Know Ida B. Wells, You're Standing On Her Shoulders

"Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob." -- Ida B. Wells "If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service."-- Ida B. Wells Listen up. Today, the daddy is feeling Ida B. Wells. He knows you've heard some but not enough of her. He knows you've heard that she was an activist in the latter part of the 19 century and after. He knows you've heard that she helped found the NAACP and that a lot of schools and streets, even housing projects, were named after her. That's all nice, isn't it? But the daddy has a sneaky impression that some of you don't want to know more. Why? Because some of you have heard that, first and foremost, she became famous not for starting the NAACP but for fighting against one of America's most despicable practices, a practice that ensured that black citizens remained shackled and beaten down and continuously terrorized after reconstruction -- lynching. No, you don't want to go there. You don't want to deal with this time in history: the period after the 1870's when the Hayes/Tilden agreement dropped, when the North not only failed to provide blacks "40 acres and a mule" but delivered them wholesale back into the cruel hands of southern plantation owners and white vigilantes if they dared resist their new form of re-enslavement, the sharecropping system. Some historians called this period "the black Nair," perhaps the worst period in African American history. 2 Born on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Missouri. Risking her own life, Ida B. Wells-Barnett spent much of her time fighting against injustice. And she was ready. She attended Rust College after emancipation and taught about injustice. Indeed, she was fired for writing about injustice, including segregated schools in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1892, she was criticized for having the nerve to criticize the unique but prevalent torture technique of lynching against Blacks. For writing and publishing these articles, she was threatened so often that she had to leave Memphis. She moved to the Northeast and became well-known for taking up the cause against lynching. Even after marriage (1895), after serving as secretary of the National Afro-American Council (1902), after helping found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1910), she continued to speak out against lynching and for justice. Like W.E.Dubois would do later with the NAACP, she left these organizations because she felt they were too conservative. Indeed, Dubois was criticized by the NAACP for writing an editorial against lynching as well. She also campaigned for women's suffrage. An interesting facet of her life is that she often went to a conference and make a fiery speech to black men about their sexism and then go to another conference and make a fiery speech to white women about their racism. 3 Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who was best known as a warrior against lynching but who was fighter against all forms of sexism and racism as well, died on March 25, 1931. After Frederick Douglass said "If there is no struggle, there is no progress" and long before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said he was "a drum major for justice," Ida B. Wells-Barnett marched and struggled for justice. Know your political Black history. Know Ida B. Wells. After all, you're standing on her shoulders.