GARVEY LIVES!
MOSIAH LIVES!
We round off our on-air Mosiah Sessions this season with a Marcus Garvey associate and legend in her own right, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, known variously as the “Princess of the Press” and “A Sword Among Lions”. (1)
While many of us might be able to identify Ida B Wells in a picture, rather less of us would be familiar with the fact she bestrode the political scene through generations of activism from Frederick Douglas through Booker T Washington and WEB Du Bois to Marcus Garvey and A Phillip Randolph. For some reason she has yet to receive full acclaim to which she is rightly due.
It wasn’t until almost four decades after Ida B Well-Barnett’s death in 1931 that her daughter, Afreda Duster edited and released her autobiography, Crusade for Justice in 1970. It was almost four decades after that in 2008 when, what is largely regarded as the definitive biography, Paula J. Giddens’ Ida: A Sword Among Lions. Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, was published to widespread acclaim. Nobel laureate, Toni Morrison was among those greatly enthused by the book:
“Sword Among Lions is more than brilliant; it is necessary. I can’t think of a biography that throws more light on the history of gender, race, and class discord in the United States. Six decades of Ida B. Wells’ life constitute a riveting, definitive narrative on a dark and bruising history. In Paula Giddings, this vibrant woman has found a biographer equal to her prowess.”
Ida Bell Wells was born on a slavery plantation in Holly Springs, Mississippi on16 July 1862, almost six months after the signing of the so-called “emancipation proclamation” that supposedly “freed all the slaves.” (2) She was the eldest of eight children born to James Wells and Elizabeth Warrenton Wells. However, Tragedy struck the family in September of 1878 when yellow fever devastated their town, taking with it both her parents and youngest sibling Stanley (another sibling, Eddie had previously died of spinal meningitis). Members of the Masons fraternal order met and decided to distribute the children across the community. However, perhaps as an indication of her future single-mindedness, sixteen-year-old Ida found the arrangement unacceptable declaring her parents would “turn over in their graves to have their children scattered like that.” She asked the guardians to help her secure a teaching position so that she could look after all of her siblings herself. (3) The guardians relented. She noted her own resultant transformation: “After being a happy, light-hearted schoolgirl, I suddenly found myself at the head of a family.” (4)
She grew into a woman in Jim Crow era Memphis and it was there that she had her ‘Rosa Parks moment’ – seventy plus years before Rosa Parks! In September 1883, having bought a first-class train ticket she proceeded to the appropriate car. The conductor insisted that she move to the raucous ‘coloured car’ and she refused. The conductor enlisted the help of white passengers to eject her from the train, although she managed to bite the conductors’ hand in the process. She took her case to the circuit court in 1884 and won, being awarded $500 (although the Tennessee Supreme court overturned the decision three years later). (5)
But the case, which attracted national attention, did cause her to become well-known and put her version of events in print, essentially starting her career as a journalist and editor, initially with local Christian publications. (6)
In fact, her increasing outspokenness in print ultimately lead to her leaving teaching and taking up journalism full-time when she became editor and co-owner of the Free Speech newspaper. She used the platform to advocate racial uplift self-determination, often writing under the pen name Iola:
“Let the Afro-American depend on no party, but on himself, for his salvation. Let him continue to get education, character, and above all, put money in his purse. When he has a dollar in his pocket and many more in the bank, he can move from injustice and oppression and no one can say him nay. When he has money, and plenty of it, parties and races will become his servants.” (7)
The Free Speech flourished under Wells’ editorship but the stark reality was that life under Jim crow was becoming increasingly precarious for Afrikans. This was brought painfully close to home in March 1892. A friend Thomas “Tommie” Moss, president of a co-operative grocery (the fifth largest wholesale grocery market in the country) and to whose child Ida was godmother was lynched alongside two associates at the instigation of a jealous white business rival who corralled a white mob, aided by the police to attack the store and it’s patrons. Wells called for an exodus from Memphis in strident terms: (8)
“The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival. There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are outnumbered and without arms. The white mob could help itself to ammunition without pay, but the order was rigidly enforced against the selling of guns to Negroes. There is therefore only one thing left we can do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and our property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons.” (9)
About twenty percent of the Afrikan population of Memphis heeded the call and left the city, with a noticeable effect on white businesses. (10)
The young editor also knew that the fate that befell her friend was closer to the truth about lynching than the widely propagated myths about Black criminals and rapists. She thundered in a Free Speech editorial on May 21st 1892:
“Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the _Free Speech_ one at Little Rock, Ark., last Saturday morning where the citizens broke into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket–the new alarm about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter.
Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.” (11)
This stinging broadside had Memphis whites in uproar, the co-owner of the Free Speech was run out of town and Ida, who was already away from Memphis on a pre-arranged trip, was threatened with lynching should she ever return, effectively exiling her from the south for three decades. Undaunted, Ida developed a new string to her bow, investigative journalist, to back up her assertions about the real cause of lynchings. By this time her writings had garnered national attention from the likes of noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass and T Thomas Fortune, the future editor of the UNIA’s Negro World newspaper, who was considered the dean of African American journalism. Fortune began publishing Well’s articles in his influential New York Age newspaper. This expose was later published as Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, that she financed through a testimonial fund raiser sponsored by “two black club women” in New York City. She followed this up with subsequent publications A Red Record (1895) and Mob Rule in New Orleans (1900), thereby compounding her reputation as a pioneering investigative journalist. (12)
In addition to racial uplift and economic empowerment, Ida B Wells was also a strong advocate of self-defence, as this passage from Southern Horrors typifies:
“Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did _not_ occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky, and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.
The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that the Winchester rifle deserved a place of honor in every Black home and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.” (13)
Such sentiments were certainly carried through the Garvey movement, as Robert Poston’s 1921 poem When You Meet A Member of the Ku Klux Klan, indicates:
“When you meet a member of the Ku Klux Klan,
Walk right up and hit him like a natural man;
Take no thought of babies he may have at home,
Sympathy’s defamed when used upon his dome.
Call your wife and baby out to see you have some fun,
Sic your bulldog on him for to see the rascal run.
Head him off before he gets then paces from your door,
Take a bat of sturdy oak and knock him down once more.
This time you may leave him where he wallows in the sand,
A spent and humble member of the Ku Klux Klan.” (14)
This advocacy of self-defence was somehow subverted during the civil rights era where non-violence was the prevailing philosophy (the Deacons For Defence and Justice being a notable exception). However, it did re-surface in the Black Nationalist/Power era through the likes of Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and Charles Hamiliton among others:
“Those of us who advocate Black power are quite clear in our own minds that a “non-violent” approach to civil rights is an approach black people cannot afford and a luxury white people do not deserve. It is crystal clear to us–and it must become so with the white society–that there can be no social order without social justice” (15)
By the turn of the century Ida B Wells had married lawyer activist journalist Ferdinand Barnett and was arguably at the height of her powers as an internationally renowned campaigner (including tours of the UK in 1893 and 1894). She remained a dedicated activist balancing roles of wife and mother. She and Ferdinand would have four children in addition to his two from his first marriage. With the death of Frederick Douglass in 1895, one could have reasonably assumed that she would afforded the role of race leadership. However, some men and even some women seemed reluctant, regarding her views as too radical. Thus the mantle was effectively taken up by Booker T Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, both of whom Wells crossed ideological swords with, although to differing extents.
