:52):
I'm Eve Jeff Coote and This is Unpopular a podcast
about the people in history who didn't let the threat
of persecution keep m from speaking truth to power. Today
we turn our attention to the story of Ida B. Wells,
a pioneer in journalism who was extremely famous in America
and at the same time was on many folks most
(05:13):
hated list. Ida Bell Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi,
on July six, eighteen sixty two, just half a year
before you, as President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Her mother was named Elizabeth Bell Wells and her father
was named James Wells, and she was the oldest child
(05:36):
out of eight siblings, including one child who died not
long after birth. But as the United States went through
a huge transitional period, so did Ida's family. James, a carpenter,
started his own business in eighteen sixty seven and became
involved in reconstruction, politics, and education, and Elizabeth was a cook.
(05:58):
Ida attended Shaw University now called Rust College, a school
founded for formerly enslaved black people, where her father served
on the first board of trustees. Ida was an avid reader,
soaking up the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Alcott, and Bronte.
But just after Ida turned sixteen in eighteen seventy eight,
(06:20):
Ida's parents and her infant brother, Stanley, died of yellow
fever as an epidemic struck the area. At that point.
Ida refused to let her siblings get split up, and
she began taking care of her brothers and sisters and
got a job as a teacher in a rural school
about six miles outside of Holly Springs. But her time
(06:41):
in Holly Springs after her parents death was rough and
Even in these years of early adulthood, Ida was the
target of townsfolks derision. When she was seen asking Dr. D. H.
Gray for the money her father had entrusted to the
children before he died. People in the town began questioning
her motives for choosing to take care of the family
(07:03):
and spreading rumors that she was sexually involved with the doctor.
On top of the slander, Ida had to stay with
local families while she taught outside of Holly Springs during
the week days, and she came home to a boatload
of housework on the weekends, and her sister Eugenia died.
Then her grandmother, who took care of her siblings while
(07:23):
she was away, had a stroke. In the early eighteen eighties,
Ida welcomed and escaped from life in Holly Springs. She
moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with her two youngest sisters to
live with an aunt. She began teaching in Tennessee, and
she started taking summer classes at Fisk University in Nashville.
(07:44):
Ida was already outspoken, but it was during her early
years in Tennessee when Ida's activism got a lot of attention.
On May four, four, she wrote a first class rail
car traveling from Memphis to Woodstock, where she taught at
a public school. Even though she had purchased a ticket
for the so called ladies car, the conductor ordered Ida
(08:06):
out of the coach, telling her it was for white
people only and that she needed to go to the
smoke Field colored car. The Civil Rights Act of eighteen
seventy five had made equal treatment on public transportation the law,
but in October eighty three, the U. S. Supreme Court
decided that the parts of the Act prohibiting discrimination in
(08:27):
public places was unconstitutional. This meant that the idea of
separate but equal accommodations was effectively legal pre Plussy versus Ferguson. Still,
Ida refused to move, digging her feet into the seat
in front of her, and scratching and biting the conductor,
but she ended up leaving the train early. When she
(08:49):
got back to Memphis, she hired black attorney Thomas Castle's
then white attorney James Greer to sue the Chesapeake and
Ohio Railroad Company. I'DA went to trial in circuit court,
where Greer argued that the railroad company violated Tennessee statutes
that said railroad companies could not charge black people first
(09:12):
class fairs and put them in second class cars, and
that required separate but equal accommodations. The judge ordered the
railway company to pay her five hundred dollars in damages,
saying the company had violated the separate but equal clause
by requiring black people to ride in a smoking car
that was not first class. The Tennessee Supreme Court later
(09:35):
overturned the decision, saying that she had been provided like
accommodations and that her intent was harassment rather than obtaining
a more comfortable seat on the trip. Wells had to
pay court costs. She wrote the following days later. I
felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things
(09:58):
from my suit for my p people. Generally, I firmly
believed all along that the law was on our side
and would, when we appealed to it, give us justice.
I feel shorn of that belief and utterly discouraged. And
just now, if it were possible, I would gather my
race in my arms and fly away with them. Oh God,
(10:20):
is there no redress, no peace, no justice in this
land for us? But it didn't take long for that
lamentation to turn into more advocacy for the rights of
black people in the Gym Crow era. She began writing
essays on black folks social conditions and reading them in public,
and she wrote about her activism. She became the secretary
(10:42):
of the Colored Press Association. She purchased ownership in the
radical weekly Free Speech and Headlight, and became its editor
in eighteen eighty nine. Under the pen name Iola, Ida
wrote about the injustices black people faced in the South,
and her articles were featured in black press around the country.
