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Ida B. Wells Ida Wells-Barnett was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862. She was the oldest of eight children. Ida was born of slaves, but her parents were able to support eight children. Her mother was a famous cook, and her father was a skilled carpenter. When Ida was only fourteen, an epidemic of Yellow Fever swept though Holly Spring and killed her parents and youngest sibling.
She kept her family together by securing a job teaching. Ida managed to continue her education by attending near by Rust College. Then she moved to Memphis to live with her aunt and help raise her youngest sisters. It was in Memphis where Ida first began to fight. In 1884, she was asked by the conductor of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man, and ordered her to move into the smoking car, which was already crowed with other passengers. She refused to move.
Then they tried to drag her out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of her arms. She bit him. Then he tried it again, but he failed. Since he could not drag her out by himself. Therefore, he went up front and got a baggage man and another man to help him. Of course, they succeeded.
Wells was removed from the train and other passengers-all whites-applauded. When Ida returned to Memphis, she hired an attorney to sue the railroad. She won her case, but the Railroad Company appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee and it reversed the lawsuit. After that, Ida worked tirelessly, and fearlessly to overturn injustices against women and other people of color. She married the editor of one of Chicago's black newspapers.
She wrote, I was married in the city of Chicago to Attorney F. L Barnett, and retired to what I thought was the privacy of a home. She didnt stay retired long and continued writing and organizing. In 1906, Ida joined with William E. B Dubois and others to further the Niagara Movement. The founding members of the National Association for Colored people (NAACP).
Ida was also among the few black leaders to oppose Booker T. Washington, and his strategies. She was viewed as one of the most radicals who organized the NAACP. Wells Barnett decided to run for the Illinois State legislature, which made her one of the first black women to run for public office in the United States. Ida B.
Wells was a woman dedicated to a cause, a cause to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from being murdered by lynching. Lynching is defined as to take the law into its own hands and kill someone in punishment for a crime or a presumed crime. Ida B. Wells back round made her a logical spokesperson against lynching. She drew on many experiences throughout her life to aid in her crusade. Her position as a black woman, however, affected her credibility both in and out of America in a few different ways.
Her parents nurtured the background of this crusader to make her a great spokesperson. She also held positions throughout her life that allowed her to learn a lot about lynching. She was fueled by her natural drive to search for the truth. Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her father, James Wells, was a carpenter and her mother was a cook. After the Civil War, her parents became politically active.
Her father was known as race man, a term given to African Americans involved in the leadership of the community. He was a local businessperson, a mason, and a member of the Board of Trustees of Shaw University. Both parents provided Ida with strong role models. They worked hard and held places of respect in the community as forward-looking people. James and Elizabeth (mother) Wells instilled their daughter a keen sense of duty to God, family, and community. Idas background was strengthened when she became part owner, editor, and writer for a weekly paper, The Free Speech.
This paper based in Memphis, Tennessee allowed Ida to learn, by research, the details of lynching. Her energetic campaign for truth and justice gave her a lot of attention to fuel her crusade. All these factors support the fact that her background made her an ample spokes person for the anti-lynching campaign. Adding to her credibility, personal experiences also gave her more of a drive to continue her crusade. She became a leading community activist through a sequence of events. In 1884, Ida was riding a train in a first class car, when she was asked to move to the smoking car.
When she refused, two conductors tried to physically move her. She instead got off the train and filed a discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit was initially won, but the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the verdict. After the train incident, in 1889, Ida went to The Free Speech paper; this is where her most promising worked developed. In 1892, three of her friends were brutally killed during a lynching. This one particular event opened the eyes of Wells and prompted her to write some of her most controversial works yet.
However, this type of writing got the Free Speech office ransacked and destroyed. The other owner of the Free Speech barely escaped with his life, but he carried the message that if Ida were to show her face ever again in Tennessee she would be killed. Now with all this ammunition based on personal experience, even as an African American woman, she had gained credibility to be able to speak with authority. As Ida B. Wells was going through this, it was at the same time that all women, black and white, were experiencing suffrage. There was a striking similarity between slavery and woman oppression.
The bottom line was that women had no authority. An example of this is that even if a woman worked outside the home, all her earnings would legally go to the head of the household. However, Wells emerged as one of the best known of these new women that chose to speak out. People were beginning to listen to these accusations of unlawful lynching, but more impressive was the fact that non-Americans were starting to listen. These non-Americans interests were peaked because the United States, as a world power, tried to silence all issues such as lynching and mob violence.
Now, these issues were becoming known, writers from other countries contacted Ida. Wells received an invitation from Isabella Five Mayo, a Scottish writer, to come speak about lynching in Great Britain. This was a great opportunity to bring British support back to the U. S.
