Racial segregation in public schools.

 

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

 (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

School segregation

In 1900, Wells was outraged when the Chicago Tribune published a series of articles suggesting adoption of a system of racial segregation in public schools. 

Given her experience as a school teacher in segregated systems in the South, she wrote to the publisher on the failures of segregated school systems and the successes of integrated public schools.

 She then went to his office and lobbied him. Unsatisfied, she enlisted the social reformer Jane Addams in her cause. 

Wells and the pressure group she put together with Addams are credited with stopping the adoption of an officially segregated school system.^[51][52]

World's Columbian Exposition

 

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

 (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

World's Columbian Exposition

In 1893, the World's Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago. Together with Frederick Douglass and other black leaders, Wells organized a black boycott of the fair, for its exclusion of African Americans from the exhibits. 

Wells, Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Wells' future husband, Ferdinand L. Barnett, wrote sections of the pamphlet The Reason Why: The Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition, which detailed the progress of blacks since their arrival in America and also exposed the basis of Southern lynchings. 

Wells later reported to Albion W. Tourgée that copies of the pamphlet had been distributed to more than 20,000 people at the fair.^[44] That year she started work with The Chicago Conservator, the oldest African-American newspaper in the city.

Discovering Heroes -- Why was Wells' name excluded from the original list of founders of the NAACP.?

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

 (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

African-American leadership

The 19th century's acknowledged leader for African-American civil rights, Frederick Douglass praised Wells' work, giving her introductions and sometimes financial support for her investigations. 

When he died in 1895, Wells was perhaps at the height of her notoriety, but many men and women were ambivalent or against a woman taking the lead in black civil rights at a time when women were not seen as, and often not allowed to be, leaders by the wider society.^[44]

 For the new leading voices, Booker T. Washington, his rival, W. E. B. Du Bois, and more traditionally minded women activists, Wells often came to be seen as too radical.^[45]

  Wells encountered and sometimes collaborated with the others, but they also had many disagreements, while also competing for attention for their ideas and programs.

 For example, there are differing in accounts for why Wells' name was excluded from the original list of founders of the NAACP.

 In his autobiography Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois implied that Wells chose not to be included.^[46] 

However, in her autobiography, Wells stated that Du Bois deliberately excluded her from the list.^[47]

Wells had gained extensive recognition and credibility, and an international audience of white supporters of her cause.

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931

She relied heavily on her pamphlet Southern Horrors in her first tour, and showed shocking photographs of actual lynchings in America. 

On May 17, 1894, she spoke in Birmingham at the Young Men's Christian Assembly and at Central Hall, and staying in Edgbaston at 66 Gough Road.^[39]
 
As a result of her two lecture tours in Britain, she received significant coverage in the British and American press.

 Many of the articles published at the time of her return to the United States were hostile personal critiques, rather than reports of her anti-lynching positions and beliefs. The New York Times, for example, called her "a slanderous and nasty-nasty-minded Mulatress."^[40] 

 Despite these attacks in the white press, Wells had nevertheless gained extensive recognition and credibility, and an international audience of white supporters of her cause.

Ida Bell Wells was the first African-American woman to be a paid correspondent for a mainstream white newspaper.

 

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

 (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

In 1894, before leaving the US for her second visit to Great Britain, Wells called on William Penn Nixon, the editor of the Daily Inter-Ocean, a Republican newspaper in Chicago. 

It was the only major white paper that persistently denounced lynching.^[34] After she told Nixon about her planned tour, he asked her to write for the newspaper while in England.^[35] 

 She was the first African-American woman to be a paid correspondent for a mainstream white newspaper.^[36]



Wells toured England, Scotland and Wales for two months, addressing audiences of thousands,^[37] and rallying a moral crusade among the British.[38

Speaking tours in Britain

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1864 – March 25, 1931)

Speaking tours in Britain

Wells traveled twice to Britain in her campaign against lynching, the first time in 1893 and the second in 1894. 

She and her supporters in America saw these tours as an opportunity for her to reach larger, white audiences with her anti-lynching campaign, something she had been unable to accomplish in America.