In eee, after Ida wrote an editorial that was critical
(11:04):
of the Memphis Board of Education and the lack of
resources in black schools, the board dismissed her from the
teaching post. Ida's controversial writings were making waves, and she
was not afraid of the blowbacks she might get for
her journalism. In that fearlessness, pursuit of truth, and dedication
to improving the lives of black people would start Ida
(11:27):
on a lifelong anti lynching crusade that earned her many enemies.
When we get back from the break, we'll look at
how well crafted words can expose truths and buried thoughts
and practices that are built on outdated and false foundations.
(11:54):
What is hashtag activism worth? Is it empty? Performance is
valuable solely for the awareness it spreads? Hashtag? What is
the hashtag? Hashtag? Or maybe I should ask what is
a hashtag worth on its own? And what is it worth?
When real world activism follows the hashtag, it's telling that
(12:17):
supporting a cause via hashtag alone can be a controversial act.
It only takes one hashtag me too, hashtag fake news,
or hashtag times up to draw out the animosity of
people who never reach out to you on social media
until it's time for an argument. A few letters typed
after the symbol formerly known as the pound sign, accompanied
(12:39):
by a short statement of advocacy for an issue has
enough impact to invoke an emotional response, and people around
the world have been arrested for their so called online activism,
detained for being critical of established institutions and people in power.
I'm using the term online activism loose, as all forms
(13:01):
of activism that begin online aren't the same, and the
internet is just another medium of communication that happens to
not have been around for hundreds or thousands of years.
It's tempting to consider the term in a dismissive way,
but here it's just a way of distinguishing a new
and developing platform and starting point for social change that
(13:23):
operates in ways only possible in contemporary times. It's clear
that online activism is a powerful tool and component of
social activism when it amplifies marginalized voices, allows for effective
organization and quick mobilizing, inspires collective action, and focuses on
educating people on the problem and the path toward progress.
(13:45):
Being able to use mediums as readily accessible as the
Internet and social media to enact justice can be empowering
to people who feel small and quiet when interacting with
established orders that have proven to be in effect to
been harmful. But there's also research that shows people who
participate in online activism may not actually engage in social
(14:08):
change beyond the Internet and only use hashtags to create
an illusion of concern, and that online activism can cause
people who are set in their ways to double down
on their stereotypes about activists and opinions on social issues.
Being emotionally affected alone just isn't enough. Social media activism
(14:30):
and internet virality are indispensable parts of the way knowledge
is spread and the way people form opinions on issues
they find compelling and important. I often think about how
long it took back in the day for news of disasters,
of war, of major events to spread, and I regret that,
despite how much access I have to world news, discoveries,
(14:54):
and changing science and theory, I'll still never be up
to day on everything. For artless, the words that are
being so widely and so quickly spread through hashtags and
articles have shown promise in their ability to uncover truths
that might otherwise be left untold to a worldwide audience.
Online activism can fill in major gaps left by traditional
(15:17):
international outlets, mainstream media, and dominant cultural conversations. It would
be misleading to imply that all activism that begins online
is positive, meaningful, smart, or worthwhile. But it would also
be unwise to understate the internet's capacity to shed light
on pervasive but unsolved problems and to challenge entrenched norms
(15:41):
through research and information sharing. The very frequent inquiry made
after my lectures by interested friends is what can I
do to help the cause. The answer always is tell
the world the facts. This is what Ida b Well
said in the pamphlet The Red Record, her eight texts
(16:02):
that detailed the escalating rates of racist violence in the
United States and the destruction of lynching. After reconstruction, many
white folks desired a return to the old order and
worked hard to stifle Black progress. That was often done
through law, but a return to that old order was
also pursued through the murder of black people who threatened
(16:25):
white social status and cultural and economic dominance. In eight two,
Ida was in Natchez, Mississippi, when she found out that
Tom Moss, her goddaughter's father, was lynched. A white mob
shot and discarded Moss in two of his colleagues, will
(16:46):
Stewart and Calvin McDowell. And Memphis, Tennessee. Moss owned People's Grocery,
a successful store in a mixed race neighborhood called the Curve.
In the week leading up to the lynching, a fight
out side of People's Grocery among black and white people.
