Honoring Ida B. Wells on her birthday
The legacy of the fearless journalist and social reformer is alive and well
One of the things I enjoy about Literary Ladies Guide is discovering forgotten and under-appreciated women writers of the past, including journalists. That said, Ida B. Wells, who we’ll be celebrating today, is not one of the forgotten. Though it’s going on 100 years since she died, her reputation has only continued to grow.
Journalism awards have been established in her name, books have been written about her, scholarships are endowed in her honor, murals celebrate her life, and there’s a museum honoring her legacy in her hometown in Mississippi. How often does this happen, especially when it comes to women? It’s truly something to celebrate.
Born on July 16, 1862, Ida B. Wells, was a fearless journalist and activist in the early civil rights movement. A feminist, editor, social reformer, and lecturer, she was also one of the founders of the NAACP.
Ida was best known for spearheading a national anti-lynching campaign She worked tirelessly to end the uniquely American practice of public mob murders.
In 2020, nearly 90 years after her death, Ida B. Wells was awarded a long overdue posthumous Pulitzer Prize in the category of Special Citations and awards for “her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.”
(**Did you know that if you hit the heart at the top or bottom of this post, it helps others discover this publication? Thank you in advance!)
Other news first
Before getting on to Ida, I’d also like to mention that today is also the birthday of Irish novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch (1919–1999). Perhaps more widely read on her side of the Atlantic, she’s my son’s favorite writer. He has written about her in a number of his Substack posts (Evan Atlas of Mapping with Atlas), including this analysis of Murdoch’s novel A Severed Head.
Iris Murdoch is actually one of the 60 cat-loving writers in my forthcoming book, Inspired by Cats: Writers and Their Mews(es), written by me and illustrated by Bob Eckstein of The Bob. Iris didn’t have cats herself but seemed drawn to friends and lovers who did, and dubbed them “felinists.” Here is Bob’s interpretation of her with one such borrowed cat (text is mine). Inspired by Cats is available for pre-order (Sept. 23 is the pub date), wherever books are sold.
I’m still chipping away at my current book project, whose manuscript is due in September. I’m both trying to rush July along, because it’s my least favorite month, and trying to holding time back, because I’m a hopeless perfectionist and want more of it. I’m tracking my progress intermittently in my notes.
And now, Ida B. Wells
Onto the main subject of today’s newsletter. Happy birthday, Ida B. Wells! The following overview of the highlights of Ida B. Wells’s life and work is excerpted and adapted from Afro-American Women Writers 1746 – 1933 by Ann Allen Shockley.
Refusal to move from a white train car, and litigation
In May 1884 (she was just twenty-two!) Ida was traveling on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad to teach in Woodstock, Tennessee, when a conductor asked her to move to the smoking car. When she refused, the conductor, with the assistance of the baggage man, tried to force her out. During the fracas, Ida braced her feet on the back of the seat and bit the conductor’s hand.
Getting off at the next stop, she returned to Memphis and brought a suit against the railroad. She won the case and was awarded five hundred dollars and damages. Her triumph was short lived, sadly. The railroad appealed and the Supreme Court of Tennessee reversed the decision.
First forays into journalism
Ida qualified to teach in the Memphis school system, and became a primary grade teacher for seven years. To further her education, she attended summer school at Fisk University, studied privately with experienced teachers, and read voraciously.
Her writing talent emerged when she was elected editor of a small church paper, the Evening Star. Much to her surprise, she was invited to contribute to the Living Way, a Baptist weekly. Adopting the pen name of Iola, she wrote her first article for the paper on the railroad suit.
Soon the young journalist, who had learned to “handle a goose-quill, with diamond point, as easily as any man in the newspaper work,” was in demand. She wrote for the American Baptist, Detroit Plaindealer, Christian Index, Indianapolis World, Gate City Press, and A. M. E. Review.
She also edited the Home department of Our Women and Children. Called the “Princess of the Press,” she was the first woman to attend the Afro-American Press Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, and was elected assistant secretary.
Buying into newspaper ownership
Her opportunity to edit a paper came when she bought a one-third interest in the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight in 1889.
Not one to hold her tongue or her pen, she wrote an article about the poor conditions of the local Black schools. The exposé provoked ill feeling against her among both Blacks and whites, and she was not rehired to teach the following year.