 She found sympathetic audiences in Britain, already shocked by reports of lynching in America.^[30]

 
Wells had been invited for her first British speaking tour by Catherine Impey and Isabella Fyvie Mayo. Impey, a Quaker abolitionist who published the journal Anti-Caste,^[31] had attended several of Wells' lectures while traveling in America. 

Mayo was a well-known writer and poet who wrote under the name of Edward Garrett. Both women had read of the particularly gruesome lynching of Henry Smith in Texas and wanted to organize a speaking tour to call attention to American lynchings.

 They asked Frederick Douglass to make the trip, but citing his age and health, he declined. He then suggested Wells, who enthusiastically accepted the invitation.^[32][33]

Lynching cases committed from 1892 to 1895 -- 14 pages of statistics

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1864 – March 25, 1931)

Wells-Barnett gave 14 pages of statistics related to lynching cases committed from 1892 to 1895; she also included pages of graphic accounts detailing specific lynchings. She notes that her data was taken from articles by white correspondents, white press bureaus, and white newspapers.  

The Red Record was a huge pamphlet, and had far-reaching influence in the debate about lynching. Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases and The Red Record's accounts of these lynchings grabbed the attention of Northerners who knew little about lynching or accepted the common explanation that black men deserved this fate.

 Generally southern states and white juries refused to indict any perpetrators for lynching, although they were frequently known and sometimes shown in the photographs being made more frequently of such events. 

Despite Wells-Barnett's attempt to garner support among white Americans against lynching, she believed that her campaign could not overturn the economic interests whites had in using lynching as an instrument to maintain Southern order and discourage Black economic ventures. 

Ultimately, Wells-Barnett concluded that appealing to reason and compassion would not succeed in gaining criminalization of lynching by Southern whites.^[29]
 
Wells-Barnett concluded that perhaps armed resistance was the only defense against lynching. Meanwhile, she extended her efforts to gain support of such powerful white nations as Britain to shame and sanction the racist practices of America.^[29]

The RED Record by Ida B. Wells

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

 (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) 

Wells-Barnett explored these in detail in her The Red Record.

• During slavery time, she noted that whites worked to "repress and stamp out alleged 'race riots'" or suspected slave rebellions, usually killing black people in far higher proportions than any white casualties. Once the Civil War ended, white people feared black people, who were in the majority in many areas. White people acted to control them and suppress them by violence.

 

• During the Reconstruction Era white people lynched black people as part of mob efforts to suppress black political activity and re-establish white supremacy after the war. They feared "Negro Domination" through voting and taking office. Wells-Barnett urged black people in high-risk areas to move away to protect their families.

 

• She noted that whites frequently claimed that black men had "to be killed to avenge their assaults upon women". She noted that white people assumed that any relationship between a white woman and a black man was a result of rape. But, given power relationships, it was much more common for white men to take sexual advantage of poor black women. She stated: "Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that black men rape white women." Wells connected lynching to sexual violence, showing how the myth of the black man's lust for white women led to murder of African-American men.

The Red Record (1895), a 100-page pamphlet describing lynching in the United States

 

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1864 – March 25, 1931

She followed-up with greater research and detail in The Red Record (1895), a 100-page pamphlet describing lynching in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

 It also covered black peoples' struggles in the South since the Civil War. The Red Record explored the alarmingly high rates of lynching in the United States (which was at a peak from 1880 to 1930). 

Wells-Barnett said that during Reconstruction, most Americans outside the South did not realize the growing rate of violence against black people in the South. 

She believed that during slavery, white people had not committed as many attacks because of the economic labor value of slaves. 

Wells noted that, since slavery time, "ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, [through lynching] without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution." 

Frederick Douglass had written an article noting three eras of "Southern barbarism" and the excuses that whites claimed in each period.

Pamphlet published titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

Southern Horrors and The Red Record

Cover of Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

 

 

On October 26, 1892, Wells began to publish her research on lynching in a pamphlet titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.^[26][27] 

 Having examined many accounts of lynchings due to the alleged "rape of white women", she concluded that Southerners cried rape as an excuse to hide their real reasons for lynchings: black economic progress, which threatened white Southerners with competition, and white ideas of enforcing black second-class status in the society.