Rumors around black people in the Curve planning a conspiracy
(17:06):
against the white people, and a shootout at People's Grocery
that injured several white men escalated racial tensions in the city.
A white grocery owner named William Barrett was threatened by
the success of the store. This outlook was not uncommon
among white people who faced economic competition from black folks
and had no problem was turning to violence to turn
(17:29):
the tides in their favor. While Moss, McDowell, and Stewart
were being held at the Shelby County Jail, a mob
dragged the three of them out of their cells, took
them to a railroad yard, and shot them to death.
(17:51):
The harrowing incident left a mark on Ida. She began
to investigate lunchings, determined to debunk the myth that the
extra legal killing of people was justified because they had
raped white women or committed some other brutal act of
violence against white people. In free speech, Ida urged black
people to leave Memphis and move west. Some who stayed
(18:14):
in Memphis boycotted white businesses, as well as traveled throughout
the South on a crusade to document the true events
that led to lynchings. She collected accounts that were not
retaliation for crimes, but were vicious instances of white people
meeting out death to preserve perceived white supremacy and save
(18:35):
themselves from social embarrassment. Black people were being lynched for
so much as existing lynchings were part of the long
game built on false accusations that served to reinforce the
stereotype of black people as uncontrollable monsters. They were a
grand lie. Nobody in this section of the country believed
(18:58):
the old, thread bare lie that negro men rape white women.
Wells wrote in an editorial in the Free Speech two
months after the People's grocery lynchings, if Southern white men
are not careful, there will overreach themselves, and public sentiment
will have a reaction, and a conclusion will be reached
which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of
(19:19):
their women. The horror, Well, at least that's what southern
white folks and white people who supported lynching thought about
the editorial. Not only did the editorial prompt many indignant
and outraged responses from locals and other newspaper editorials, but
it put Ida on many people's lists of ne'er do Wells.
(19:40):
She was already a target of hate for her critical
writings and did not hesitate to carry a pistol. But
once she insulted the morality of white women and called
attention to the injustice of lynching, an angry mob took
it upon themselves to burn down the Free Speech Building
and destroy the printing press. Wells was in New York
(20:02):
when she heard the news, and as her life was threatened,
she knew that it was entirely too dangerous to go
back to Tennessee. So she took a job with the
New York Age and continued to expose the truth of
lynching through her journalism, a cause she would take on
for the rest of her life. Let's Take a Quick
Break In Wells published a pamphlet called Southern Horrors Lynch
(20:38):
Law in All its Phases. Three years later, she published
The Red Record, in which she meticulously covered the crime
of lynching throughout the United States and how the reasons
for his proliferation were unfounded. Through the use of carefully
gathered facts, information from white sources in the South, and
statistics from the Chicago Tribune, Wells provide did undeniable evidence
(21:01):
that the narrative of lynchings driven by insatiable black lust
and in humanity was fiction, and as part of her
anti lynching campaign, she urged her readers to educate others
and revolutionized public sentiment to encourage religious leaders to condemn
lynchings and to show white Southerners how it was beneficial
(21:22):
to refuse to invest capital and places where lawlessness and
mob violence ruled. As she continued to compile data about
lynching cases and break down the myth of black men
as sexual predators, as she toured Britain and gained an
international audience that included white people. As she received endless
props from Frederick Douglas for her work, Americans made clear
(21:46):
their resentment of Ida and her dedication to a meticulously
researched analysis of the lynching record that included white people
who believe black folks deserved to be lynch in higher
class black folks who were eager to maintain their social
positions and not stir the pot. Wells was pegged by
many as irrational, emotional, too radical, and dangerous. The New
(22:10):
York Times called her quote a slanderous and nasty minded
mulattress who does not scruple to represent the victims of
black fruits in the South as willing victims. But despite
the attacks on her character and threats on her life,
Wells put up other fights that got her labeled as
an adversary. She turned to black civil rights, helping found
(22:31):
the n Double a CP. She reported on race riots
and spoke out against school of segregation. She advocated for
women's suffrage, particularly that of black women, and founded the
Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago. At the time, many white
suffragists were still intent on upholding white power structures and
(22:51):
maintained prevailing ideologies on the natural savagery and inferiority of
black people. The U. S Government even put her under
valance for inciting quote a great deal of interracial antagonism
with her writing on the East St. Louis massacres of
nineteen seventeen, and a spy once called her a far
(23:12):
more dangerous agitator than Marcus Garvey. Ida and her husband,
Ferdinand Lee Barnett, once supported Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association.
