June 12, 2025 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, born into slavery during the Civil War, Ida B. Wells is best remembered as an American journalist who fought tirelessly against lynching during the Jim Crow era. What most people don’t know is that she also defended the right of African Americans to own firearms. Our regular contributor, Ashley Hlebinsky, shares her story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, the story of Ida B. Wells. Born into
slavery during the Civil War, she is best remembered as
an American journalist who fought tirelessly against lynching during the
(00:31):
Jim Crow era. Here to tell her story is our
frequent contributor, Ashley Lebinski. Take it away, Ashley.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
The name Ida B.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Wells is most often associated with Black American advocacy in
the post Civil War period. She has had a presence
that has extended all the way into modern day. But
it's kind of interesting to understand her entire story because
us a solid portion of that has been largely forgotten
(01:03):
by the American public. And that was that not only
was she a civil rights advocate, not only was she
an advocate for women's rights, but she also had a
lot to do with the Second Amendment advocacy in terms
of self defense and firearms training for African Americans.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Ida B.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Wells was born in eighteen sixty two in Holly Springs, Mississippi,
and she spent her first three years of life as
an enslaved person. But after the war, the family became
active in the Republican Party, so she was a part
of a family that were activists really from the start.
Once African Americans gained their freedom, she attended Rust College
for a little bit, but she ended up having to
(01:41):
take care of her family because her parents and her
brother died in eighteen seventy eight from yellow fever, so
she had.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Several other siblings.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
She decided to get a job teaching school in order
to help support their family, and they ultimately moved to Memphis, Tennessee,
to be near an aunt, so to be a near
a new family.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Her advocacy story really starts.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Because of a legal battle involving a ticket that she
purchased for a train ride.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
She was taking a train ride into the.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
City, and so she decided that she wanted to buy
a first class ticket for herself, but the train company,
because of laws at the time, the train company was
allowed to segregate the carts, and so they told her
that despite the fact that she was able to buy
the first class car, that she was going to have
to move and she refused and was physically removed from
the train, and so this started a legal battle that
(02:31):
she ultimately settled with the train company, and then two
years later the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned her victory. So
she definitely got the shaft in that scenario, and that
inspired really the beginning of her work and what she's
more well known for, which is journalism. So she started
bringing attention to African American issues in America in the
(02:52):
post Civil War period, but also specifically.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
In the post Civil War South. She became editor and co.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Owner of a Memphis paper which was known as The
Free Speed Each and Headlight, and she initially was writing
under a pen name, which was kind of a smart
idea for a while because she was bringing up so
many difficult issues that she was ultimately fired from her
teaching job, so she went kind of full time in
a journalism and activism. Now she's known for African American
(03:18):
activism in general, but her Second Amendment advocacy really got started.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
And took off by the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
And there's a really famous quote that she has, and
I'm actually going to read the entirety of the quote
rather than the one line that you often hear from
any kind of gun rights group. But she really thought
that African Americans needed to learn and train in self defense,
because at that point in time she really felt that
the government was not there to protect her, and there
was a lot of instances where that was the case.
(03:44):
And so one of the most famous things that she
wrote was called Southern Horrors, and within this in the
eighteen nineties she wrote, of the many inhuman outrages of
this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching
did not occur was where the men are themselves in Jacksonville, Florida,
and Patica, Kentucky, and prevented it. The only times an
(04:05):
Afro American who has assaulted got away has been when
he had a gun and used it in self defense.
The lesson this teaches in which every Afro American should
ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a
place of honor in every black home, and it should
be used for that protection which.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
The law refuses to give.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
When the white man, who is always the aggressor, knows
he runs at great risk of biting the dust every
time his Afro American victim does, he will have greater
respect for Afro American life. The more the Afro American
yields and cringes and begs. The more he has to
do so, the more he has insulted, outraged.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And lynched.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
So a lot of times when you hear kind of
this quote from I to b Wells, you only hear
the part about the Winchester rifle, but it comes within
a much larger context.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And this attitude that she has in.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
The eighteen nineties, it's personal tour, and I'll talk about
that in a second. But at the same time, she
is really going off of cent tres long tradition in
American culture and American history of firearms laws that are
overtly racist. So to give kind of a perspective is
even dating to the colonies. So before the creation of
(05:13):
the United States of America, there were laws specifically regulating
race and ethnic groups from owning firearms. So it wasn't
like you had to guess the interpretation of the law.
