On her birthday, here is a salute to Ida B. Wells, the muckraking journalist and activist who rose up out of enslavement to become this nation’s most powerful voice in the battle against lynching in America. Of all the women who are the foremothers of modern day activists using media to fight systemic racism—like the women who founded Black Lives Matter—Ida B. Wells tops my list. Though I wrote about her recently for Women’s History Month, the primary focus then was biographical and not on her journalism and anti-lynching crusade. That mission she spearheaded in the past has many parallels and connections to ugly racist events we still face daily.
As we observe and protest the rise of open and blatant white supremacist acts of violence under the imprimatur of the Orange Bigot currently occupying the Oval Office (along with his segregationist minions like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III), more than ever we need media voices who will speak truth to power and tear away the lies which enable both ignorance and denial.
Black lives did not matter during slavery—only white profits. The brutality and cruelty has been well-documented despite the lies about happy slaves promoted by enslavement apologists. Those same lies and myths are still being perpetrated by today’s major media. As recently as two weeks ago we saw Sally Hemings falsely depicted as the “mistress” (and not the enslaved victim) of Thomas Jefferson. Thankfully, an uproar of pushback ensued.
In her anti-lynching pamphlets Wells wrote of “white men's institutionalized sexual power over black women (which included long-standing patterns of abuse and victimization that arose under slavery and continued in its aftermath).” After emancipation, the terrorizing and brutalization of newly-freed blacks became the focal point of a supremacist agenda. This continued for decades—in what the press described as “riots”—but which were in actuality massacres. Just as lynching was excused and justified by the lynch mobs and the politicians who benefited from the repression of black and other citizens of color, today we see the same type of justification for white domestic terror perpetrated by police and civilians in the name of law, order, and the protection of white people (Trump calls it “national security.”)
The hate spewed by Trump supporters is simply the latest iteration of attempts to silence the voices of blacks, women, immigrants, and LGBT citizens.
While there are biographies of Wells that I have recommended you read, like Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching and To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells, it is important to also read her original reportage:
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
Wells' preface:
The greater part of what is contained in these pages was published in the New York Age June 25, 1892, in explanation of the editorial which the Memphis whites considered sufficiently infamous to justify the destruction of my paper, the Free Speech.
Since the appearance of that statement, requests have come from all parts of the country that "Exiled" (the name under which it then appeared) be issued in pamphlet form. Some donations were made, but not enough for that purpose. The noble effort of the ladies of New York and Brooklyn Oct. 5 have enabled me to comply with this request and give the world a true, unvarnished account of the causes of lynch law in the South.
This statement is not a shield for the despoiler of virtue, nor altogether a defense for the poor blind Afro-American Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white Delilahs. It is a contribution to truth, an array of facts, the perusal of which it is hoped will stimulate this great American Republic to demand that justice be done though the heavens fall.
It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. The awful death-roll that Judge Lynch is calling every week is appalling, not only because of the lives it takes, the rank cruelty and outrage to the victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters and the stain it places against the good name of a weak race.
The Afro-American is not a bestial race. 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. Other considerations are of minor importance.
IDA B. WELLS
New York City, Oct. 26, 1892
Wells received this letter about her work from Frederick Douglass, which applauds her for presenting facts.
HON. FREDERICK DOUGLASS'S LETTER
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. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity,and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.
Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If the American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half Christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame, and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.
But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and Heaven—yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the power of a merciful God for final deliverance.
Very truly and gratefully yours,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C.
Marshaling facts, Wells published a study titled "The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States” under the name Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
In her introduction she wrote:
The first excuse given to the civilized world for the murder of unoffending Negroes was the necessity of the white man to repress and stamp out alleged "race riots." For years immediately succeeding the war there was an appalling slaughter of colored people, and the wires usually conveyed to northern people and the world the intelligence, first, that an insurrection was being planned by Negroes, which, a few hours later, would prove to have been vigorously resisted by white men, and controlled with a resulting loss of several killed and wounded. It was always a remarkable feature in these insurrections and riots that only Negroes were killed during the rioting, and that all the white men escaped unharmed.
