Ida B. Wells—the anti-lynching crusader, women’s rights activist, voting rights advocate, and journalist—was born into enslavement on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
As I sit here today, watching the resurgence of anti-Black hate groups, “white nationalism” denial from Sen. Tommy Tuberville, hate legislation from the Republi-Klan Party, book banning in the name of fake anti-CRT mania, daily news stories of anti-Black and -POC police brutality, and the rolling back of women’s rights, I feel like it is time, once again, to turn to music that narrates history, celebrates our hard-won victories, honors our freedom fighters, and moves us to keep on fighting that good fight.
Wells, also known as Ida B. Wells-Barnett, is a powerful symbol and example of who we must not only admire, but emulate, if we are going to drag this country out of the putrid weeds of hate—again.
RELATED STORY: Ida B. Wells-Barnett fought to make black lives matter
Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music. With nearly 170 stories (and counting) covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack, I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
Eliza Castile, writing for Bustle on the occasion of Wells being the subject of a 2015 Google Doodle, offered this most appropriate headline: ”Ida B. Wells Was A Complete And Utter Badass.”
Wells quickly became a prominent journalist and activist for civil rights and women's suffrage in a time when that kind of ideology could get you killed. After getting fired from her job as a teacher, she became an editor before age 25 of two papers in Memphis, which she continued to run even after her printing press was destroyed by an angry mob. "Fearless and uncompromising, she was a fierce opponent of segregation and wrote prolifically on the civil injustices that beleaguered her world," the Google Doodle reads. Later in life, she became editor of the Chicago Conservator and married Chicago attorney Ferdinand Barrett. She insisted on keeping her maiden name, which was exactly as radical for the time as it sounds. In 1909, she helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Castile also selected eight “badass” quotes from Wells:
1. "No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders."
2. "What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party."
3. "The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press."
4. "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."
5. "I came home every Friday afternoon, riding the six miles on the back of a big mule. I spent Saturday and Sunday washing and ironing and cooking for the children and went back to my country school on Sunday afternoon."
6. "In fact, for all kinds of offenses - and, for no offenses - from murders to misdemeanors, men and women are put to death without judge or jury; so that, although the political excuse was no longer necessary, the wholesale murder of human beings went on just the same."
7. "The alleged menace of universal suffrage having been avoided by the absolute suppression of the negro vote, the spirit of mob murder should have been satisfied and the butchery of negroes should have ceased."
8. "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."
To get a sense of Wells’ fierce oration, listen to Ruby Dee’s recording of her iconic speech, “Lynching, Our National Crime.”
The Guardian published the complete text of the speech, but here is an excerpt:
The pioneering African American investigative reporter Ida B Wells gave this impassioned speech at the 1909 National Negro Conference
“The lynching record for a quarter of a century merits the thoughtful study of the American people. It presents three salient facts:
“First, lynching is color-line murder.
“Second, crimes against women is the excuse, not the cause.
“Third, it is a national crime and requires a national remedy.
“Proof that lynching follows the color line is to be found in the statistics which have been kept for the past 25 years. During the few years preceding this period and while frontier law existed, the executions showed a majority of white victims. Later, however, as law courts and authorized judiciary extended into the far west, lynch law rapidly abated, and its white victims became few and far between.
“Just as the lynch-law regime came to a close in the west, a new mob movement started in the south. This was wholly political, its purpose being to suppress the colored vote by intimidation and murder. Thousands of assassins banded together under the name of Ku Klux Klan, “Midnight Raiders”, “Knights of the Golden Circle”, et cetera, et cetera, spread a reign of terror by beating, shooting and killing colored in a few years, the purpose was accomplished, and the black vote was suppressed. But mob murder continued.
“From 1882, in which year 52 were lynched, down to the present, lynching has been along the color line. Mob murder increased yearly until in 1892; more than 200 victims were lynched and statistics show that 3,284 men, women and children have been put to death in this quarter of a century. During the last 10 years, from 1899 to 1908 inclusive, the number lynched was 959. Of this number 102 were white, while the colored victims numbered 857. No other nation, civilized or savage, burns its criminals; only under that Stars and Stripes is the human holocaust possible. Twenty-eight human beings burned at the stake, one of them a woman and two of them children, is the awful indictment against American civilization – the gruesome tribute which the nation pays to the color line.”
While looking for music for today’s story, I was delighted to find this musical biography of Wells-Barnett, by rapper Queen CJ. It’s a video I’ll be passing on to my young folks.
The most powerful piece of music addressing lynching is “Strange Fruit,” of course. Written by Abel Meeropol and most famously sung by Billie Holiday, I’ve written about the song several times.
RELATED STORIES: As long as white supremacy endures, Billie Holiday's 'Strange Fruit' will be an anthem of resistance
The 'strange fruit' was often female
Other younger artists you may not have heard are continuing the song’s legacy. Give a listen to José James’ moving and nuanced version of “Strange Fruit” from his 2015 album, “Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday.”