The law specifically said that, you know, you could not
sell guns to Native Americans, you could not sell guns
to African Americans. And some of these laws were so
intense that if you were caught selling to one of
(05:35):
these groups, then you actually could be sentenced to death,
and there were several cases of that happening. But what
happens around the end of the Civil War is that
the federal government starts intervening in terms of black rights
in America. And so in eighteen sixty six you get
the Civil Rights Act, and so that initial act basically
said that you could no longer create these laws based
(05:57):
on race. And so what you see exactly that you
see the laws going from black people can't own firearms
to now we have a regulation on a specific type
of firearm. So those firearms were usually cheaper, smaller, inexpensive guns.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So if you know a the about gun laws.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
You know that you know in the post World War
two period, in the latter half of the twentieth century,
you hear this term Saturday Night Special, which is a
regulation on cheap imported foreign firearms. And so this is
kind of a really early version of that.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And you've been listening to Ashley Lebinski and if the
voice sounds familiar, well, she's the former co host of
Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, and she's telling the story
of I. B. Wells and a part of it that
a lot of people don't know about, and that is
the civil right that mattered a lot to African Americans
in the South, living in dangerous circumstances and not being
(06:50):
able to count on that local sheriff for defense, if anything,
for malice and for worse. And when we come back,
you're going to hear more about the story story of
I to B Wells, her defense of the Second Amendment,
and so much more. And it's a local story. We
broadcast from Oxford, Mississippi, of an hour south straight as
(07:11):
a crow from Memphis. So this is a local story
for us, one close to the heart. When we come back,
more of the story of I to B Wells, her
defense of our Second Amendment rights. All Americans here on
our American Stories. Leehabibe here the host of our American Stories.
(07:35):
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories
(07:57):
dot com and give And we continue with our American
Stories and Ashley Levinski telling the story of id B
Wills and your defense of the Second Amendment. Let's pick
(08:19):
up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
You see the laws going from black people can't own
firearms to now we have a regulation on a specific
type of firearm. So those firearms were usually cheaper, smaller,
inexpensive guns.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So the laws were called Army Navy.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Laws colloquially, and so basically it said you could own
a specific type of handgun, a revolver, as long as
it was an Army Navy model. So this is a larger,
usually handgun, and it's a more expensive handgun. But then
there were revolvers that were made by other manufacturers that
were a lot less expensive, a lot more affordable for
an entire economic class of people. And while those guns
(08:59):
had the exact same same capacity and the same function
as the Army Navy guns, they were regulated and the
Army Navy models worked. And so a lot of people
interpret this as being a transition from you can't be
overtly racist now, so now you're going to legislate based
on an economic class. And so she's alive during the
time period, although she's very young, during the Civil Rights
(09:20):
Act and then the Fourteenth Amendment in eighteen sixty eight,
which grants African Americans equal rights under the Constitution.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
But you see that even.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Though these laws are changing, they're still having a massive
negative impact on African Americans. And the specific example that
inspired her to get into Second Amendment advocacy was the
lynching of her friend Thomas Moss. So, her friend, Thomas
Moss owned a grocery store and initially one day got
into an argument over our marble's gain that turned into
(09:49):
a neighborhood fight, and that fight escalated into a group
of people who were from kind of a white owned
grocery store nearby that decided to come and try to
attack Moss's and they were met with gunfire on the
opposite side. And so Moss and several other people were
jailed for this, and the really, I mean just you
(10:10):
can see how an African American during this time could
not feel safe because Moss is in jail with several people,
and a mob of seventy five masked men descended on
the jail and they dragged the men that were there
from their cells and took them.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
To the rail yard and murdered them.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
And before being shot, Moss was quoted to say, tell
my people to go west. There is no justice here.
