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Ida B. Wells and the Crusade
Sarah Russell Lynching is a despicable act occurring when a mob kills a person, usually by hanging them. Before 1880 most lynching victims were white. Since then, the majority of the victims have been blacks who resided in the southern United States. However, all victims of lynchings were treated unfairly. Most victims did not have the benefit of a trial and a chance to defend themselves before they were put to death. The mob assumed that they were guilty. Because of these assumptions and all the innocent people that were killed, a fair assessment is that lynch mobs promote disrespect for law, order, and basic human rights. During the time of lynchings, a school teacher worked in the Memphis area. Her name was Ida B. Wells. When Wells started teaching in Memphis, she had no intention of causing trouble. However, when she wrote about the inferior facilities of black schools around Memphis, trouble was what she caused. Because of her writings, she was fired from her teaching position. She found that she then had a lot of spare time, and she devoted the rest of her life to journalism and the exposure of crime and injustice. When a good friend of hers was lynched in Memphis because he operated a better grocery store than a white competitor. Wells decided to focus her writing on the fight against lynching and mob violence directed at blacks who were acccused of attacking white women. Wells based most of her writings on reports published in newspapers. She proved that only a small percent of black lynching victims had been formally accused of raping white women, because they were always lynched before they could stand trial. In her opinion, lynchings were part of an organized effort to "keep the nigger down" and restore white supremacy in the South. Wells also wrote for many black newspapers. At first, she wrote about black people standing up for their rights. Many people saw and liked her articles; soon she wrote for the best black newspapers in the country. Doing well, she decided to set up her own paper in Memphis. She called it Free Speech. There she wrote her opinions about lynchings and why she thought they had happened. She did such a good job that she made the white citizens of Memphis furious. They felt she was causing trouble with her paper; as a result men burned her printing press. Wells took that as a final warning and left the South. After leaving Memphis, she traveled throughout the United States giving speeches about lynchings. She spoke at many meetings in the northern states because that was where she felt she could gain support. She also made two separate trips to Great Britain where she endeavored to "tell the world the facts" about lynchings. When she was done traveling, she settled down in New York. She became a staff member of the newspaper New York Age. She continued publicizing facts about lynching and why it should end. In 1895 she wrote "Red Record," the first serious statistical treatment of lynching ever written. Shortly after moving to New York, Wells met Ferdinand Barnett, a lawyer and an editor. They married and moved to Chicago where she continued to help her people with her civil rights work by becoming a chair of the Chicago Equal Rights League and the first president of the Negro
Fellowship League. Wells was also a cofounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Ida Wells was a very important person in the crusade against lynching. Because of her writings, the number of lynchings in the South were slowly, but surely, decreased. Her reports were so influential that they often helped prevent further injustice and cruel acts such as the lynchings. Ida B. Wells was an American heroine and a true fighter for equal rights.—[From Russell L. Adams, Great Negroes; Miriam DeCosta-Willis, The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells; Isobel V. Morin, Women Who Reformed Politics; Gloria Steinem, Herstory.]
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