 Black economic progress was a contemporary issue in the South, and in many states whites worked to suppress black progress. 

In this period at the turn of the century, Southern states, starting with Mississippi in 1890, passed laws and/or new constitutions to disenfranchise most black people and many poor white people through use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other devices.

 Wells-Barnett recommended that black people use arms to defend against lynching.^[28]

The lynching at The Curve in Memphis ---- Part IV

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

 (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

The lynching at The Curve in Memphis

 

"There is, therefore, only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and 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."^[23]
 
The event led Wells to begin investigating lynchings using investigative journalist techniques. 

She began to interview people associated with lynchings, including a lynching in Tunica, Mississippi, in 1892 where she concluded that the father of a young white woman had implored a lynch mob to kill a black man with whom his daughter was having a sexual relationship, as to "to save the reputation of his daughter."^[24]
 
In May 1892, Wells published an editorial refuting what she called the "that old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women.

 If Southern men are not careful, a conclusion might be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women."^[25] Wells’ newspaper office was burned to the ground, and she would never again return to Memphis.

The lynching at The Curve in Memphis - Part III

 

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

 (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

 

The lynching at The Curve in Memphis

 

 Thomas Moss, a postman in addition to being the owner of the People's Grocery, was named as a conspirator along with McDowell and Stewart. The three men were arrested and jailed pending trial. 

Around 2:30 a.m. on the morning of March 9, 1892, 75 men wearing black masks took Moss, McDowell, and Stewart from their jail cells at the Shelby County Jail to a Chesapeake and Ohio rail yard one mile north of the city and shot them dead. The Memphis Appeal-Avalanche reports: 

Dear Miss Wells:
Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. ... Brave woman!

—Frederick Douglass (1895)^[21]


 

Just before he was killed, Moss said to the mob: "Tell my people to go west, there is no justice here."^[22]
After the lynching of her friends, Wells wrote in Free Speech and Headlight urging blacks to leave Memphis altogether:

The lynching at The Curve in Memphis --- Part II

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

The lynching at The Curve in Memphis

The white grocer Barrett returned the following day, March 3, 1892, to the People's Grocery with a Shelby County Sheriff's Deputy, looking for William Stewart. 

But Calvin McDowell, who greeted Barrett, indicated that Stewart was not present. Barrett was dissatisfied with the response and was frustrated that the People's Grocery was competing with his store. 

Angry about the previous day's mêlée, Barrett responded that "blacks were thieves" and hit McDowell with a pistol. McDowell wrestled the gun away and fired at Barrett—missing narrowly. McDowell was later arrested but subsequently released.^[19]
 
On March 5, 1892, a group of six white men including a sheriff's deputy took electric streetcars to the People's Grocery. 

The group of white men were met by a barrage of bullets from the People's Grocery, and Shelby County Sheriff Deputy Charley Cole was wounded, as well as civilian Bob Harold. 

Hundreds of whites were deputized almost immediately to put down what was perceived by the local Memphis newspapers Commercial and Appeal-Avalanche as an armed rebellion by black men in Memphis.^[20]

The lynching at The Curve in Memphis --- Part I

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

The lynching at The Curve in Memphis

In 1889, a black proprietor named Thomas Moss opened the People's Grocery in a South Memphis neighborhood nicknamed "The Curve." 

Wells was close to Moss and his family, having stood as godmother to his first child. Moss's store did well and competed with a white-owned grocery store across the street, owned by William Barrett. 

On March 2, 1892, a young black boy named Armour Harris was playing a game of marbles with a young white boy named Cornelius Hurst in front of the People's Grocery.

 The two boys got into an argument and a fight during the game. As the black boy Harris began to win the fight, the father of Cornelius Hurst intervened and began to "thrash" Harris. 