She had never particularly enjoyed teaching because of its “confinement and monotony,” and now she set out to express what she called her “real me” in newspaper work. Shortening the name of the paper to the Free Speech, she devoted full-time to traveling for the paper and making it a success.
Free Speech soon became a household word “up and down the Delta.” It was printed on pink paper to make it stand out, and circulation increased from fifteen hundred to four thousand.
Urging Black people to move west
On March 9, 1892, the lynching in Memphis of three young Black businessmen, who were the owners of the People’s Grocery Company and friends of Ida’s, changed the direction of her life.
Away at the time in Natchez, Mississippi, she returned to write blistering editorials that condemned the white community for permitting the lynching, and urged its Black citizens to leave the city and go west.
Hundreds of Black people did indeed begin to move away, including entire church congregations. She also encouraged Blacks to boycott white businesses, introducing the concept of the Black boycott, a tool that would prove most effective going forward.
Militant anti-lynching writings
In May 1892, Ida left an editorial at the paper to be published while she attended the A. M. E. General Conference in Philadelphia. From there, she was scheduled to go to New York to see T. Thomas Fortune, the brilliant editor of the New York Age.
While in the company of Fortune, she learned about the destruction of her press by an angry white mob. Her partner, J. C. Fleming, had been run out of town, and friends sent word warning her not to return, for the mob was threatening to kill her on sight.
Now an exile, Ida was asked by T. Thomas Fortune to write for the New York Age. For the June 5, 1892 issue, she substantiated her Memphis editorial by writing an incisive front-page piece on lynching. Four months later, it was published again in pamphlet form and called Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892).
Her writing aroused the interest of the eminent Frederick Douglass, who published a letter in the pamphlet citing her as a "Brave woman!" That was the beginning of a lifetime friendship between the two.
Ida B. Well's militant writings against lynching inspired other Black women to rally behind her cause. Victoria Earle Matthews, writer and reformer of New York, and Maritcha Lyons, a Brooklyn schoolteacher, led a group of Black women to give lda a testimonial at Lyric Hall, in October, 1892. She was presented with five hundred dollars and a gold brooch in the shape of a pen.
This event was an important turning point in her life. Before a large gathering of prominent Black women, she gave her first public lecture on the horrors of lynching. The testimonial had another historic aspect — it laid the groundwork for the beginning of the Black women's club movement.
A writer and speaker in demand
After this event, Ida received numerous requests to speak on the subject of lynching. In April and May of 1893, she traveled to England, Scotland, and Wales, and in 1894, she visited England again for six months. Her speeches there led to the formation of the Anti-Lynching Committee.
Frequently invited to write as well as speak, she was asked to send back articles about her trip to the Chicago daily paper the Inter-Ocean (subsequently the Herald-Examiner), in a column titled “Ida B. Wells Abroad.” She commented in her autobiography that she was the first Black person to become a regular paid correspondent for a daily paper in the United States.
Always quick to publicize racial disparities, she protested against the barring of Blacks from the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. She, along with Frederick Douglass and Frederick J. Loudin, an original Fisk University Jubilee Singer, appealed for funds to publish a pamphlet protesting the discrimination.
Settling in Chicago; becoming a wife and mother
Ida settled in Chicago, where she wrote her indictment, A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States, 1892-1893-1894 (1895). This notable work presented both the statistics and history of lynching.
She joined the staff of the first Black Chicago newspaper, the Conservator, owned by Ferdinand L. Barnett, a widower and attorney. Romance entered the picture, and on June 27, 1895, Ida married Barnett, with whom she had four children. Motherhood didn’t stop her from continuing her writing and lecturing.
In the role of social reformer, she founded the Negro Fellowship League in the most blighted section of Chicago's South Side. The league gave a refuge to those who were homeless, offered religious services, and helped the unemployed. As the first Black woman to be appointed a probation officer, she used the league's services to assist with her work. In 1913, Ida also organized the first suffrage group composed of Black women, the Alpha Suffrage Club.
Ida fought a “lonely and almost single-handed fight” against lynching long before men or women of any race entered this battle. She left her story in an autobiography begun in 1928. Her memoirs were eventually edited by her daughter, Alfreda M. Duster, and published under the title Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of lda B. Wells (1970).
Michelle Duster, Ida’s great-granddaughter, continues to preserve her legacy with books including Ida B. the Queen, Ida B. Wells: Voice of Truth, and others.