“She was held at a distance by both Black male leaders and white female leaders—and sometimes even by Black women leaders. Was it because she was a no nonsense person who didn’t suffer fools easily? Partly, but it was also because she could be intimidating, and many leaders wanted the spotlight for themselves. It was also because she lived and fought during the dominance of two Black leadership pillars: first, Booker T. Washington, and second, the white liberals and Black men who controlled the National NAACP.” (16)
Booker T Washington has historically been portrayed as the great accomodationist (of white oppression) who acted without nuance and was dismissive of the efforts of Ida B Wells. Yet new research by the scholars such as Tyrene Wright reveal that the Tuskeegee Institute founder “systematically compiled very detailed records on every lynching that was reported across the US.” (17) Perhaps Washington copiously employed a version of what Mama Marimba Ani would call almost a century later the “rhetorical ethic,” in this case telling Europeans what they wanted to hear (rather than the truth) to safeguard his institution building mission, an imperative that few other leaders at the time seemed to be as committed to. (18)
Du Bois’ treatment of Ida B Wells-Barnett (as well as a host of others including Washington and Marcus Garvey) was far more egregious – yet history has been far more kind to him. Not only did the Harvard educated leader write Wells out the founding of the racially mixed NAACP, they also contrived to expunge her from the history of the anti-lynching campaign, even while they imitated her investigative approaches. (19)
Ever the committed activist Wells-Barnett sought to set up and work with various organisations but her militant politics, particularly at a time of growing conservatism found her sidelined in organisations like National Association of Colored Women (that she co-founded) and even the IBW Club that bore her name. (20) Inevitably, she also clashed with elements of the women’s suffrage movement who were more wedded the prevailing social order than justice. The late historian Rosalyn Terborg-Penn noted: “The existence of racism resulting in an anti-Black woman suffrage agenda and tactics among many whites, and the racial discrimination among African American women encountered at the polls, reinforced differences among Black and white women suffragists.” (21)
When a new generation of assertive leaders like Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Asa Phillip Randolph and Hubert Henry Harrison emerged they received willing patronage from Wells-Barnett. In fact, on meeting Garvey the year following his arrival in the USA at his law office, Ferdinand Barrett invited him to the family home for dinner. Moreover, before Randolph became involved in ‘Garvey Must Go’ campaign, he, Garvey and Wells-Barnett shared platforms a few times. (22) One such occasion was in 1918 all three spoke at a UNIA rally in Harlem. Moreover, Wells-Barnett , and Randolph were all scheduled represent the UNIA at the 1919 peace conference in Versailles along with business woman and benefactor to Madam C.J. Walker until the government intervened and denied their passports. (23)
As an indication of how the new generation regarded her, historian Natanya Duncan reveals, “Wells-Barnett encountered both a receptive and tolerant audience in the UNIA. Despite her apprehensions about Garvey’s purchase of ships for the Black Star Line, she remained an ardent supporter and member of the organization throughout its heyday.” (24) Furthermore, Wells-Barnett herself “approved of Garvey’s ability to endow the masses of our people with racial consciousness and racial solidarity.” (25)
The US government had placed both Ida Wells-Barnett and Marcus Garvey under surveillance and at this stage expressed more concern over the anti-lynching crusader’s long track record. The Military Intelligence Division reported in 1918:
“Both of these people are being carefully watched. It is reported to this office that Ida B Wells-Barnett is considered a far for dangerous agitator than Marcus Garvey.” (26)
From there Marcus Garvey went on to build “the largest mass movement of its kind,” (27) while Ida B Wells-Barnett remained an activist until the very end, including attempted forays into party politics. She “slipped away quietly” on March 25th 1931, four months before her sixty-ninth birthday. The cause of death was uremic poisoning. (28)
There are some very direct identifiers of the legacy of Ida Bell Wells-Barnett. Award-winning investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones states: “She is really the template on which I’ve tried to base my own journalistic career.” (29) Meanwhile, academic Keisha Blain argues that present day police killings of Afrikans “represent the continuation of lynching culture in the United States. Today, black Americans die at the hands of police at a rate that is almost equivalent to the number of documented lynchings during the early 20th century.” Thus within this context: “Ida B. Wells offered the solution to police violence more than 100 years ago.” (30)
The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s Operation Ghetto Storm is also worthy of mention:
“In July 2012, in the tradition of “On Lynching” by Ida B. Wells‐Barnett and “We Charge Genocide” by William L. Patterson, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement released a critical report that exposed the fact that in the first six months of the year a Black man, woman, or child was summarily executed by the police, and a smaller number of security guards and self‐appointed vigilantes, Every 36 Hours! But, the July 2012 report did not tell the whole story. Further investigation revealed a more accurate and gruesome number of extrajudicial killings during the first six months of the year. And true to form, the assault on Black life stayed consistent for the last six months of the year, resulting in the extrajudicial killing of at least 313 Black people in 2012, or one Every 28 Hours!” (31)
There is still some way to go for Ida B Wells-Barnett to be afforded comparable acclaim of the generations of leaders she worked alongside. But the breadth and depth of her legacy means that those that remain advocates of racial uplift, self-determination, complimentarity between men and women and community self-defence are its inheritors.