And this is actually kind of as an aside. Is
an interesting thing to point out because one of the
circumstances that you do see in this really violent post
Civil War South, as you do see African Americans starting
to go west, and they also start carrying Winchester rifles
(10:48):
with them. And in direct response to what happened, I B.
Wells puts in her memoir, I had bought a pistol
the first thing after Tom Moss was lynched, because I
expected some cowardly retaliation from the lynchers.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I felt that but one had better.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Die fighting against injustice than to die like a.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Dog or rat in a trap.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I had already determined to sell my life as dearly
as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take
one Lincher with me, this would even.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Up the score a little bit.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And she was right after Masa's lynching, she started really
talking about African American rights in her newspaper, and she
did get retaliation about two months later in response to
these anti lynching articles, and when she was out of town,
the office for the newspaper was attacked and ransacked, and
so Wells ended up deciding to move to New York City,
(11:34):
so she moves north and she'll stay north. She ultimately
end up in Chicago for the rest.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Of her life. But there's a.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Really interesting example of kind of the impact that she
had really to frighten lawmakers, especially in the South, which
is that after she wrote Southern Horrors and came out
basically saying that African Americans should have a Winchester rifle
as kind of their pride and joy in every black home. Interestingly,
in Florida, in the next legislative session after this article
(12:02):
comes out, Florida creates a law regulating the carry of Winchester's.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
And this is the first time in all of American.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
History where a law has specifically gone after something like this. Now,
it didn't ban Winchester's, but it imposed a hefty fee
in order to get a permit to carry a Winchester,
and the way that the law was written basically said
that even though you pay the fee and fill out
all the forms and are completely capable of passing all
the checks within this law, it is up to the
(12:31):
sheriff to determine whether or not he wants to give
it to you. And there's been some criticism whether or
not because it does not say race, because it no
longer can say a race, whether or not this would
have been, you know, inherently a racist act.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
But it seems suspicious.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Timing that right after she writes this article, then they
decide to regulate Winchester's, which there is absolutely no precedent
on that whatsoever in the entire country. So it does
show that she has a lot of power in the South,
even though she vacates goes to the North. And so ultimately,
all of this hardship, all this advocacy, all of this trauma,
doesn't stop her, and in eighteen ninety three she founds
(13:09):
the Negro Women's Club in Chicago, and the main objective
of that was to educate and empower black women with
skills such as first aid and firearms training.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So the firearms.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Component of it continues, even though her advocacy is much
broader than that.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And in eighteen ninety five.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
She marries an attorney and journalist named Ferdinand Barnett, and
he's from Chicago, and so she ends up working for
his paper for a while, and her writings ultimately get
noticed by another really significant civil rights figure from this time,
who was a former slave, and that was Frederick Douglass,
and in nineteen oh nine she helped to establish the NAACP.
(13:47):
It's an interesting piece of history when you look at
not just Black American history, but then the role of
the black woman in American history. And if you know
anything about kind of these civil rights movement that occurs.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
In the post World War two period, there have been a.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Lot of writings by black feminists from this time period
where they feel like they don't really have a place
within either the Black movement, and in some respects, you know,
the Black panthers initially had kind of a hierarchy system
against women that they ultimately ended up getting rid of,
but there was this hierarchy system, so in some respects
they didn't feel like they were equals within the black
(14:23):
civil rights movement. And then they also didn't feel like
equals within the feminist movement because it was predominantly white women,
and white women tended to keep the black.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Feminists kind of at bay. And so this is something
that you.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Hear a lot about in the nineteen sixties, but this
is also what id B. Wells was going through when
she was fighting for women's suffrage. So during the women's
suffrage movement, you often hear about white women fighting for
the right to vote, and they often did exclude black
women from this conversation because they felt that it would detract.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
From the movement.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
And so Ida b Wells, like in all other circumstances,
not to be deterred, and she ends up creating the
Negro Women's Club because she feels like it's an opportunity
also for black women to be able to participate in
what would have been kind of a white led social club,
and so she was trying to give them.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
The ability to have a voice and to protest.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
And even it gets so crazy that at one point
she goes to march in DC and the activists, the
Women's Suffragettes, they actually from her state, ask her and
her women to march separately at the end of the parade,
and of course she.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Does not do that.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
So even though they're trying to exclude her and the
women that she kind of represents, she always finds a
way to kind of push herself into a much more
diverse conversation and storyline, and this creation of these Negro
Women's clubs ultimately expands to other cities during her lifetime.