 The People's Grocery employees William Stewart and Calvin McDowell saw the fight and rushed outside to defend the young Harris from the adult Hurst as people in the neighborhood gathered in to what quickly became a "racially charged mob."^[18]

Ida Bell Wells- Barnett was offered an editorial position for the Evening Star in Washington, D.C.

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

While continuing to teach elementary school, Wells became increasingly active as a journalist and writer. She was offered an editorial position for the Evening Star in Washington, D.C., and she began writing weekly articles for The Living Way weekly newspaper under the pen name "Iola." 

Under her pen name, she wrote articles attacking racist Jim Crow policies.^[16] In 1889, she became editor and co-owner with J. L. Fleming of The Free Speech and Headlight, a black-owned newspaper established by the Reverend Taylor Nightingale and based at the Beale Street Baptist Church in Memphis. 

In 1891, Wells was dismissed from her teaching post by the Memphis Board of Education due to her articles that criticized conditions in the black schools of the region. 

She was devastated but undaunted, and concentrated her energy on writing articles for The Living Way and the Free Speech and Headlight.^[17]
 
Wells was considered to be a well accomplished, successful woman who was well respected among the community.

 She belonged to the middle class which at the time was considered to be rare for women especially women of color.

The Memphis Diary of Ida Bell Wells-Barnett

 

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

On May 4, 1884, a train conductor with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad^[10][11] ordered Wells to give up her seat in the first-class ladies car and move to the smoking car, which was already crowded with other passengers.

 The previous year, the Supreme Court had ruled against the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 (which had banned racial discrimination in public accommodations). This verdict supported railroad companies that chose to racially segregate their passengers. 

When Wells refused to give up her seat, the conductor and two men dragged her out of the car. Wells gained publicity in Memphis when she wrote a newspaper article for The Living Way, a black church weekly, about her treatment on the train.

 In Memphis, she hired an African-American attorney to sue the railroad. When her lawyer was paid off by the railroad,^[12] she hired a white attorney. 

She won her case on December 24, 1884, when the local circuit court granted her a $500 award. The railroad company appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court's ruling in 1887.

 It concluded, "We think it is evident that the purpose of the defendant in error was to harass with a view to this suit, and that her persistence was not in good faith to obtain a comfortable seat for the short ride."^[13][14] 

Wells was ordered to pay court costs. Her reaction to the higher court's decision revealed her strong convictions on civil rights and religious faith, as she responded: "I felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things from my suit for my people. ... O God, is there no ... justice in this land for us?"^[15]

Ida Bell Wells attended Lemoyne-Owen College, a historically black college in Memphis.

 

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett

 (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

 Soon after moving to Memphis, Wells was hired in Woodstock by the Shelby County school system.

 During her summer vacations she attended summer sessions at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville.

 She also attended Lemoyne-Owen College, a historically black college in Memphis. 

She held strong political opinions and provoked many people with her views on women's rights.

At the age of 24, she wrote, "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge."^[9]

Ida Bell Wells becomes a teacher in a black elementary school in Holly Springs.

 

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

Following the funerals of her parents and brother, friends and relatives decided that the five remaining Wells children should be separated and sent to various foster homes. 

Wells resisted this solution. To keep her younger siblings together as a family, she found work as a teacher in a black elementary school in Holly Springs. 

Her paternal grandmother, Peggy Wells, along with other friends and relatives, stayed with her siblings and cared for them during the week while Wells was teaching.

But when Peggy Wells died from a stroke and her sister Eugenia died, Wells accepted the invitation of her Aunt Fanny and moved with her two youngest sisters to Memphis in 1883.

Wells’ father, James Wells, became a trustee of Shaw College (now Rust College).

 

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

After emancipation, Wells’ father, James Wells, became a trustee of Shaw College (now Rust College). 

He refused to vote for Democratic candidates during the period of Reconstruction, became a member of the Loyal League, and was known as a "race man" for his involvement in politics and his commitment to the Republican Party.^[5] 

He founded a successful carpentry business in Holly Springs in 1867, and his wife Lizzie became known as a "famous cook".^[7]
 
Ida B. Wells was one of the eight children, and she enrolled in the historically black liberal arts college Rust College in Holly Springs (formerly Shaw College). 

