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]