And she helps establish a branch in Memphis, Tennessee. She
does try to run for office, but that ultimately doesn't
(15:54):
work out and she passes.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Away in nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
So this is an extra ordinary story that has so
many different layers. You know, if you have a woman
in the post Civil War period who has such a
prominent role in a society that is very male dominated
and very male controlled, but then you also have a
black woman who is trying to find a place for
herself within the black community, but then also the women
(16:19):
community within the United States, and so she does so
much to impact all of American society that I think
to some extent it is unfortunate to lose such an
important part to her life, which is her self defense advocacy.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And it may not be.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
The most popular part of her advocacy when you talk
about the politics bind firearms today, but I think in
order to understand her story, but then also the history
of regulation and African American activism, you can't separate that
from the early days of self defense advocacy.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Ashley Lebinski, our frequent contributor here in Our American Stories
and co host of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the
former curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum, and
co founder of the University of Wyoming College of Law's
(17:20):
Firearms Research Center. And in the end, Ashley is just
a terrific historian on this important aspect and dimension of
American life in American culture, and I to b Wells,
understood the importance of this right. I once heard Condaliza
Rice share a story that was very similar to her
neighborhood and the degree of which they felt safer because
(17:43):
her dad and the dads in the neighborhood owned firearms
to protect them from the marauders called the KKK, who
were terrorizing neighborhoods, but not hers. The story of Ida
b Wells here on Our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, the story of Ida B. Wells. Born into
slavery during the Civil War, she is best remembered as
an American journalist who fought tirelessly against lynching during the
(00:31):
Jim Crow era. Here to tell her story is our
frequent contributor, Ashley Lebinski. Take it away, Ashley.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
The name Ida B.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Wells is most often associated with Black American advocacy in
the post Civil War period. She has had a presence
that has extended all the way into modern day. But
it's kind of interesting to understand her entire story because
us a solid portion of that has been largely forgotten
(01:03):
by the American public. And that was that not only
was she a civil rights advocate, not only was she
an advocate for women's rights, but she also had a
lot to do with the Second Amendment advocacy in terms
of self defense and firearms training for African Americans.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Ida B.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Wells was born in eighteen sixty two in Holly Springs, Mississippi,
and she spent her first three years of life as
an enslaved person. But after the war, the family became
active in the Republican Party, so she was a part
of a family that were activists really from the start.
Once African Americans gained their freedom, she attended Rust College
for a little bit, but she ended up having to
(01:41):
take care of her family because her parents and her
brother died in eighteen seventy eight from yellow fever, so
she had.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Several other siblings.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
She decided to get a job teaching school in order
to help support their family, and they ultimately moved to Memphis, Tennessee,
to be near an aunt, so to be a near
a new family.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Her advocacy story really starts.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Because of a legal battle involving a ticket that she
purchased for a train ride.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
She was taking a train ride into the.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
City, and so she decided that she wanted to buy
a first class ticket for herself, but the train company,
because of laws at the time, the train company was
allowed to segregate the carts, and so they told her
that despite the fact that she was able to buy
the first class car, that she was going to have
to move and she refused and was physically removed from
the train, and so this started a legal battle that
(02:31):
she ultimately settled with the train company, and then two
years later the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned her victory. So
she definitely got the shaft in that scenario, and that
inspired really the beginning of her work and what she's
more well known for, which is journalism. So she started
bringing attention to African American issues in America in the
(02:52):
post Civil War period, but also specifically.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
In the post Civil War South. She became editor and co.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Owner of a Memphis paper which was known as The
Free Speed Each and Headlight, and she initially was writing
under a pen name, which was kind of a smart
idea for a while because she was bringing up so
many difficult issues that she was ultimately fired from her
teaching job, so she went kind of full time in
a journalism and activism. Now she's known for African American
(03:18):
activism in general, but her Second Amendment advocacy really got started.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
And took off by the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
And there's a really famous quote that she has, and
I'm actually going to read the entirety of the quote
rather than the one line that you often hear from
any kind of gun rights group. But she really thought
that African Americans needed to learn and train in self defense,
because at that point in time she really felt that
the government was not there to protect her, and there
was a lot of instances where that was the case.