Many people ask a question what is mob violence. Today, mob violence has a different meaning if to compare with its initial one of the nineteenth century. After the end of Civil War African Americans suffered a lot of mistreatment. Ida B. Wells was a young African American journalist, who investigated and accounted for the violence influence upon the African Americans during the period of Post-Reconstruction. Wells was writing about her own investigations because she thought that it was the first step to tell the world the facts and to make lynching a crime against American values. (27) In the book Southern Horrors and Other Writings, Royster discussed the mob violence of the lower South and the steps that were taken by Wells in order to end the violence.
In the nineteenth century, many different acts of mob violence were done to African Americans that lived in the South. Wells primarily focused on lynching of African Americans by the mob. The reasons for lynching were allegations of murder, burglary, arson, poisoning water and livestock, insulting whites, being insolent, and other perceived offenses. (29) In many cases, African Americans were lynched for no reason at all or these reasons were not legitimate. The lynchings could have been handled in a different way as in a court and jury, not by the mob. The mob violence attacked African Americans to the point that sometimes they had nothing to say in their doings. Men, women, and children were among mistreated ones.
Ida B. Wells reported in A Red Record that during a single year, 1892, 241 men, women, and children across 26 states were lynched. Of the 241, 160 people were identified as African Americans, which represented an increase of 200 percent over the ten-year period since 1882 (10). This shows how the violence towards African Americans increased during the period of Reconstruction. In many cases, African Americans were lynched for strange reasons. Many African American men were lynched for alleged rape of white women even though they had a relationship with these women.
Wells wrote that the whites excuse was that Negroes had to be killed to avenge their assaults upon women (77 - 78). The press also said, Negroes were like beasts and had to be punished quickly (62). The sentence of whites compared to African Americans at this time could not be comparable. The statistics showed that more than ten-thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, without judicial trial and only three white men have been tried, convicted, and executed (75 - 76).
Mainly African Americans were being killed by whites because the whites were too upset that they were now free and not their property and also because whites lost profits of all this. They did not want them to gain too much power, rights, and independence. Ida B. Wells did all she could to help the African Americans in dealing with the mob violence during the nineteenth century. She took several steps to achieve her crusades to end mob violence. Wells investigated lynchings, wrote newspaper articles and editorials, spoke about mob violence, and joined organizations to prevent violence.
First, Wells had to dismantle the stereotypes based on gender and race (30). The stereotypes said that the white women were pure and innocent but the African American women were wanton, licentious, promiscuous (30). Wells had to stop this because she did not want people thinking like this about African American women. Wells wrote a pamphlet Southern Horrors that described violence. Later, Wells made a speech in Washington, D. C.
hoping she would gain support from Britain, which she did. Wells joined anti-lynching committees like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which provided protection against mob violence. Others were the Anti-Lynching Crusaders and the Association of Southern Women for the Protection of Lynching (ASWPL). These groups were mainly made up of women seeking public awareness. Ida B.
Wells was in two British tours after gaining support from Britain. On her first tour, she campaigned and sent copies of her works back to Memphis. After completion of this, the Memphis people stopped lynching for about twenty years. Her second tour was even more successful. Wells wanted send back information to the United States and this information was much more sophisticated that previous works sent to Memphis.
Wells gained success with the Columbus Exposition in Chicago, where African Americans could not participate. Ida B. Wells hoped that all her doings would help improve the lives of African American women. Wells hoped to accomplish this by breaking up the stereotypes between gender and race.
African American women were seen very opposite compared to the white women and Wells planned to stop that. She wanted the African American women to be seen equally. By having women join organizations and speak for themselves, African American women would gain respect and be treated equally. When these women joined the organizations, they were heard and people responded to them. Whites believed that African Americans should not be allowed to be free, which eventually resulted into attacks and punishments of blacks. Ida B.
Wells was anti-lynching activist and radical, who became a champion of truth and justice and a highly visible international leader against mob violence, disorder, and lawlessness. (33) Wells did as much as she could to stop mob violence and to protect the rights of African Americans. According to legal history, the anti-lynching activities were not successful because Congress was not able to pass the Blair Bill, the Dyer Bill or any other legislation that could stem the tide of violence. Indeed, Ida B. Wells helped a lot in reducing the number of lynchings and drawing public attention to the problems of African Americans. Ida B.
Wells, because of her background, proved to be a great representative against lynching, even though it was quite difficult to deal with mob violence in the nineteenth century. Her parents had installed many exceptional qualities that she helped her in her crusade. In addition, based on her personal experiences, she had gained strength. Finally, even as an African American woman, her credibility was impressive among both African Americans and non-Americans. Bibliography: Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Southern Horrors and Other Writings.
New York: Boston, 1997.
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Research essay sample on Ida B Wells African American Women