The government denied Wells a passport when she was nominated
as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of nineteen nineteen.
To say that Ida's body of work was in opposition
(23:32):
to contemporary norms is to say the least. She was
well known, but she was subversive and widely denounced for it.
Though the work she did to challenge conventions of the
day was dangerous, Wells considered it necessary to share with
the world the truth of the atrocity of lynchings and
the perils of anti blackness and racism. Ida b Wells
(23:56):
once wrote the following the Afro American, It's not a
b sal race. If this work can contribute in any
way toward proving this and at the same time aroused
the conscience of the American people to demand for justice
to every citizen and punishment by law for the lawless,
I shall feel I have done my race a service.
(24:18):
Other considerations are of minor importance. Before her research into
the stories behind lynchings. Before her investigative journalism was published
and defied intentionally distorted historical records, the prevailing notion in
Why America was that lynchings were warranted. I'da died in
ninety one. Her legacy of civil rights activism is cemented
(24:43):
in the impact her journalism and activism left on her
contemporaries and future activists in academics and more literally, the
reflection space that honors her at the National Memorial for
Peace and Justice in Montgomery that said, the state sanctioned
extra judicial killings of black people is an issue Americans
are still grappling with. Ida b. Wells is crusade to
(25:06):
take on lynching and other race issues at a time
when speaking up as a black woman was so risky.
Can be viewed as a model for confronting questionable and
harmful practices today. Through her words, calls to action, and
personal activism, she was able to rock the foundation of
a system of racial terrorism that seemed impossible to move.
(25:29):
Considering the effectiveness of Ida's work, there is no reason
to dismiss the potential for online activism to inspire social change.
Through her personal experience with slavery and lynching and her
impassioned research into the reality of black persecution in the US,
she opened eyes to the importance of pursuing truth rather
(25:50):
than thoughtlessly trusting the falsified balance presented in lynching accounts.
It's not crazy to think that someone's words could help
inspire such a drastic change and thought expose new truths
and mobilized movements today, even when they seem outrageous and inconceivable.
(26:13):
We'll see you again next week for another episode of Unpopular.
Our producer is Andrew Howard, Holly Fry and Christopher Hasiotis
are our executive producers, and if you want to reach
out to us, if you have any suggestions for people
to cover, or if you just generally want to vent.
You can reach us at Unpopular at i heart media
(26:34):
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Unpopular Show, on Twitter at Underscore Unpopular Show, and on
Facebook at this is Unpopular. And you can subscribe to
the show on Apple Podcasts, the I heart Radio app,
or wherever you get your podcast
Just a quick warning before we start the show. There
is sensitive content in this episode about racial terrorism and lynching,
so if there are young ears around, please take that
into consideration. My partner, my friend, and I drove over
to Montgomery, Alabama to visit the Legacy Museum and the
(00:25):
National Memorial for Peace and Justice, or as it's better known,
the National Lynching Memorial. As we walked through the memorial,
America's legacy of racial terrorism and extra judicial murder literally
hung over our heads like a dark cloud. We passed
beneath the names of thousands of black people in America
(00:47):
who died as victims of lynching, the memory of their
lives engraved on still sculptures that seemed so heavy, so monumental,
that they could fall on us at any moment, but
they weren't going to the United States has a tendency
not to reckon with the horrors of its past. There's
a good chance the lynching epidemic will continue to be
(01:09):
thought of as a stain on the fabric of American
history or a fortunate part of America's past, depending on
your perspective, rather than an institutional, ill and shape shifting
social monster that remains part of our national consciousness. Somehow
people think lynching should be left in the past, and
(01:30):
that having a lynching memorial is just pouring salt on
old wounds. Yet we're still having conversations about whether Confederate
statues need to be taken down anyway. What these critics
fail to realize, or what they choose to ignore, is
that lynching continued into the twenty one century, though numbers
(01:52):
have decreased. I'm only about three generations removed from the
time when lynching was at its peak in the United
States at the end of the eighteen hundreds, and the
extra judicial killing of black people persists to this day.
Lynching was just declared a federal hate crime in I
(02:13):
will not be the one to pretend that mob violence
and mandated murder based on race has no effect on
the American psyche and systems. And that's not to mention
how many black people had their futures ripped away from
them and lost their ability to build families because lynching
black people for doing things like standing around was just
(02:35):
how it was. There is no justification for these murders
that could stand up to a test of logic or justice.