(03:44):
And so one of the most famous things that she
wrote was called Southern Horrors, and within this in the
eighteen nineties she wrote, of the many inhuman outrages of
this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching
did not occur was where the men are themselves in Jacksonville, Florida,
and Patica, Kentucky, and prevented it. The only times an
(04:05):
Afro American who has assaulted got away has been when
he had a gun and used it in self defense.
The lesson this teaches in which every Afro American should
ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a
place of honor in every black home, and it should
be used for that protection which.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
The law refuses to give.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
When the white man, who is always the aggressor, knows
he runs at great risk of biting the dust every
time his Afro American victim does, he will have greater
respect for Afro American life. The more the Afro American
yields and cringes and begs. The more he has to
do so, the more he has insulted, outraged.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And lynched.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
So a lot of times when you hear kind of
this quote from I to b Wells, you only hear
the part about the Winchester rifle, but it comes within
a much larger context.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And this attitude that she has in.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
The eighteen nineties, it's personal tour, and I'll talk about
that in a second. But at the same time, she
is really going off of cent tres long tradition in
American culture and American history of firearms laws that are
overtly racist. So to give kind of a perspective is
even dating to the colonies. So before the creation of
(05:13):
the United States of America, there were laws specifically regulating
race and ethnic groups from owning firearms. So it wasn't
like you had to guess the interpretation of the law.
The law specifically said that, you know, you could not
sell guns to Native Americans, you could not sell guns
to African Americans. And some of these laws were so
intense that if you were caught selling to one of
(05:35):
these groups, then you actually could be sentenced to death,
and there were several cases of that happening. But what
happens around the end of the Civil War is that
the federal government starts intervening in terms of black rights
in America. And so in eighteen sixty six you get
the Civil Rights Act, and so that initial act basically
said that you could no longer create these laws based
(05:57):
on race. And so what you see exactly that you
see the laws going from black people can't own firearms
to now we have a regulation on a specific type
of firearm. So those firearms were usually cheaper, smaller, inexpensive guns.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So if you know a the about gun laws.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
You know that you know in the post World War
two period, in the latter half of the twentieth century,
you hear this term Saturday Night Special, which is a
regulation on cheap imported foreign firearms. And so this is
kind of a really early version of that.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And you've been listening to Ashley Lebinski and if the
voice sounds familiar, well, she's the former co host of
Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, and she's telling the story
of I. B. Wells and a part of it that
a lot of people don't know about, and that is
the civil right that mattered a lot to African Americans
in the South, living in dangerous circumstances and not being
(06:50):
able to count on that local sheriff for defense, if anything,
for malice and for worse. And when we come back,
you're going to hear more about the story story of
I to B Wells, her defense of the Second Amendment,
and so much more. And it's a local story. We
broadcast from Oxford, Mississippi, of an hour south straight as
(07:11):
a crow from Memphis. So this is a local story
for us, one close to the heart. When we come back,
more of the story of I to B Wells, her
defense of our Second Amendment rights. All Americans here on
our American Stories. Leehabibe here the host of our American Stories.