From James’ bio, written by Thom Jurek at All Music:
Originally from Minnesota, José James is the son of a like-named multi-instrumentalist, though he was raised by his mother in Duluth and Minneapolis, and also spent some time in Seattle. Active in the music programs of the two Minneapolis high schools he attended, the younger James started performing locally during his late teens. After he turned heads as a finalist in the 2004 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocalist Competition, he relocated to New York to attend the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. James caught the attention of Gilles Peterson and signed with the BBC DJ's Brownswood label, where he debuted in 2007 with a handful of 12" releases, including an interpretation of John Coltrane's "Equinox." He made his full-length debut the following January with Dreamer. The album ended up earning him accolades worldwide for its blend of jazz, electronic, soul, and pop styles. It placed at number 21 in Jazz Times' Top 50 for the year. Consequently, James played on prestigious stages all over the world, including those at the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Victoria Jazz Festival, and London's Royal Festival Hall. He made numerous guest appearances on recordings by the Junior Mance Trio, Jazzanova, Nicola Conte, Basement Jaxx, and Chico Hamilton, to name a few.
To me, Nina Simone has always embodied the spirit of Ida B. Wells. In this clip she talks about what she feels is an artists’ duty.
Transcript:
An artist's duty as far as I'm concerned is to reflect the times. I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, musicians. As far as I'm concerned it's their choice. But I choose to reflect the times and situations in which i find myself. That to me is my duty. And at this crucial time in our lives when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don't think you can help but be involved. Young people, black and white, know this, that is why they are so involved in politics. We will shape and mold this country or it will not be shaped and molded at all any more. So I don't think you have a choice, how can you be an artist and not reflect the times. That to me is the definition of an artist.
Simone recorded “Revolution” in 1969. Here’s a live version, uploaded to her estate’s official YouTube channel. It’s thought that this is a rehearsal ahead of a 1969 concert in Olympia, Washington.
Lyrics:
[Part 1:]
And now we got a revolution
'Cause I see the face of things to come
Yeah, your Constitution
Well, my friend, it's gonna have to bend
I'm here to tell you 'bout destruction
Of all the evil that will have to end
(It will, oh, yes, will end
Don'tcha know it's gonna be) All right
(It will end) Well, all right
Well, all right
Some folks are gonna get the notion
I know, they'll say I'm preachin' hate
But if I have to swim the ocean
Well, I would just to communicate
It's not as simple as talkin' jive
The daily struggle just to stay alive
(Alive and well on Earth
Don'tcha know it's gonna be) Well, all right
(Stay alive) Alive and well
Sing about a revolution
Because I'm talkin' 'bout a change
It's more than just air pollution
Well, you know you got to clean your brain
The only way that we can stand, in fact
Is when you get your foot off our back
(Get off our backs, get back
Don'tcha know it's gonna be) All right
(Well, get back) Get back
Well, all right
The Black Panther Party for Self Defense produced musicians as well. Party leader Elaine Brown recorded “Seize the Time” in 1969. Her story is told on the Voices of the Civil Rights Movement website.
Elaine Brown is accustomed to breaking new ground — and overcoming adversity is a challenge she’d conquered long before she made history in the 1970s as the first and only woman to lead the Black Panther Party. Of the many Black-led organizations advocating for the civil and human rights of Black Americans at the time, “none had women in leadership except the Black Panther Party,” asserts Brown, 77. Fortunately, Brown was up for the challenge — and the many difficulties her controversial appointment would bring into her life. Her well-earned reputation as a brilliant, bold, unyielding supporter of the liberation of Black people in America and beyond lives on today, as further evidenced by the more than five decades she has lent her support — and her voice — to speaking out on issues of equality and justice. “We were there to challenge the entire structure and scheme,” says Brown, of the Panthers’ efforts to make American society more equitable. “And so it is that [which] gave me, and gives me, meaning and purpose today.”
Promoting self-determination and an end to police brutality facing Black Americans — both of which topped the Black Panther Party’s agenda from its inception in 1966 — are the core of Brown’s activism.
Similar themes have since emerged in the Black Lives Matter movement of present-day, serving as a reminder of the lasting impact that both the Panthers and Brown have made on America and the world; an impressive feat for a Black girl raised in poverty in Philadelphia by a devoted dress-factory worker mother. She would not learn of her absent father, a well-respected neurosurgeon, until the age of 14.
In her young adulthood, Brown’s desire to pursue a songwriting career inspired her relocation to California, where the Black Panthers were born and largely based. Her time there would introduce her to the then-burgeoning organization known for its brash, unapologetic message of Black pride. Brown’s outlook forever changed following a chance encounter with a local Black Panther Party leader: “I met this incredible man named [Alprentice] ‘Bunchy’ Carter, who was the founder and leader of the southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party. I knew that I had to do something.”
Here’s Brown’s “Seize the Time.”
Lyrics:
You tell me that the sun belongs
To you and should surround you
But, when I turn to look
I see they've snatched
The sun from all around you.
