"Ida B. Wells"
It's a common misconception that actions speak louder than words. The press, a powerful medium of communication, persuades and impacts people as efficiently or more than actions. After reading Ida B. Wells " Southern Horrors and Other Writings," one sees the effect that her words had on shaping our country during the pivotal time of reconstruction. Wells came into the world as a slave on July 16, 1862, in Hole Springs, Mississippi and left as an inspiration to equality. Slavery no longer existed within the south. African Americans were supposed to be equal citizens, but they faced one of the cruelest practices any race has ever faced. Lynching and mob violence came into practice by white southerners after slavery had ended. "The lynching of slaves was rare, first and foremost because it would result in a loss of "property" and profit. Obviously it is more profitable to sell salved than to kill them (Wells p.10)." With this attitude not instilled in white southerners' times were scary for African Americans. When three of Well's friends were lynched she had seen enough. She picked up her pen and began to show the world the true southern horrors that she and her people faced everyday.
There is no justification for what the white southerners did to African Americans, but they tried to make a case of their criminal actions. The main justification for mob violence and lynching was to protect white women's virtue. If they had any suspicion to believe that an African American was even with a white woman they wouldn't hesitate to lynch them or carry out violent mob action against them. The white press in the "Evening Scimitar," a paper in Memphis, gives this excuse for the lynch law. "Aside from the violation of white women by negroes, which is the outcropping of a bestial perversion of instinct, the chief cause of trouble between the races in the South is the Negro's lack of manners (Wells p.63)." Wells did not accept those kinds of excuses and wanted the world to see what was really going on in the South. She knew the southerners were using their women as an excuse to murder and intimidate a race. "Lynching was not simply a spontaneous punishment for crimes but an act of terror perpetrated against a race of people in order to maintain power and control.
Upon reflecting on today's quarter projects an image came into my mind. It was a circle with a bunch of different arrows moving out from a common center trying to push out of the circle that contained them (see below). I found this to be an apt description of the individuals we discussed in class today. All of them worked to apply pressure to society in different ways. One common link I saw between Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs and Ida B. Wells was applying political pressure. Although they worked towards different goals I could see a common thread between the methods they used to apply pressure which often involved writing and trying to communicate their ideas to the masses. I found these ideas to be a rather efficient way to spread these beliefs
The hypocrisy and double standard that allowed whites to bring harm to blacks without fear of any repercussions had existed for years before the murder Tyson wrote about occurred in May of 1970 (Tyson 2004, 1). Lynching of black men was common place in the south as Billie Holiday sang her song “Strange Fruit” and the eyes of justice looked the other way. On the other side of the coin, justice was brought swiftly to those blacks who stepped out of line and brought harm to the white race. Take for instance Nate Turner, the slave who led a rebellion against whites. Even the Teel’s brought their own form of justice to Henry Marrow because he “said something” to one of their white wives (1).
Ida Minerva Tarbell was born in Erie, Pennsylvania on November 5, 1857 (Lowrie). She was the daughter of Esther and Franklin Tarbell (Lowrie). At the age of three, Ida was moved to Titusville, Pennsylvania with her family (Lowrie). Tarbell's mother took a teaching job and her father became an oil producer and refiner in their new town (Lowrie). As King wrote, “her father's business, along with those of many other small businessmen, was adversely affected by the South Improvement Company scheme between the railroads and larger oil interests.” Tarbell stayed in Titusville and finished high school there (Lowrie). She then studied at Allegheny College in 1876, where she graduated in 1880, the only woman in her class (Lowrie).
The history of The Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States is a fascinating account of a group of human beings, forcibly taken from their homeland, brought to a strange new continent, and forced to endure countless inhuman atrocities. Forced into a life of involuntary servitude to white slave owners, African Americans were to face an uphill battle for many years to come. Who would face that battle? To say the fight for black civil rights "was a grassroots movement of ordinary people who accomplished extraordinary things" would be an understatement. Countless people made it their life's work to see the progression of civil rights in America. People like W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, A Phillip Randolph, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others contributed to the fight although it would take ordinary people as well to lead the way in the fight for civil rights. This paper will focus on two people whose intelligence and bravery influenced future generations of civil rights organizers and crusaders. Ida B.Wells and Mary Mcleod Bethune were two African American women whose tenacity and influence would define the term "ordinary to extraordinary".
Ida B. Wells-Barnett dedicated her life to social justice and equality. She devoted her tremendous energies to building the foundations of African-American progress in business, politics, and law. Wells-Barnett was a key participant in the formation of the National Association of Colored Women as well as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She spoke eloquently in support of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The legacies of these organizations have been tremendous and her contribution to each was timely and indespensible. But no cause challenged the courage and integrity of Ida B. Wells-Barnett as much as her battle against mob violence and the terror of lynching at the end of the 19th century.
