BADASS WOMEN IN HISTORY SERIES
Ida B. Wells: My Tears Shall Fall
Shining a light on the ever-present and crushing darkness. The life and work of Ida B. Wells, Pt. 2
She got the news she had lost everything as she was traveling in Jersey City. The front page of the New York Sun declared the destruction of her newspaper “The Free Speech”. She had written an editorial months before which described the heinous murder of a store owner and his store clerks. It all started over a marble game. A white boy accused the black boys of cheating. A fight ensued and the white boys lost the fight. When they found out, the fathers of the white boys decided to take it upon themselves to avenge the delicate honor of their boys, so they beat on the black kids. When the black fathers of the children heard of this, they were not having it so they beat the fathers of the white kids and before too long a full-fledged riot had ensued. The violence eventually spilled out beyond city limits and a locally owned grocery store owner was attacked. A white mob had stormed into the store killing the owner and the clerks. The white owned newspaper headline screamed, “officials of the law wounded in the discharge of their duties”. It was never established that a single officer of the law had been in that mob. An alternate history was already being written. They accused the store owner of harboring criminals and allowing drinking and illegal gambling to go on in the store after they shot and killed him and since he was no longer alive to tell his side of things, the white narrative won the day.
That is…until Ida B. Wells showed up and began questioning the official narrative. Once she had interviewed the witnesses, attackers, victims, and local law enforcement the events of that disturbing and fateful day began to take a much different shape. Ida’s narration of events was scathing and her editorial prose encouraging blacks to flee the city to move west even more so. No justice to be had for black people in Memphis, was her verdict.
A f*cking game of marbles…
Burn it down
Three months later while she was traveling, members of the same white mob attacked her publication “The Free Speech” and destroyed all of the publication equipment. Ida had everything she owned invested in that venture with one quarter ownership. Everything was destroyed and her crime? Daring to speak the truth. Apparently, freedom of speech was only extended to white people.
Why did the white mob wait three months to attack the paper? After Ida’s editorial about the white mob, black people were fleeing the city in large numbers which started to decimate the White economy. Local shops, railways, and streetcars were being starved of much needed black dollars. White Memphis had cooked their own golden goose. All because of a fucking marble game.
Stranded in Jersey City, Ida frantically telegrammed back and forth with her lawyer who assured her that her business partners had fled unharmed. Ida started carrying a pistol with her wherever she went after that. She had decided she would take as many lynchers with her as possible should they ever attack her. She was warned by family and friends that her publication was being constantly watched and that she should not ever return to Memphis. If she were to decide to come back, there was a group of men who had decided to organize to be her protection but that would only have resulted in more death and bloodshed, so she took their advice and remained in New York.
Starting over
She was offered a position at the paper “The New York Age” where she would continue her work exposing lynchings and white mob murder. Starting over from scratch, she was given a quarter ownership of the publication.
“Protecting white women’s honor” was one of the many repeated themes in regard to lynchings. It was more of an excuse, really. Whenever a white mob wanted to justify their wanton murder of black men, they would accuse the black man of either raping or attacking a white woman.
Prime example of this was in Tunica County, Mississippi where an Associated Press reporter wrote: “Big burly brute was lynched because he had raped the seven-year-old daughter of the sheriff”. You see how they framed this? The black man was the “burly brute” so already, you feel sympathy for the white family and a sense of relief that this brute was taken care of. The headlines really haven’t changed much in over one hundred and twenty-five years. They’ve toned down the hyperbolic language but the methods of painting black people a certain way remains the same.
When Ida met with the “seven-year-old daughter”, she was well over the age of seventeen. The anonymous “big burly brute” turned out to be the sheriff’s hired hand who lived on the property and the daughter was discovered in his cabin. In order to “protect her reputation” the sheriff led a white mob to the cabin where they drug her out and hung him.
It was becoming an epidemic. White mobs had learned how to circumvent the “Liberty and justice for all” clause to kill with impunity. They would accuse the successful black business owners of rape and then lynch them. Depending on which state the lynching occurred, no court of law would ever touch them. This was called “Keeping the N****r Down”. White America could not and would not abide black people to be more successful than they were.
Public speaking
Ida kept bringing all the sordid facts and gut-wrenching murders to the attention of the public conscience and slowly but surely these facts began to trickle into the white papers of the country. It was getting harder and harder to ignore them.
Ida’s work began to capture the imagination and appreciation of the Black communities that had the chance to read her work. Two New York women got together to discuss ways they could show their appreciation for Ida’s work and to bring more attention to it. They decided the best course of action would be to form and organize a club for colored women. This was before the age of social media where you wouldn’t even have to leave the comforts of your own home. This was how you drew attention to certain causes, you formed a club and gathered as many likeminded people in as you could. Eventually, the numbers for Ida’s appreciation club increased to the point where no house or church could hold their numbers, so they rented out Lyric Hall.
Remembered and appreciated
All the leading-colored women of Boston and Philadelphia were invited to join the event. They ended up raising enough money for Ida to begin her publication again. It was the largest gathering that had ever been attempted for women of color on October 5th, 1892.
Ida was called up to give a speech about her investigations into lynchings and she panicked. For all the articles she had written, she had never given a public address before. Luckily, she had committed her vivid memories to paper because all at once her mind drifted back to her home in Memphis, the dead mutilated bodies of the victims, the lying sneering faces of the white people she interviewed, and the tears began to fall as she spoke. Mortified of her loss of control, she gestured for the handkerchief she had left on her chair. Twice this had happened to her while she gave an address. Ida referred to it as a woman’s weakness.
My my… how far we’ve come. Society is just now coming around to the idea that men freely expressing their emotions through tears is a good thing.
Let those tears flow, Ida. There is no shame. America is rediscovering and appreciating your work again.
Thank you for reading. Here’s a Friend link for a friend🌺 And here’s Part 1.
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