White folks gathered to watch black bodies hang, gazing in
glee and reveling in white supremacy as they watched the
life drain out of adults and children alike, their limp
corpses swaying gently from a tree branch. Sometimes victims were
(03:02):
dragged behind cars. Sometimes the lynched were castrated before they
were killed. Mothers, police officers, teachers, and other supposedly upstanding
members of the community attended lynching parties. When Henry Smith
was accused of raping and murdering a white girl in
three he was paraded around town on a float, then
(03:25):
tortured with hot irons soaked with kerosene, then set on
fire in front of a crowd of thousands. After he died,
people grabbed pieces of his burned body as keepsakes, and
photographs of the lynching were sold as postcards. If you
live in the United States, you might already know the
(03:46):
history of the country's lynchings. If you don't, you may
be familiar with a history of extra judicial punishment and
murder present in your country's history. But I give you
these brutal images to remind you how normal and it
accepted it was in America to lynch black people, to
inspire fear in their hearts, maintain a system of racial
(04:07):
supremacy and inferiority, and rich society of perceived undesirables. I
cannot downplay the horrifying regularity of unjust killings based on
skin color, and how often they were committed for petty
crimes or no crimes at all. To stand against lynch
(04:28):
ings and to call attention to the injustice of white
mob violence was to oppose with the oppressive majority considered
right and fair. But as journalists and anti lynching activists,
Ida Bell Wills Barnett once wrote, the way to right
wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
(04:52):
I'm Eve Jeff Coote and This is Unpopular a podcast
about the people in history who didn't let the threat
of persecution keep m from speaking truth to power. Today
we turn our attention to the story of Ida B. Wells,
a pioneer in journalism who was extremely famous in America
and at the same time was on many folks most
(05:13):
hated list. Ida Bell Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi,
on July six, eighteen sixty two, just half a year
before you, as President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Her mother was named Elizabeth Bell Wells and her father
was named James Wells, and she was the oldest child
(05:36):
out of eight siblings, including one child who died not
long after birth. But as the United States went through
a huge transitional period, so did Ida's family. James, a carpenter,
started his own business in eighteen sixty seven and became
involved in reconstruction, politics, and education, and Elizabeth was a cook.
(05:58):
Ida attended Shaw University now called Rust College, a school
founded for formerly enslaved black people, where her father served
on the first board of trustees. Ida was an avid reader,
soaking up the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Alcott, and Bronte.
But just after Ida turned sixteen in eighteen seventy eight,
(06:20):
Ida's parents and her infant brother, Stanley, died of yellow
fever as an epidemic struck the area. At that point.
Ida refused to let her siblings get split up, and
she began taking care of her brothers and sisters and
got a job as a teacher in a rural school
about six miles outside of Holly Springs. But her time
(06:41):
in Holly Springs after her parents death was rough and
Even in these years of early adulthood, Ida was the
target of townsfolks derision. When she was seen asking Dr. D. H.
Gray for the money her father had entrusted to the
children before he died. People in the town began questioning
her motives for choosing to take care of the family
(07:03):
and spreading rumors that she was sexually involved with the doctor.
On top of the slander, Ida had to stay with
local families while she taught outside of Holly Springs during
the week days, and she came home to a boatload
of housework on the weekends, and her sister Eugenia died.
Then her grandmother, who took care of her siblings while
(07:23):
she was away, had a stroke. In the early eighteen eighties,
Ida welcomed and escaped from life in Holly Springs. She
moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with her two youngest sisters to
live with an aunt. She began teaching in Tennessee, and
she started taking summer classes at Fisk University in Nashville.
(07:44):
Ida was already outspoken, but it was during her early
years in Tennessee when Ida's activism got a lot of attention.
