Basic Information
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an African-American woman who lived to be sixty eight years old. She was born on July 16th, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi and came from a successful family. She was known for her anonymous journalism covering issues of race and politics under the alias “lola.” She was also known for her leadership in the anti-lynching crusade in the 1890’s fighting for both men and women. One of her other accomplishments was being a co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women or (NACW) in 1896. She passed away on March 25, 1931 in Chicago, Illinois from kidney disease. Aside from Lucy Stone, she was known as one of the first American women to keep her last name after marriage (Biography.com Editors, 2014).
Background Information
Although born into slavery during the Civil War, Wells-Barnett became a famous educated journalist activist. She lived in Mississippi with her family, Wells-Barnett being the oldest of her siblings. Her family was subjected to racial prejudice and were forced to live by discriminatory rules and practices. Despite their hardships, her father, James, contributed in creating Shaw University now known as Rust College, which was a school that helped newly freed slaves. Both of her parents were involved in the Republican Party during Reconstruction after the Civil War ended. Wells-Barnett’s parents pressed on the importance of an education, so she attended Shaw University at the age of sixteen. She was forced to drop out due to her parents and infant brother dying of a yellow fever outbreak. After the incident, she was forced to raise her remaining siblings. She started a job as a teacher to provide for her siblings, claiming to be eighteen. She then moved with her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee in 1882 to live with their aunt. Wells-Barnett continued her education at Fisk University in Nashville (Biography.com Editors, 2014). On her way to school in May of 1884, she was told by the conductor of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad to ride in the smoking car. When she refused, she was violated by the conductor when he attempted to forcefully move her and her baggage to the other coach. She managed to leave the train at the next stop and decided to sue the railroad. After winning the settlement, she was awarded five hundred dollars and earned attention from the ordeal because the law that stated that riding the railroad shall be equal, but separate; however, “Railroad personnel had insisted that all Negroes ride in the smoking car, which was not a first-class coach” (Duster, 1970 p. xvi). Unfortunately, the railroad won the case on appeal. In 1895. she met Ferdinand Barnett, an African-American lawyer with whom she married and had four children, .
Contributions to the First Wave
Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote an essay called “Lynch Law in America” in which she describes the horrors of lynching. The examples of lynching she gave were graphic, describing more than ten thousand, men, women, and children dying in the form of drowning, burning, hanging, and burning alive. Organizations such as the “Red-Shirt” and the Ku Klux Klan intended to void African-American’s right to vote by removing them from their homes and beating and exiling them under the supremacy of the “unwritten law.” This was performed during election days to prevent “negro domination” and suppress African-American’s ability to vote. The “unwritten law” refuses African-Americans to a trial for certain crimes and explains that no white woman “shall be compelled to charge an assault under oath or to submit any such charge to the investigation of a court of law” (Wells, 1900 p.2). Because of this, many innocent African-Americans were faced with murder without a trial. White women could charge African-American males with assault with any motive, no matter what the man’s reputation was. Lynching was something that Wells-Barnett felt very strongly about because a friend of hers was a victim of lynching. After investigating numerous lynching cases, she published her anti-lynching findings through a pamphlet and several local newspaper columns (Norwood, 2017). This caused outrage that led to the burning of her press by locals. After the ordeal, she was forced to relocate to Chicago, Illinois.
From there, Wells-Barnett became involved with other African-American leaders who boycotted the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 (Norwood, 2017). The reason for the boycott was that they believed the exposition committee was locking African-Americans out and negatively portrayed the African-American community (Norwood, 2017). She also published A Red Record in 1893 that was “a personal examination of lynchings in America” (Biography.com Editors, 2014). Her pamphlet “The Reason Why the Colored American is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition” was funded and supported by the abolitionist, editor and statesman, Frederick Douglass, and abolitionist Ferdinand Barnett, who was a lawyer and editor. Her pamphlet was inspired by the African-Americans who were banned from the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 (Biography.com Editors, 2014).
She later founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Club in 1896 that focused on the issues regarding civil rights and women’s suffrage (Norwood, 2017) and the NAACP or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which were both civil rights and women’s suffrage organizations.
She also helped to organize the Alpha Suffrage Club of African-American women in 1914 who later elected Oscar DePriest to Congress, an African-American male. Her reasoning for helping to organize the club was because of Fannie Barrier Williams, an African-American woman. In 1894, Williams tried to join the all-white group called Chicago Women’s Club, but the club split in their decision to accept her. Williams was finally admitted after fourteen months, but Wells-Barnett noted a similar issue in Illinois involving the State Federation of Women’s Clubs. African-American clubs were barred from membership in the State Federation of Women’s Clubs (Terborg-Penn, 1995, p.147). By the second decade in the twentieth century, numerous African-American women’s clubs appeared and a “large federation of “colored” women’s clubs was active in black communities throughout Illinois” (Terborg-Penn, 1995, p.147).
In the end of her career, Wells-Barnett helped with the growing of the city of Chicago with the urban reform. She left behind several writings, speeches, and protests that fought against prejudice (Biography.com Editors, 2014).
“I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”
~ Ida B. Wells-Barnett (Biography.com Editors, 2014)
Analysis and Conclusion
While Wells-Barnett had a significant impact on the first wave and she changed the fight for the ballots by being an African-American female who confronted white women. She used her state citizenship to her advantage and “rejected the notion that she did not belong among her state delegates” (Terborg-Penn, 1995). One of Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s strengths and weakness was that she was very stubborn. She was not afraid to say what needed to be said, despite the consequences, taking her journalism in mind. In the parade sponsored by National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1913 at the nation’s capital, Wells-Barnett was instructed to march in the back with the rest of the African-American women. She refused and as the delegates started their march, she stepped out and joined the march along Belle Squires and Virginia Brooks, the only white Illinois colleagues who were supportive of her cause.
In conclusion, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an anti-lynching activist for women, men, and children. She was a well-educated African-American woman who lived a hard life of violence, sexism, and racism, but was described as courageous, determined, and aggressive (Duster, 1970, p. xiv). She was known for her journalism, which she used to shed light on African-American conditions in the south (Norwood, 2017). She was very involved in anti-lynching, which she defended against white women who ignored lynching. She founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Club and was considered a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as well (Biography.com Editors, 2014). This is only a small snippet of what Wells-Barnett accomplished, but she continues to inspire to this day.
References
Biography.com Editors. (2014). Ida B. Wells Biography. Biography. Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/activist/ida-b-wells
Duster, Alfreda M. (2013). Crusade for Justice the Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, Negro American Biographies and Autobiographies. University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=d3bRAgAAQBAJ&dq=ida+b+wells+barnett +biography&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
(1891). Ida B. Wells, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing slightly right. Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/item/93505758/
Norwood, Arlisha R. (2017). Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931). National Women’s History Museum. Retrieved from https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett.
Terborg-Penn, R. (1995). African American Women and the Woman Suffrage Movement. In M. S.Wheeler. One Woman One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement. Troutdale, Or: NewSage Press.
Wells, Ida B. (1900). Lynch Law in America. So Just: Speeches on Social Justice. Retrieved from http://www.sojust.net/speeches/ida_wells_lynch_law.html#sthash.hAJNLpyD.dpuf