In 1860-1960 there was lynching in the United States. When the confederates (south) lost the civil war the slaves got freedom and got rights of human beings. This was just to say because segregation wasn 't over in the South and didn 't go away for over 100 years. Any black person in the South accused but not convicted of any crime of looking at a white woman, whistling at a white woman, touching a white woman, talking back to a white person, refusing to step into the gutter when a white person passed on the sidewalk, or in some way upsetting the local people was liable to be dragged from their house or jail cell by lots of people crowds, mutilated in a terrible
Ida B. Wells was born into slavery, and lived in Holly Springs Mississippi. She was later freed, and learned from her parents what it meant to be a political activist. By 1891, Wells was the owner of the newspaper, Free Speech, and was reporting on the horrors that were occurring in the south. Wells, along with other people of the African American activist community were particularly horrified about the lynching’s that were occurring in the south. As a response to the lynching that was occurring, and other violent acts that the African American community was dealing with Wells wrote three pamphlets: Southern Horrors, The Red Record, and Mob Brutality. Muckraking and investigative journalism can be seen throughout these pamphlets, as well as Wells intent to persuade the African American community, and certain members of the white community to take a stand against the crime of lynching. Wells’ writings are an effective historical text, because she serves as a voice to an underrepresented African American community.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett is an investigative journalist who wrote in honesty and bluntness about the tragedies and continued struggles of the Negro man. She was still very much involved with the issue even after being granted freedom and the right to vote. Statistics have shown that death and disparity continued to befall the Negro people in the South where the white man was “educated so long in that school of practice” (Pg. 677 Par. 2). Yet in all the countless murders of Negroes by the white man only three had been convicted. The white man of the South, although opposed to the freedom of Negroes would eventually have to face the fact of the changing times. However, they took every opportunity and excuse to justify their continued horrors. There were three main excuses that the white man of the South came up w...
...re and an American hero she devoted her life to working towards equal rights for all women. Through writing, speaking, and campaigning, Anthony and her supporters brought about change in the United States government and gave women the important voice that they had always been denied. Any study of feminism or women’s history would be incomplete without learning about her. She fought for her beliefs for 50 years and led the way for women to be granted rights as citizens of their country, Thanks to Anthony’s persistence, several years after her death, in 1920 women were given the right by the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution. I do believe she was the key figure in women getting the right to vote. “She will forever stand alone and unapproached, her fame continually increasing as evolution lifts humanity into higher appreciation of justice and liberty.”
Ida B. Wells was dedicated to journalism and letting people know what is going on. With her journalism investigation instincts, she uses to identify what excuses the whites use to identify lynch campaign against blacks. In the following essay, I will explain what reasons for this vicious and sustained campaign of violence against African-Americans.
“[A] comparison of the likelihood of white and black people being lynched at any given year (by comparting the ratio of white and black lynchings to the size of the white and black populations respectively) reveals that black people were some ten times more likely to be lynched than white people across the Western and Southern states, but they were more than forty times as likely to be lynched as white people in Northern states” (King and Tuck 227). After reading that, I had to sit back and breathe. This passage came as a huge shock that black people were forty times more likely in the North because textbooks have always set up the North to seem like this pretty OK place to live – not necessarily the best, but so much better than the South. While the North may have seemed better than the South because of a few “better” economic opportunities – one could argue that being a maid wasn’t much better, the North clearly faltered when it came to lynchings. To think that the North was a paradise, when it fact was not, is ignorant; I’m pretty disappointed in all of my past history textbooks that spoke of the North as a “saving grace” for African Americans. Another passage in the King and Tuck article that I found intriguing was a quote about Justice Joseph Bradley and a
Although abolition of slavery in the South coincided with the conclusion of the Civil War, a century of institutionalized racism was widespread in the former Confederacy. This institutionalized racism came in the form of the Jim Crow laws. It was a social norm to look at African Americans as inferior or even harmful to the White population. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan roamed around "defending" the white population from the African Americans. This defense came in the form of public executions (lynching) or intimidation.
I do not believe there is anything that can justify the cruelty or murder of Emmett Till’s innocent soul. Across America, we will remember Emmett Till and how he was just happily living his life. Everyone should not have their happiness or life oppressed by discrimination. Life was very difficult for African Americans. White’s treated blacks as less than human. White people believed that if you had a different skin color that made you automatically less intelligent, civilized, and
Wells. In May 1892, whites envied three of her friends for opening a successful grocery store. Her friends were arrested, then taken from jail, and lynched. Lynching was a very public act that differs from ordinary murders or assaults because it is a killing that is against the boundaries of due process; the legal requirement that all states must respect all legal rights owed to a person. This horrific execution took place every other day in the 1890’s, but the mob killing of the innocent three men who owned the grocery store was extremely frightening. In protest 2000 black residence left Memphis that summer and headed West for Oklahoma, but Ida B Wells stayed and began her own research on lynching. Her editorials in the “Memphis Free Speech and Headlight” confronted the Lynch Law; which was said to be in place to protect white women, even though they leave white men free to seduce all the colored girls he can, yet black men were being lynched for having consensual relations with white women. Ida B. Wells states, “No one believes the old thread lies that Negro men assault white women, and if the southern white men are not careful they will overreach themselves and a conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women”. Whites were outraged with her words and Wells was fortunately away in the East when a mob came looking for her, they trashed the offices
The South did not come easy especially for minorities living in America like Edesha said, Whites had sworn since before reconstruction that we blacks would not only know our place but stay in it forever. This showed that after slavery was abolished some white people did not want to make a change in society under the law some whites still wanted to be separated from all blacks and those who did not fit their description. It seems like the whites were afraid that African Americans would someday take over and treat them the same way they were being treated, and that was mentally, verbally, and physically abuse just cause of their skin color and ethnicity.