On May four, four, she wrote a first class rail
car traveling from Memphis to Woodstock, where she taught at
a public school. Even though she had purchased a ticket
for the so called ladies car, the conductor ordered Ida
(08:06):
out of the coach, telling her it was for white
people only and that she needed to go to the
smoke Field colored car. The Civil Rights Act of eighteen
seventy five had made equal treatment on public transportation the law,
but in October eighty three, the U. S. Supreme Court
decided that the parts of the Act prohibiting discrimination in
(08:27):
public places was unconstitutional. This meant that the idea of
separate but equal accommodations was effectively legal pre Plussy versus Ferguson. Still,
Ida refused to move, digging her feet into the seat
in front of her, and scratching and biting the conductor,
but she ended up leaving the train early. When she
(08:49):
got back to Memphis, she hired black attorney Thomas Castle's
then white attorney James Greer to sue the Chesapeake and
Ohio Railroad Company. I'DA went to trial in circuit court,
where Greer argued that the railroad company violated Tennessee statutes
that said railroad companies could not charge black people first
(09:12):
class fairs and put them in second class cars, and
that required separate but equal accommodations. The judge ordered the
railway company to pay her five hundred dollars in damages,
saying the company had violated the separate but equal clause
by requiring black people to ride in a smoking car
that was not first class. The Tennessee Supreme Court later
(09:35):
overturned the decision, saying that she had been provided like
accommodations and that her intent was harassment rather than obtaining
a more comfortable seat on the trip. Wells had to
pay court costs. She wrote the following days later. I
felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things
(09:58):
from my suit for my p people. Generally, I firmly
believed all along that the law was on our side
and would, when we appealed to it, give us justice.
I feel shorn of that belief and utterly discouraged. And
just now, if it were possible, I would gather my
race in my arms and fly away with them. Oh God,
(10:20):
is there no redress, no peace, no justice in this
land for us? But it didn't take long for that
lamentation to turn into more advocacy for the rights of
black people in the Gym Crow era. She began writing
essays on black folks social conditions and reading them in public,
and she wrote about her activism. She became the secretary
(10:42):
of the Colored Press Association. She purchased ownership in the
radical weekly Free Speech and Headlight, and became its editor
in eighteen eighty nine. Under the pen name Iola, Ida
wrote about the injustices black people faced in the South,
and her articles were featured in black press around the country.
In eee, after Ida wrote an editorial that was critical
(11:04):
of the Memphis Board of Education and the lack of
resources in black schools, the board dismissed her from the
teaching post. Ida's controversial writings were making waves, and she
was not afraid of the blowbacks she might get for
her journalism. In that fearlessness, pursuit of truth, and dedication
to improving the lives of black people would start Ida
(11:27):
on a lifelong anti lynching crusade that earned her many enemies.
When we get back from the break, we'll look at
how well crafted words can expose truths and buried thoughts
and practices that are built on outdated and false foundations.
(11:54):
What is hashtag activism worth? Is it empty? Performance is
valuable solely for the awareness it spreads? Hashtag? What is
the hashtag? Hashtag? Or maybe I should ask what is
a hashtag worth on its own? And what is it worth?
When real world activism follows the hashtag, it's telling that
(12:17):
supporting a cause via hashtag alone can be a controversial act.
It only takes one hashtag me too, hashtag fake news,
or hashtag times up to draw out the animosity of
people who never reach out to you on social media
until it's time for an argument. A few letters typed
after the symbol formerly known as the pound sign, accompanied
(12:39):
by a short statement of advocacy for an issue has
enough impact to invoke an emotional response, and people around
the world have been arrested for their so called online activism,
detained for being critical of established institutions and people in power.
I'm using the term online activism loose, as all forms
(13:01):
of activism that begin online aren't the same, and the
internet is just another medium of communication that happens to
not have been around for hundreds or thousands of years.
It's tempting to consider the term in a dismissive way,
but here it's just a way of distinguishing a new
and developing platform and starting point for social change that
(13:23):
operates in ways only possible in contemporary times. It's clear
that online activism is a powerful tool and component of
social activism when it amplifies marginalized voices, allows for effective
organization and quick mobilizing, inspires collective action, and focuses on
educating people on the problem and the path toward progress.
(13:45):
Being able to use mediums as readily accessible as the
Internet and social media to enact justice can be empowering
to people who feel small and quiet when interacting with
established orders that have proven to be in effect to
been harmful. But there's also research that shows people who
participate in online activism may not actually engage in social
(14:08):
change beyond the Internet and only use hashtags to create
an illusion of concern, and that online activism can cause
people who are set in their ways to double down
on their stereotypes about activists and opinions on social issues.