In September 1878, tragedy struck the Wells family when both of her parents died during a yellow fever epidemic that also claimed a sibling.^[8] 

Wells had been visiting her grandmother's farm near Holly Springs at the time, and was spared.

Black Female Activist --- Ida Bell Wells-Barnett

 

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

Subjected to continued threats, Wells left Memphis for Chicago. She married and had a family while continuing her work writing, speaking, and organizing for civil rights and the women's movement for the rest of her life. 

Wells was outspoken regarding her beliefs as a Black female activist and faced regular public disapproval, sometimes including from other leaders within the civil rights movement and the women's suffrage movement.

 She was active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. 

A skilled and persuasive speaker, Wells traveled nationally and internationally on lecture tours.^[3]

Listen Carefully My Brothers and Sisters ---- James 1:19

James 1:19

King James Version

 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:

Blessing & Cursing Should Not Come Out Of The Same Mouth. No Stop it Right Now No More

James 3:10-11

King James Version

¹⁰ Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
¹¹ Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?

Mark 4:17

King James Version

 And have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time: afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake, immediately they are offended.

Deuteronomy 26:14 KJV

 

 

 

 

Deuteronomy 26:14

King James Version

 I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I taken away ought thereof for any unclean use, nor given ought thereof for the dead: but I have hearkened to the voice of the Lord my God, and have done according to all that thou hast commanded me.

Blessed are the undefiled

Psalm 119:1

King James Version

 Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.

We are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Romans 8:37

Romans 8:37

King James Version

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

The Battle Is The Lord's! ---- Everyone Will See

 

 

 

I Samuel 17:47

“And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD'S, and he will give you into our hands.” King James Version (KJV)

David Conquered the giant, Because David Believed in GOD!!!!

1 Samuel 17:47

“And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD'S, and he will give you into our hands.” King James Version (KJV)

GOD Bless You All

2 Corinthians 2:14

King James Version

 Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.

David encouraged himself in the Lord his God. I Samuel 30:6 KJV

1 Samuel 30:6

King James Version

And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.

Hebrews 4:15 kjv

Hebrews 4:15

King James Version

For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

Shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. Isaiah 55:11

 

Isaiah 55:11

King James Version

 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.

Isaiah 43:18-19

King James Version

¹⁸ Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old.
¹⁹ Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

JESUS is brought as a lamb to the slaughter

Isaiah 53:7

King James Version

 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

But when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

 

 

1 Corinthians 13:11

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

King James Version (KJV)

 

 

 

1 John 1:9

King James Version

 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Ida Bell Wells--- investigative reporting was carried nationally in black-owned newspapers.

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

 (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) 

 In the 1890s, Wells documented lynching in the United States through her indictment called "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases," investigating frequent claims of whites that lynchings were reserved for black criminals only. 

Wells exposed lynching as a barbaric practice of whites in the South used to intimidate and oppress African Americans who created economic and political competition—and a subsequent threat of loss of power—for whites.

 A white mob destroyed her newspaper office and presses as her investigative reporting was carried nationally in black-owned newspapers.

IDA B. Wells co-owned and wrote for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper.

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931)

Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War. 

At the age of 16, she lost both her parents and her infant brother in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. 

 She went to work and kept the rest of the family together with the help of her grandmother. Later, moving with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, she found better pay as a teacher. 

Soon, Wells co-owned and wrote for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper. 

Her reporting covered incidents of racial segregation and inequality.

Ida Bell Wells

Ida B. Wells
Wells, c. 1893
Born	Ida Bell Wells July 16, 1862 Holly Springs, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	March 25, 1931 (aged 68) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Burial place	Oak Woods Cemetery
Nationality	American
Other names	Ida Bell Wells-Barnett Iola (pen name)
Education	Rust College Fisk University
Occupation	Civil rights and women's rights activist, journalist and newspaper editor, teacher
Spouse(s)	Ferdinand L. Barnett
Children	6
Parent(s)	James Wells and Elizabeth "Izzy Bell" Warrenton