(07:35):
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to Ouramerican Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories
(07:57):
dot com and give And we continue with our American
Stories and Ashley Levinski telling the story of id B
Wills and your defense of the Second Amendment. Let's pick
(08:19):
up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
You see the laws going from black people can't own
firearms to now we have a regulation on a specific
type of firearm. So those firearms were usually cheaper, smaller,
inexpensive guns.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So the laws were called Army Navy.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Laws colloquially, and so basically it said you could own
a specific type of handgun, a revolver, as long as
it was an Army Navy model. So this is a larger,
usually handgun, and it's a more expensive handgun. But then
there were revolvers that were made by other manufacturers that
were a lot less expensive, a lot more affordable for
an entire economic class of people. And while those guns
(08:59):
had the exact same same capacity and the same function
as the Army Navy guns, they were regulated and the
Army Navy models worked. And so a lot of people
interpret this as being a transition from you can't be
overtly racist now, so now you're going to legislate based
on an economic class. And so she's alive during the
time period, although she's very young, during the Civil Rights
(09:20):
Act and then the Fourteenth Amendment in eighteen sixty eight,
which grants African Americans equal rights under the Constitution.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
But you see that even.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Though these laws are changing, they're still having a massive
negative impact on African Americans. And the specific example that
inspired her to get into Second Amendment advocacy was the
lynching of her friend Thomas Moss. So, her friend, Thomas
Moss owned a grocery store and initially one day got
into an argument over our marble's gain that turned into
(09:49):
a neighborhood fight, and that fight escalated into a group
of people who were from kind of a white owned
grocery store nearby that decided to come and try to
attack Moss's and they were met with gunfire on the
opposite side. And so Moss and several other people were
jailed for this, and the really, I mean just you
(10:10):
can see how an African American during this time could
not feel safe because Moss is in jail with several people,
and a mob of seventy five masked men descended on
the jail and they dragged the men that were there
from their cells and took them.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
To the rail yard and murdered them.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
And before being shot, Moss was quoted to say, tell
my people to go west. There is no justice here.
And this is actually kind of as an aside. Is
an interesting thing to point out because one of the
circumstances that you do see in this really violent post
Civil War South, as you do see African Americans starting
to go west, and they also start carrying Winchester rifles
(10:48):
with them. And in direct response to what happened, I B.
Wells puts in her memoir, I had bought a pistol
the first thing after Tom Moss was lynched, because I
expected some cowardly retaliation from the lynchers.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
I felt that but one had better.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Die fighting against injustice than to die like a.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Dog or rat in a trap.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I had already determined to sell my life as dearly
as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take
one Lincher with me, this would even.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Up the score a little bit.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
And she was right after Masa's lynching, she started really
talking about African American rights in her newspaper, and she
did get retaliation about two months later in response to
these anti lynching articles, and when she was out of town,
the office for the newspaper was attacked and ransacked, and
so Wells ended up deciding to move to New York City,
(11:34):
so she moves north and she'll stay north. She ultimately
end up in Chicago for the rest.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Of her life. But there's a.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Really interesting example of kind of the impact that she
had really to frighten lawmakers, especially in the South, which
is that after she wrote Southern Horrors and came out
basically saying that African Americans should have a Winchester rifle
as kind of their pride and joy in every black home. Interestingly,
in Florida, in the next legislative session after this article
(12:02):
comes out, Florida creates a law regulating the carry of Winchester's.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
And this is the first time in all of American.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
History where a law has specifically gone after something like this. Now,
it didn't ban Winchester's, but it imposed a hefty fee
in order to get a permit to carry a Winchester,
and the way that the law was written basically said
that even though you pay the fee and fill out
all the forms and are completely capable of passing all
the checks within this law, it is up to the
(12:31):
sheriff to determine whether or not he wants to give
it to you. And there's been some criticism whether or
not because it does not say race, because it no
longer can say a race, whether or not this would
have been, you know, inherently a racist act.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
But it seems suspicious.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Timing that right after she writes this article, then they
decide to regulate Winchester's, which there is absolutely no precedent
on that whatsoever in the entire country. So it does
show that she has a lot of power in the South,
even though she vacates goes to the North. And so ultimately,
all of this hardship, all this advocacy, all of this trauma,
doesn't stop her, and in eighteen ninety three she founds
(13:09):
the Negro Women's Club in Chicago, and the main objective
of that was to educate and empower black women with
skills such as first aid and firearms training.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So the firearms.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Component of it continues, even though her advocacy is much
broader than that.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And in eighteen ninety five.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
She marries an attorney and journalist named Ferdinand Barnett, and
he's from Chicago, and so she ends up working for
his paper for a while, and her writings ultimately get
noticed by another really significant civil rights figure from this time,
who was a former slave, and that was Frederick Douglass,
and in nineteen oh nine she helped to establish the NAACP.