Being emotionally affected alone just isn't enough. Social media activism
(14:30):
and internet virality are indispensable parts of the way knowledge
is spread and the way people form opinions on issues
they find compelling and important. I often think about how
long it took back in the day for news of disasters,
of war, of major events to spread, and I regret that,
despite how much access I have to world news, discoveries,
(14:54):
and changing science and theory, I'll still never be up
to day on everything. For artless, the words that are
being so widely and so quickly spread through hashtags and
articles have shown promise in their ability to uncover truths
that might otherwise be left untold to a worldwide audience.
Online activism can fill in major gaps left by traditional
(15:17):
international outlets, mainstream media, and dominant cultural conversations. It would
be misleading to imply that all activism that begins online
is positive, meaningful, smart, or worthwhile. But it would also
be unwise to understate the internet's capacity to shed light
on pervasive but unsolved problems and to challenge entrenched norms
(15:41):
through research and information sharing. The very frequent inquiry made
after my lectures by interested friends is what can I
do to help the cause. The answer always is tell
the world the facts. This is what Ida b Well
said in the pamphlet The Red Record, her eight texts
(16:02):
that detailed the escalating rates of racist violence in the
United States and the destruction of lynching. After reconstruction, many
white folks desired a return to the old order and
worked hard to stifle Black progress. That was often done
through law, but a return to that old order was
also pursued through the murder of black people who threatened
(16:25):
white social status and cultural and economic dominance. In eight two,
Ida was in Natchez, Mississippi, when she found out that
Tom Moss, her goddaughter's father, was lynched. A white mob
shot and discarded Moss in two of his colleagues, will
(16:46):
Stewart and Calvin McDowell. And Memphis, Tennessee. Moss owned People's Grocery,
a successful store in a mixed race neighborhood called the Curve.
In the week leading up to the lynching, a fight
out side of People's Grocery among black and white people.
Rumors around black people in the Curve planning a conspiracy
(17:06):
against the white people, and a shootout at People's Grocery
that injured several white men escalated racial tensions in the city.
A white grocery owner named William Barrett was threatened by
the success of the store. This outlook was not uncommon
among white people who faced economic competition from black folks
and had no problem was turning to violence to turn
(17:29):
the tides in their favor. While Moss, McDowell, and Stewart
were being held at the Shelby County Jail, a mob
dragged the three of them out of their cells, took
them to a railroad yard, and shot them to death.
(17:51):
The harrowing incident left a mark on Ida. She began
to investigate lunchings, determined to debunk the myth that the
extra legal killing of people was justified because they had
raped white women or committed some other brutal act of
violence against white people. In free speech, Ida urged black
people to leave Memphis and move west. Some who stayed
(18:14):
in Memphis boycotted white businesses, as well as traveled throughout
the South on a crusade to document the true events
that led to lynchings. She collected accounts that were not
retaliation for crimes, but were vicious instances of white people
meeting out death to preserve perceived white supremacy and save
(18:35):
themselves from social embarrassment. Black people were being lynched for
so much as existing lynchings were part of the long
game built on false accusations that served to reinforce the
stereotype of black people as uncontrollable monsters. They were a
grand lie. Nobody in this section of the country believed
(18:58):
the old, thread bare lie that negro men rape white women.
Wells wrote in an editorial in the Free Speech two
months after the People's grocery lynchings, if Southern white men
are not careful, there will overreach themselves, and public sentiment
will have a reaction, and a conclusion will be reached
which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of
(19:19):
their women. The horror, Well, at least that's what southern
white folks and white people who supported lynching thought about
the editorial. Not only did the editorial prompt many indignant
and outraged responses from locals and other newspaper editorials, but
it put Ida on many people's lists of ne'er do Wells.
