A Red Record, 1895 Ida B. Wells,

About Ida B. Wells Ida Wells was born a slave. At the age of 14, lost her mother, father and youngest sibling to a Yellow Fever epidemic. Put herself through Rust College in Mississippi while supporting her five siblings. She was a teacher. In 1884, she was “forcefully removed” from a train for refusing to move to the colored smoking car. This was 21 years before Plessy vs. Ferguson.* Sued the railroad company, but lost in appeals. At the age of 25, her journalism career began. Twelve years later, she became a partner in a Memphis newspaper. In 1892, three of her friends were lynched: Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Henry Stewart. This event inspires her to work harder against social injustices. In 1909, she worked with W.E.B. DuBois on the conception of the NAACP. She was considered radical in a time of radicals. In 1913, she served as a key member in the women’s suffrage movement. Ran for the Illinois State legislature, making her one of the first black women to run for a public office in the U.S. –*Plessy v. Ferguson: 1896, U.S. Supreme Court held that if separate facilities for black were equal to those for whites, then it was acceptable. Established idea of separate-but-equal. Overturned in 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Historical Background Lynching came about during the Westward expansion; there was a need for quick justice. There would be a trial, a sentence and the execution was usually carried out on the court grounds. The orderly process of law superseded this quick justice method and lynching gradually faded from the West. The use of lynching in the South was in support of certain “unwritten laws.” Lynch statistics were reported by The Chicago Tribune starting in Another large newspaper, The New York Times, was openly against lynching, but was biased on presenting the victim’s guilt.

Main Points Three major justifications were used to validate the use of extra-legal lynching in the South. These were used to hide the racism issue: –To protect citizens from “race rioting” “No Negro rioter was every apprehended and proven guilty… It was too much to ask thoughtful people to believe this transparent story.” –To protect the government from “Negro domination” –To protect the virtues of white women “To justify their own barbarism they assume a chivalry which they do not possess. True chivalry respects all womanhood, and no one who reads the record, as it is written in the faces of the million mulattoes in the South, will for a minute conceive that the southern white man had a very chivalrous regard for the honor due the women of his own race or respect for the womanhood which circumstances placed in his power.…Virtue knows no color line, and the chivalry which depends upon complexion of skin and texture of hair can command no honest respect.”

Main Points The act of lynching was considered a social event which is Medieval and barbaric. –“Never in the history of civilization has any Christian people stooped to such a shocking brutality and indescribable barbarism as that whih characterized the people of Paris, Texas, and adjacent communities on the 1 st of February, 1893.” –“Arriving here at 12 o’clock the train was met by a surging mass of humanity 10,000 strong. The negro was placed upon a carnival float in mockery of a king upon his throne, and, followed by an immense crowd, was escorted through the city so that all might see the most inhuman monster known in current history.” –The teeth, strips of flesh, pieces of rope…all of these things were collected as souvenirs.

Main Points The U.S. Government could not protect the rights of black citizens to due justice. –“The government which had made the Negro a citizen found itself unable to protect him.” –“The burning of the dead Negro was witnessed by a score or so of policemen and as many deputy sheriffs, but not a hand was lifted to stop the proceedings after the jail door yielded.” –“Gov. Tillman, who had during his canvass for re- election the year before, declared that he would lead a mob to lynch a Negro that assaulted a white woman, gave Peterson up to the mob.”

Social Impact A Memphis newspaper called her a “Black scoundrel” White businessmen in her community threatened to lynch the owners of The Free Speech; creditors repossessed the offices and sold the equipment. Wells went on to help found the NAACP in 1909 with W. E. B. DuBois.

Questions to Consider Why did Wells use the existence of tens of thousands of people of mixed race in the South as evidence that Southern white men lacked a true sense of honor? Why would people travel long distances to attend a public torturing? What accounted for the brutality of the lynch mobs?