skip to main |
skip to sidebar
By Paula J. Giddings
- In 1893, the "Chicago Inter-Ocean", a mainstream metro newspaper, commissioned 30 year old Ida Wells to investigate a crime. A black man, accused of murdering two white girls, had been mutilated, burned to death and left hanging from a telegraph pole. Wells made the trip, assumed the identity of the dead man's widow, tracked down eyewitnesses and published her findings in detail.
The Introduction describes the history of lynching and serves as a backdrop to Wells's crusade against lynching:
"The origin of the term "lynching," according to James E. Cutler, author of "Lynch-Law" (1905) the first scholarly text on the subject, is attributed to Charles Lynch, a Virginia justice of the peace (and brother of the founder of Lynchburg). Lynch established informal, extra-legal citizen juries during the Revolutionary War years when official courts were few and traveling to them through British-occupied territories was perilous. The common sentence for those found guilty--mostly horse thieves and Tories--was thirty nine lashes with a whip.
By the 1830s, when southern abolitionism reached its height, lynching was associated more with those who threatened the slave order. Following the Civil War, the practice became more murderous with the bloody struggle for power among northern federalists, Confederates, and newly enfranchised black men.
"However, it wasn't until 1886, when increasing numbers of rural blacks migrated to southern cities, that the number of African Americans lynched exceeded that of whites: a trend that continued even as blacks became increasingly disenfranchised; had largely eschewed their political aspirations in favor of building institutions, acquiring wealth, and eliminating ignorance; and ex- Confederates had regained control of their state governments. Both Wells and Cutler cited what were surely conservative estimates by the Chicago Tribune, which reported that 728 persons were lynched between 1882 and 1891, the majority of them African American men. The statistics further showed that less than a third had been accused of rape, much less guilty of it."
In 1893 Wells was established as a black journalist, co-editor and part-owner of the "Memphis Free Speech". A white mob seized the three black men and killed them in a railroad yard duplicating wounds suffered by three white deputies. Wells urged her black readers: "Save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts." Memphis blacks took her advice and departed by the thousands to the West, and those who stayed behind boycotted streetcars and quit their jobs. Business owners panicked and commerce "came to a standstill," Wells would recall with some satisfaction.
Wells used the "Free Speech" to respond to an editorial supporting lynching. The South was menaced by the "horrible and bestial propensities" of black men, whose seething ambition was to catch a white woman alone. Lynching, the paper argued, was a defensive act by noble whites protecting chaste women from depraved blacks. Wells replied that, according to her own investigations, some lynchings involved black men who were guilty of nothing more than having had consensual sex with a white woman. If lynchings were sometimes proof of a white woman's desire for a black man, Wells argued, then the future lynching of blacks by white men would lead others to draw conclusions "which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women."
Despite the firestorm created by her editorial, Wells continued her fight. She gave 102 lectures in Britain to bring international pressure on the U.S. She helped to introduce anti-lynching legislation in six states. Eventually, Wells married a successful Chicago attorney, had four children, wrote in defense of prisoners on death row, opened a reading room and social center in Chicago, ran for public office, and was part of a contingent that met with President Woodrow Wilson in 1913 to protest civil-service segregation.
Ida Wells Clubs opened in cities across the country, and benefactors sent money to her causes. But the women' suffrage movement generally avoided Wells because its leaders didn't want to alienate Southern women. Black ministers asked her to mute the sexual themes in her writing about lynching and women' rights, and W.E.B. Du Bois took credit for excluding her from NAACP leadership positions. Government agents investigated her for treason after passage of the Espionage Act of 1917.
This is a carefully researched biography, describing a real American heroine, and her efforts to stop a terrible crime. I found that it added a very useful dimension to Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.
By Paula J. Giddings
- I was never a Greek, but I read this book because I am familiar with Delta Sigma Theta from their activities at my alma mater, and have enjoyed Paula Giddings's other research about black women's history. Unsurprisingly, I also enjoyed this book. It explains how Delta Sigma Theta provided a critical organizing space for collegiate black women in an era trying to make them choose between the identities and at a time when their being in college itself was a rarity.
In addition to the social events, this sorority also had explicitly political events. From inception, DST worked for civil rights, reflecting their steadfast belief in community progress through community service. While other Greek organizations do community service here-and-there, this is the backbone of DST according to Giddings.
Their first public act was participation in a women's suffrage march (pp. 55-60). Unfortunately, some of the white suffragists they marched with were not grasping the importance of opposing racism (pp. 56-57, pp. 59-60) while opposing sexism. Before 'intersecting identities' became a buzz word in feminist research circles, DST members already understood they could not choose between being a woman or a black. The social justice they embraced and advanced consequently had to recognize them as being both.
The list of Deltas who were in public service is inspiring. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Betty Shabazz, Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisolm, and Marian Wright Edelman are only a few. Even though the organization also faced charges of elitism, DST ultimately comes across as one of the most accessible service organizations. In addition to supporting suffrage, the organization opposed lynching and reached out to single mothers (pp. 300-302) in eras when those activities was politically (if not culturally) dangerous.
This book is (of course) a must get for people who were a part of DST. I'm also convinced it is mandatory reading for people interested in community organizing studies. Giddings explains how women's collegiate organizations can and do play empowering roles in communities throughout the nation in great detail to her readers.
Posts