(19:40):
She was already a target of hate for her critical
writings and did not hesitate to carry a pistol. But
once she insulted the morality of white women and called
attention to the injustice of lynching, an angry mob took
it upon themselves to burn down the Free Speech Building
and destroy the printing press. Wells was in New York
(20:02):
when she heard the news, and as her life was threatened,
she knew that it was entirely too dangerous to go
back to Tennessee. So she took a job with the
New York Age and continued to expose the truth of
lynching through her journalism, a cause she would take on
for the rest of her life. Let's Take a Quick
Break In Wells published a pamphlet called Southern Horrors Lynch
(20:38):
Law in All its Phases. Three years later, she published
The Red Record, in which she meticulously covered the crime
of lynching throughout the United States and how the reasons
for his proliferation were unfounded. Through the use of carefully
gathered facts, information from white sources in the South, and
statistics from the Chicago Tribune, Wells provide did undeniable evidence
(21:01):
that the narrative of lynchings driven by insatiable black lust
and in humanity was fiction, and as part of her
anti lynching campaign, she urged her readers to educate others
and revolutionized public sentiment to encourage religious leaders to condemn
lynchings and to show white Southerners how it was beneficial
(21:22):
to refuse to invest capital and places where lawlessness and
mob violence ruled. As she continued to compile data about
lynching cases and break down the myth of black men
as sexual predators, as she toured Britain and gained an
international audience that included white people. As she received endless
props from Frederick Douglas for her work, Americans made clear
(21:46):
their resentment of Ida and her dedication to a meticulously
researched analysis of the lynching record that included white people
who believe black folks deserved to be lynch in higher
class black folks who were eager to maintain their social
positions and not stir the pot. Wells was pegged by
many as irrational, emotional, too radical, and dangerous. The New
(22:10):
York Times called her quote a slanderous and nasty minded
mulattress who does not scruple to represent the victims of
black fruits in the South as willing victims. But despite
the attacks on her character and threats on her life,
Wells put up other fights that got her labeled as
an adversary. She turned to black civil rights, helping found
(22:31):
the n Double a CP. She reported on race riots
and spoke out against school of segregation. She advocated for
women's suffrage, particularly that of black women, and founded the
Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago. At the time, many white
suffragists were still intent on upholding white power structures and
(22:51):
maintained prevailing ideologies on the natural savagery and inferiority of
black people. The U. S Government even put her under
valance for inciting quote a great deal of interracial antagonism
with her writing on the East St. Louis massacres of
nineteen seventeen, and a spy once called her a far
(23:12):
more dangerous agitator than Marcus Garvey. Ida and her husband,
Ferdinand Lee Barnett, once supported Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association.
The government denied Wells a passport when she was nominated
as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of nineteen nineteen.
To say that Ida's body of work was in opposition
(23:32):
to contemporary norms is to say the least. She was
well known, but she was subversive and widely denounced for it.
Though the work she did to challenge conventions of the
day was dangerous, Wells considered it necessary to share with
the world the truth of the atrocity of lynchings and
the perils of anti blackness and racism. Ida b Wells
(23:56):
once wrote the following the Afro American, It's not a
b sal race. If this work can contribute in any
way toward proving this and at the same time aroused
the conscience of the American people to demand for justice
to every citizen and punishment by law for the lawless,
I shall feel I have done my race a service.
(24:18):
Other considerations are of minor importance. Before her research into
the stories behind lynchings. Before her investigative journalism was published
and defied intentionally distorted historical records, the prevailing notion in
Why America was that lynchings were warranted. I'da died in
ninety one. Her legacy of civil rights activism is cemented
(24:43):
in the impact her journalism and activism left on her
contemporaries and future activists in academics and more literally, the
reflection space that honors her at the National Memorial for
Peace and Justice in Montgomery that said, the state sanctioned
extra judicial killings of black people is an issue Americans
are still grappling with. Ida b. Wells is crusade to
(25:06):
take on lynching and other race issues at a time
when speaking up as a black woman was so risky.
Can be viewed as a model for confronting questionable and
harmful practices today. Through her words, calls to action, and
personal activism, she was able to rock the foundation of
a system of racial terrorism that seemed impossible to move.
(25:29):
Considering the effectiveness of Ida's work, there is no reason
to dismiss the potential for online activism to inspire social change.
Through her personal experience with slavery and lynching and her
impassioned research into the reality of black persecution in the US,
she opened eyes to the importance of pursuing truth rather
(25:50):
than thoughtlessly trusting the falsified balance presented in lynching accounts.
It's not crazy to think that someone's words could help
inspire such a drastic change and thought expose new truths
and mobilized movements today, even when they seem outrageous and inconceivable.
(26:13):
We'll see you again next week for another episode of Unpopular.
Our producer is Andrew Howard, Holly Fry and Christopher Hasiotis
are our executive producers, and if you want to reach
out to us, if you have any suggestions for people
to cover, or if you just generally want to vent.
You can reach us at Unpopular at i heart media
(26:34):
dot com. You can also follow us on Instagram at
Unpopular Show, on Twitter at Underscore Unpopular Show, and on
Facebook at this is Unpopular. And you can subscribe to
the show on Apple Podcasts, the I heart Radio app,
or wherever you get your podcast
Unpopular News
Host
Yves Jeffcoat
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