Why you hardly seem
To want what's yours
You hardly seem to care
If you love the sun
It's where you've come from
Then you had better dare
To Seize The Time
The time is now
Oh, Seize The Time
And you know how.
Also in 1969, Marlena Shaw recorded “Women of the Ghetto.”
As Phil Harrell wrote for NPR in 2020:
"Woman of the Ghetto" offers a really powerful challenge to these reports that were coming out in the 1960s, often created by white urban sociologists who were talking about the conditions of the ghetto and what was wrong with Black America — often blaming Black people themselves. And Marlena Shaw's song is remarkable in part because she speaks from the first-person's perspective and she's also speaking, significantly, from a woman's perspective: "I am a woman of the ghetto." That matters. She's able to express concerns about domestic issues: How does somebody feed their children? What do you do about the rats that might be crowding in on your domestic space?
Have a listen:
Lyrics:
(la-la-la-la-la-la-la, ...)
I was born, raised in a ghetto
I was born and raised in a ghetto
I'm a woman, of the ghetto
Won't you listen, won't you listen to me, legislator?
(ging, gi-gi-gi-gi-ging...)
How do you raise your kids in a ghetto?
How do you raise your kids in a ghetto?
Do you feed one child and starve another?
Won't you tell me, legislator?
Enthralled through
I know that my eyes ain't blue
But you see I'm a woman
Of the ghetto
I'm proud, free,
Black, that is me
But I'm a woman of the ghetto
Ella Baker was one of the women who followed in Wells’ activist footsteps.
Ella Baker began her involvement with the NAACP in 1940. She worked as a field secretary and then served as director of branches from 1943 until 1946.
Inspired by the historic bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Baker co-founded the organization In Friendship to raise money to fight against Jim Crow Laws in the deep South.
In 1957, Baker moved to Atlanta to help organize Martin Luther King’s new organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She also ran a voter registration campaign called the Crusade for Citizenship.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been denied service.
Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to assist the new student activists because she viewed young, emerging activists as a resource and an asset to the movement. Miss Baker organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee — SNCC — was born.
Baker was immortalized in song by Bernice Reagon and Sweet Honey in the Rock; this 2020 cover from the Resistance Revival Chorus is a powerful listen.
Here’s more about the cover and video:
Music collective Resistance Revival Chorus just released a video for their recording of “Ella’s Song,” in commemoration of Juneteenth and Ella Baker. The recording was also released as part of Bandcamp’s Juneteenth campaign, with all proceeds going to the Movement for Black Lives.
“Ella’s Song” descends from the words of civil rights activist Ella Baker, which were turned into an a cappella piece written by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon and performed by the ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock. This arrangement, produced by Tiffany Gouché under the direction of RRC musical director Abena Koomson-Davis, originates from Toshi Reagon & Big Lovely’s recording in celebration of the 2017 Women’s March, with added vocal harmonies arranged and taught by Sound (Julie) Brown.
Koomson-Davis says of the song,
I first heard Sweet Honey in the Rock perform Ella’s Song as a teenager. I was galvanized by the power of collective singing to shift the focus of our hearts to justice, dignity, and oneness. The call and response has echoed in me ever since, and in many ways is the foundation of my work as a musician and educator. It demands that we honor Black lives, that we honor our children, that we honor womanhood, and remain steady in the fight for freedom. I do not take the anchoring phrase “we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes” as a dismissal of self-care or some capitalist grind philosophy. It is not “I cannot rest,” It is “WE.” It is akin to the tradition of West African dance, drumming and song, where the “WE” generates continuous movement and music. While individuals and partners may take breaths between passages, our collective contributions keep the song of freedom playing. May WE boldly sound these efforts, ever toward LIBERATION.
Lyrics:
We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes
Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons
Is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers' sons
That which touches me most is that I had a chance to work with people
Passing on to others that which was passed on to me
To me young people come first, they have the courage where we fail
And if I can but shed some light as they carry us through the gale
The older I get the better I know that the secret of my going on
Is when the reins are in the hands of the young, who dare to run against the storm
Not needing to clutch for power, not needing the light just to shine on me
I need to be one in the number as we stand against tyranny
Struggling myself don't mean a whole lot, I've come to realize
That teaching others to stand up and fight is the only way my struggle survives
I'm a woman who speaks in a voice and I must be heard
At times I can be quite difficult, I'll bow to no man's word
We who believe in freedom cannot rest
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes
I’ll close with this message from the women of Sweet Honey:
We shall not bow down to racism.
We shall not bow down to injustice.
We shall not bow down to exploitation.
(Whatchya gonna do?)
I’m gon’ stand.
I’m gon’ stand
I’m gon’ stand.
I’m gon’ stand.
Just can’t tolerate no racism.
No I just can’t tolerate injustice.
No I just can’t tolerate no exploitation.
(What we gonna do? What we gonna do?)
I’m gon’ stand
(I’m gon’ stand.
I’m gon’ stand).
Happy Birthday to Ida B. Wells, and a salute to every single person who is continuing to fight for freedom and justice.
Join me in the comments for even more music—and please post songs that are significant to you.