We don’t know our own history. I aced the mandatory eighth grade Illinois Civics class in 1960, by repeating what I had been taught about Abraham Lincoln. But I was not taught about Ida B. Wells, the African-American journalist who did as much as anyone to stop lynching in the United States, even though I had probably gone past her home in Chicago on the way to White Sox games.
How did Ida B. Wells get written out of history? First, lynching is such a horrific subject, that most adults don’t want to think about it, let alone teach it to children. Second, Ida was a “difficult woman”, who antagonized everyone from President McKinley to Booker T. Washington, to her own mother-in-law. The men who wrote histories of lynchings were glad to leave her out of their books.
Smith College professor Paula J. Giddings has written a massive biography Ida: A Sword Among Lions. Ida B Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching to fill that void. It is a remarkable story. Wells was born into slavery in 1862 in Mississippi. When her parents died of yellow fever when she was 16, she got a job teaching to support her five brothers and sisters. At age 22 she became the Rosa Parks of her day when she won a lawsuit against a railroad that had refused her a seat in the First Class Ladies Section. This made her famous. By the time she was 23 she was a celebrity journalist writing for both black and white weeklies.
She used her fame to write about the horrors of lynching, which meant white mobs, without judge or jury, could torture and execute blacks to maintain white supremacy. Giddings includes graphic descriptions of the hanging, castration, and mutilation of African-American men. Lynchings were not secret: they were community events complete with souvenir post cards. Like Ancient Romans going to see gladiators or Shakespeare’s Londoners going to see bear baiting, turn of the century Americans, men, women and children, would turn out to see a lynching as public entertainment. The Tuskegee Institute estimates that there were 3,437 lynchings of African Americans between 1880 and 1951.
So how did Ida B. Wells and others stop this reign of terror and lawlessness?
1. She built strong national organizations, including the first national black women’s secular organization and was one of the Founding Forty of the NAACP.
2. She worked to win and use political power. Ida built the first black women’s suffrage organization in Chicago, which helped elect the city’s first black alderman in 1915, five years before they won the vote for women. Like many Obama campaign alumni today, the hundreds of grassroots leaders developed in these campaigns then used their skills for social justice issues.
3. She made organizing a profession. In 1899 “Funds were recently made available by a five-dollar membership fee – an innovation that Ida had long sought: the ability to earn a regular income for doing race work.” P.412 Five dollars in 1899 is worth $120 in 2008 dollars. As Secretary of the Afro-American Council, membership dues paid for Ida B. Wells to travel, organize, and write.
4. She did not have to be liked. Correspondence often began “Ida has finally calmed down…” P. 491. She was a fearless and righteous campaigner, both inside and outside organizations.
5. She never gave up. Two days before she died at age 69 she was organizing an African American book fair to benefit the Wabash YMCA. She did not live to see the end of lynching, but she knew her editorials, speeches, and organizing had led to the resistance that would stop lynching in America.
This book is not a page turner. It is an academic text-book. But if you want to learn what you weren’t taught in school, get Ida: A Sword Among Lions. If you are a difficult woman yourself (and proud of it) buy two and donate one to your public library to inspire the next generation.
Joan Flanagan is the Fundraiser for the Center for New Community. She has lived her entire life in and around Chicago, and she is still learning its rich history.