(13:47):
It's an interesting piece of history when you look at
not just Black American history, but then the role of
the black woman in American history. And if you know
anything about kind of these civil rights movement that occurs.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
In the post World War two period, there have been a.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Lot of writings by black feminists from this time period
where they feel like they don't really have a place
within either the Black movement, and in some respects, you know,
the Black panthers initially had kind of a hierarchy system
against women that they ultimately ended up getting rid of,
but there was this hierarchy system, so in some respects
they didn't feel like they were equals within the black
(14:23):
civil rights movement. And then they also didn't feel like
equals within the feminist movement because it was predominantly white women,
and white women tended to keep the black.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Feminists kind of at bay. And so this is something
that you.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Hear a lot about in the nineteen sixties, but this
is also what id B. Wells was going through when
she was fighting for women's suffrage. So during the women's
suffrage movement, you often hear about white women fighting for
the right to vote, and they often did exclude black
women from this conversation because they felt that it would detract.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
From the movement.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
And so Ida b Wells, like in all other circumstances,
not to be deterred, and she ends up creating the
Negro Women's Club because she feels like it's an opportunity
also for black women to be able to participate in
what would have been kind of a white led social club,
and so she was trying to give them.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
The ability to have a voice and to protest.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
And even it gets so crazy that at one point
she goes to march in DC and the activists, the
Women's Suffragettes, they actually from her state, ask her and
her women to march separately at the end of the parade,
and of course she.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Does not do that.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
So even though they're trying to exclude her and the
women that she kind of represents, she always finds a
way to kind of push herself into a much more
diverse conversation and storyline, and this creation of these Negro
Women's clubs ultimately expands to other cities during her lifetime.
And she helps establish a branch in Memphis, Tennessee. She
does try to run for office, but that ultimately doesn't
(15:54):
work out and she passes.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Away in nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
So this is an extra ordinary story that has so
many different layers. You know, if you have a woman
in the post Civil War period who has such a
prominent role in a society that is very male dominated
and very male controlled, but then you also have a
black woman who is trying to find a place for
herself within the black community, but then also the women
(16:19):
community within the United States, and so she does so
much to impact all of American society that I think
to some extent it is unfortunate to lose such an
important part to her life, which is her self defense advocacy.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And it may not be.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
The most popular part of her advocacy when you talk
about the politics bind firearms today, but I think in
order to understand her story, but then also the history
of regulation and African American activism, you can't separate that
from the early days of self defense advocacy.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Ashley Lebinski, our frequent contributor here in Our American Stories
and co host of Discovery Channel's Master of Arms, the
former curator in charge of the Cody Firearms Museum, and
co founder of the University of Wyoming College of Law's
(17:20):
Firearms Research Center. And in the end, Ashley is just
a terrific historian on this important aspect and dimension of
American life in American culture, and I to b Wells,
understood the importance of this right. I once heard Condaliza
Rice share a story that was very similar to her
neighborhood and the degree of which they felt safer because
(17:43):
her dad and the dads in the neighborhood owned firearms
to protect them from the marauders called the KKK, who
were terrorizing neighborhoods, but not hers. The story of Ida
b Wells here on Our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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