(1) Paula J. Giddings (2009) Ida: A Sword Among Lions. Amistad. p. 152
(2) Remember This (25/10/16) Everything You Think You Know About Lincoln and Race Is Wrong (2000). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1XWq0_P_hI
(3) Giddings. Op. cit. p. 10-11
(4) Alfeda M. Duster,(ed.) (1970) Crusade For Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. University of Chicago Press. p. xv
(5) Giddings. Op. cit. p. 60-137
(6) Todd Steven Burroughs (2017) A People’s Biography of Ida B Wells. p. 9. https://imixwhatilike.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/A-Peoples-Biography-of-Ida-B.-Wells.pdf
(7) Iola’s Southern Field in the New York Age, November 19, 1892, as printed in Mia Bay (ed.) (2014) Ida B. Wells: The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader. Penguin Books. pp. 84.
(8) Giddings. p. 175
(9) Duster. p. 52.
(10) Giddings p. 201-203
(11) Ida B Wells (1982) Free Speech May 21 1892 Editorial, reprinted in Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. https://archive.org/stream/southernhorrors14975gut/14975.txt
(12) Helen Taylor Greene and Shaun L Gabbideon (2000) African American Criminological Thought. State University of New York. p. 11.
(13) Wells, Op. cit.
(14) Tony Martin (1983) Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts, and the Harlem Renaissance. The Majority Press. p. 73
(15) Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton (1967) Black Power: The Politics of Liberation In America. Vintage Books. p. 53
(16) Burroughs. Op. cit. p. 3.
(17) Tyrene Wright (2015) Booker T Washington and Africa:The Making Of A Pan-Africanist. Global Africa Press. p. ix
(18) Marimba Ani (1994) Yurugu: An African Centred Critique of European Cultural Thought and: African-Centered Critique of European Thought and Behavior. Africa World Press. p. 312-317
(19) Giddings. pp. 494-502.
(20) Burroughs. p. 37-38
(21) Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (1998). African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920. Indiana University Press., pp. 2.
(22) Giddings. p. 584; Tony Martin (1986) Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The Majority Press. pp. 315-348.
(23) Giddings. p. 590
(24) Natanya Duncan (2009) The ‘Efficient Womanhood’ Of The Universal Negro Improvement Association: 1919-1930.Unpublished Thesis. p. 21
(25) Giddings. p. 619.
(26) Giddings. p. 590
(27) Tony Martin (1983) Marcus Garvey, Hero: A First Biography. The Majority Press. p. 161.
(28) Giddings. p. 657
(29) Felice León (19/03/19) Nikole Hannah-Jones Tells the Story of Investigative Journalist Ida B. Wells. https://theglowup.theroot.com/nikole-hannah-jones-tells-the-story-of-investigative-jo-1833389130
(30) Keisha Blain (11/07/17) Ida B. Wells offered the solution to police violence more than 100 years ago.
(31) Kali Akuno (2014) Preface to Operation Ghetto Storm. Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. p. 3. http://www.operationghettostorm.org/
we ask the question:
“A far more dangerous agitator than Marcus Garvey.” Who is Ida B Wells-Barnett?
1) Has Ida B Wells been given comparable acclaim to the leaders she worked alongside?
2) If not, why not?
3) In what ways was she “a far more dangerous agitator than Marcus Garvey.”?
4) What can we learn about gender politics from her activism?
5) Are 21st century police killings the modern day equivalent of 19th and 20th century lynchings?
Our Special Guest:
Prof. Paula J. Giddings: Paula J. Giddings is Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College. She is the author of When and Where I Enter: The Impact on Black Women on Race and Sex in America; In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement; and, most recently, the biography of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, Ida: A Sword Among Lions, which won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. Giddings is also the editor of Burning All Illusions, an anthology of articles on race published by The Nation magazine from 1867 to 2000. She is a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeune Afrique (Paris), The Nation, and Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, among other publications. Before her tenure at Smith College, Giddings taught at Spelman College, where she was a United Negro Fund Distinguished Scholar; Douglass College/Rutgers University, as the Laurie Chair in Women’s Studies; and Princeton and Duke universities. She served as the editor of Meridians, feminism, race, transnationalism. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. One commentator observed that she “fits many of the clothes that her biographical subject first wore. In the 1970s, she worked as the Paris Bureau Chief of the Encore American and Worldwide News magazine, a national Black magazine. While there, she traveled to South Africa, covering the anti-apartheid movement. In the 1980s, she became a historian who wrote a book about the Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta.”