From 1865 to 1872, hundreds of colored men and women were mercilessly murdered and the almost invariable reason assigned was that they met their death by being alleged participants in an insurrection or riot. But this story at last wore itself out. No insurrection ever materialized; no Negro rioter was ever apprehended and proven guilty, and no dynamite ever recorded the black man's protest against oppression and wrong. It was too much to ask thoughtful people to believe this transparent story, and the southern white people at last made up their minds that some other excuse must be had.
Then came the second excuse, which had its birth during the turbulent times of reconstruction. By an amendment to the Constitution the Negro was given the right of franchise, and, theoretically at least, his ballot became his invaluable emblem of citizenship. In a government"of the people, for the people, and by the people," the Negro's vote became an important factor in all matters of state and national politics. But this did not last long. The southern white man would not consider that the Negro had any right which a white man was bound to respect, and the idea of a republican form of government in the southern states grew into general contempt. It was maintained that "This is a white man's government,"and regardless of numbers the white man should rule. "No Negro domination" became the new legend on the sanguinary banner of the sunny South, and under it rode the Ku Klux Klan, the Regulators, and the lawless mobs, which for any cause chose to murder one man or a dozen as suited their purpose best. It was a long, gory campaign; the blood chills and the heart almost loses faith in Christianity when one thinks of Yazoo, Hamburg, Edgefield, Copiah, and the countless massacres of defenseless Negroes, whose only crime was the attempt to exercise their right to vote.
But it was a bootless strife for colored people. The government which had made the Negro a citizen found itself unable to protect him. It gave him the right to vote, but denied him the protection which should have maintained that right. Scourged from his home; hunted through the swamps; hung by midnight raiders, and openly murdered in the light of day, the Negro clung to his right of franchise with a heroism which would have wrung admiration from the hearts of savages. He believed that in that small white ballot there was a subtle something which stood for manhood as well as citizenship, and thousands of brave black men went to their graves, exemplifying the one by dying for the other.
This statement from Wells is striking:
The men and women in the South who disapprove of lynching and remain silent on the perpetration of such outrages, are particeps criminis, accomplices, accessories before and after the fact, equally guilty with the actual lawbreakers who would not persist if they did not know that neither the law nor militia would be employed against them.
It is echoed in the words on this tee shirt:
Black people who are murdered by police or so-called vigilantes are portrayed as “at fault” for their own deaths. After the murder by cop of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, ColorofChange put up a petition titled "Media Outlets: Stop victim-blaming Alton Sterling and Philando Castile,” pointing out:
Neither Alton Sterling nor Philando Castile did anything to justify being killed by the police. But that hasn’t stopped national news outlets from criminalizing and dehumanizing these two fathers – explicitly diverting attention away from the actions of the police officers.
We’ve seen this with Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and so many others before. National media outlets victim-blaming Black folks for their own deaths and perpetuating a narrative that they had it coming, that because they “were no angels” that they deserved to die.
Enough is enough. It’s time for our community to pressure national news outlets to reassess their coverage policies around incidents of police killings and to stop victim-blaming practices like detailing past criminal history of victims and sharing old mugshots.
At a time when the racist lies spewed from the White House are normalized, facts are being labelled “fake,” and when major media news outlets still have too few (or no) voices of people of color in prime time (we see you, MSNBC), bloggers and those of you who use media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have to call out the bullshit wherever it is found.
Black Lives Matter is doing it.
Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, Dignity and Power Now, The Reverence Project, RISIST, and Defend Movement respond to recent NRA videos. Featuring the families of Keith Bursey, Charleena Lyles, and Kisha Michael, who were all killed by law enforcement.
As a birthday gift to Ida B. Wells-Barnett, make an effort to emulate her powerful example. Every voice raised makes a difference.
From a selection of her badass quotes:
"I’d rather go down in history as one lone Negro who dared to tell the government that it had done a dastardly thing than to save my skin by taking back what I said."
