She was born
in Holly Springs, Mississippi
into the world
of chattel slavery.
350,000 Union soldiers died in
the Civil War.
President Lincoln said they did
not “die in vain”,
and the Thirteenth Amendment
said,
slavery was abolished.
Black people learned to read,
they voted, and held public
office.
But the federal government
abandoned reconstruction,
and the Ku Klux Klan took
political power.
Her mother was a cook.
Her father was a carpenter,
and they managed to support
Ida and her seven siblings.
Then the yellow fever took
the lives of her parents.
Her first struggle, at the age of
sixteen,
was to keep the family together.
She taught school,
and cared for the entire family.
Eventually she earned money
as a journalist.
People who had power said that
Black people weren’t supposed
to sit where white people sat on
rail cars.
Ida was asked to vacate her
“first class” seat.
She refused and several white men
forced her to move.
She sued and won her case.
But there was an appeal,
and the judges ruled that Ida’s
case
was not “reasonable.”
Ida was an independent minded
woman
who found it difficult to make
many friends.
Thomas Moss, a letter carrier,
was her friend.
He owned a grocery, had a wife
and a child, with another on the way.
There were white people who
resented Moss because he had money.
He was arrested for a crime he
didn’t commit.
Seventy five racists took Moss,
Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart
out of a jail and lynched them.
Ida was so incensed by the horror
of this reality,
that she made the campaign
against lynching her life’s work.
Unlike many others, she would
never back down.
While many understood that
lynching was wrong,
many also argued that Black men
raped white women.
Therefore they argued that white
women needed to be protected.
Ida Wells wrote, “The Truth About
Lynching.”
She argued that, at times, some
white women had
consensual relationships with
Black men,
but segregationists didn’t feel
this was possible.
She said that Black women were
oftentimes
raped by white men who went
unpunished.
Lynchings took place in order to
intimidate
Black people so they would
continue to work the worst jobs.
Ida learned from these lynchings
that
“a Winchester rifle should
have a place of honor in every
black home.”
“for protection the law refuses
to give.”
She also advised Black people to
take Thomas Moss’ advice,
and move out of their homes in
the south,
to new homes in the west.
Thousands took this advice.
This was too much for the racists,
and Ida’s life was threatened in
Memphis.
She needed to abandon her
business,
and did not return for thirty
years.
Some people said that Ida
preached hatred
against white people who lived in
the South.
They attempted to isolated her,
so powerful forces in this
country might be accommodated.
But thousands of Black men,
women and children were lynched.
They were beaten, tortured,
hanged,
shot, and burned to death.
Their body parts were cut off,
collected, and even sold as
souvenirs.
But the government chose
not to prosecute the known
murderers.
How was she to fight against a
government
that refused to prosecute
murderers?
She did this by introducing her
readers
to the individuals who had been
lynched.
She wrote about Frazier Baker,
who was the Post Master of Lake
City, South Carolina.
After his enemies burned the Post
Office to the ground,
Baker used his home as a Post
Office.
Hundreds of racists surrounded
his home and set it on fire.
When Baker and his family came
out of the home,
He and his infant daughter were
murdered,
His wife and children suffered
life-changing injuries.
The government made an
investigation.
When no one was prosecuted,
The government that claims to
represent, “liberty and justice for all”
became an accomplice in the
murder of Frazier Baker.
No reason was given for this
murder.
Ida Wells understood that Frazier
Baker was murdered
because he was a Black man,
who attempted to get a descent
job in the United States of America.
Ida gave the facts showing how
people
were victimized oftentimes for
merely defending themselves
against hysterical mobs whose
only concern
was to keep Black people in their
place.
Anyone could read about these
lynchings in the newspapers.
Ida Wells collected these stories
and even made her own
investigations.
The Twenty-fourth U.S. infantry
of Black soldiers
had risked their lives in wars
abroad.
In Houston, Texas those soldiers
attempted to defend their
comrades from a racist mob.
Sergeant Vida Henry gave the
order engage a racist mob.
After the battle, Henry committed
suicide,
rather than face execution from
the government
he valiantly served for thirteen
years.
Ida distributed buttons that
supported
the Black soldiers
who had been sentenced to death
by a court which pretended to
represent justice.
“Intelligence officers”
threatened to
arrest her on charges of treason.
Ida countered that it would be an
“honor” to go to prison under
such circumstances.
Ida would go on to mobilize
women to support the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters,
who overcame seemingly
insurmountable odds to gain union recognition.
She wrote the pamphlets:
The Requirements of Southern Journalism,
United States Atrocities: Lynch Law,
Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His fight to the Death,
The Arkansas Race Riot,
The East St. Louis Massacre: The Greatest Outrage of the Century
Lynch Law in Georgia,
and Colored Women of Chicago.
Some of the bravest leaders for
human dignity
respected her work, That list
includes:
Frederick Douglass, Susan B.
Anthony,
Marcus Garvey, and W.E.B. Du
Bois.
However, those who pretended to
be leaders of the movement
attempted to marginalize her
accomplishments,
but she will be remembered as
someone who
never compromised her struggle for
human dignity.
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