Crusade for Justice PDF
Preview Crusade for Justice
CRUSADE FOR JUSTICE Ida B. Wells at the age of sixty- eight (1930). Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. “Ida B. Wells, journalist and civil rights activist.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. CRUSADE FOR JUSTICE THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF IDA B. WELLS Edited by Alfreda M. Duster New Foreword by Eve L. Ewing New Afterword by Michelle Duster the university of chicago press Chicago and London The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 1970, 2020 by The University of Chicago Foreword © 2020 by Eve L. Ewing Afterword © 2020 by Michelle Duster All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Originally published 1970 in a series edited by John Hope Franklin Second edition 2020 Printed in the United States of America 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 1 2 3 4 5 isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 69142- 8 (paper) isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 69156- 5 (e- book) doi: https:// doi .org /10 .7208 /chicago /9780226691565 .001 .0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 1862–1931, author. | Duster, Alfreda M., 1904–1983, editor. | Ewing, Eve L., writer of foreword. | Duster, Michelle, writer of afterword. Title: Crusade for justice : the autobiography of Ida B. Wells / edited by Alfreda M. Duster ; with a new foreword by Eve L. Ewing and a new afterword by Michelle Duster. Description: Second edition. | Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2019039068 | isbn 9780226691428 (paperback) | isbn 9780226691565 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 1862–1931. | African American women—Biography. Classification: lcc e185.97.b26 a3 2020 | ddc 323.092 [b]—dc23 lc record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/2019039068 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). CONTENTS Foreword by Eve L. Ewing vii Foreword to the 1970 Edition by John Hope Franklin xiii Introduction by Alfreda M. Duster xv Preface / 3 1 Born into Slavery / 7 25 A Regrettable Interview / 170 2 Hard Beginnings / 14 26 Remembering English Friends / 180 3 New Opportunities / 20 27 Susan B. Anthony / 189 4 Iola / 27 28 Ungentlemanly and Unchristian / 196 5 The Free Speech Days / 32 29 Satin and Orange Blossoms / 202 6 Lynching at the Curve / 42 30 A Divided Duty / 208 7 Leaving Memphis Behind / 47 31 Again in the Public Eye / 217 8 At the Hands of a Mob / 53 32 New Projects / 228 9 To Tell the Truth Freely / 59 33 Club Life and Politics / 237 10 The Homesick Exile / 67 34 A Negro Theater / 246 11 Light from the Human Torch / 73 35 Negro Fellowship League / 253 12 Through England and Scotland / 76 36 Illinois Lynchings / 263 13 Breaking the Silent Indifference / 82 37 naacp / 274 14 An Indiscreet Letter / 89 38 Steve Green and “Chicken Joe” 15 Final Days in London / 92 Campbell / 286 16 “To the Seeker of Truth” / 98 39 Seeking the Negro Vote / 295 17 Inter- Ocean Letters / 107 40 Protest to the Governor / 303 18 In Liverpool / 113 41 World War I and the Negro 19 In Manchester / 122 Soldiers / 313 20 In Bristol / 130 42 The Equal Rights League / 321 21 Newcastle Notes / 136 43 East Saint Louis Riot / 328 22 Memories of London / 144 44 Arkansas Riot / 341 23 “You Can’t Change the Record” / 153 45 The Tide of Hatred / 349 24 Last Days in Britain / 159 46 The Price of Liberty / 358 Afterword by Michelle Duster / 363 Bibliography 373 / Index 377 Campaign card (5.7 × 10.4 cm) of Ida B. Wells- Barnett. Support for her candidacy is requested as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri (June 1928). Courtesy University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center. FOREWORD EVE L. EWING I suspect many readers may come to this book seeking something it cannot readily give. It remains unfinished, ending abruptly mid- narrative. At its conclusion, Wells is in the midst of a complicated account involving fundraising by the American Citizenship Fed- eration, an invitation for Robert Sengstacke Abbott (the famous publisher of the Chicago Defender) to dine at the Drake Hotel, and the invitation’s withdrawal for fear hotel staff would discriminate against him. The book’s final sentences read, “In a few days an item appeared in the Tribune stating that the two- million- dollar drive had been called off. I also received some beautiful letters from mem- bers of the board of directors thanking us for calling attention to what was go . . . ,” and there it ends. Midstory, midsentence, mid- word. What could be more maddening? A century beyond the era of Ida B. Wells, we who so admire her, who so aspire to her legacy of politically transformative writing and organizing, are left grasping for something she wasn’t able to give us. In the corpus of memoirs and autobiographies left behind by luminaries of her caliber, this one stands apart. Largely missing are general observations about what constitutes a good life, admonitions about where and how to direct our energies toward achieving social change, and grandiose statements about the nature of blackness, or of womanhood, or of the American democratic project. Instead, fittingly, Ida B. Wells has given us a record of her work. Indeed, the above passage about the Drake Hotel incident is typical. This is a woman who changed the world through meticulous fact- finding, who often established a record where there was none, using viii foreword careful documentation when others were satisfied with hearsay or outright lies. Her autobiography is no different. Chapter by chapter, she spells out in detail all the messy facts that others would just as soon omit. Much of the book is dedicated to her travels throughout the United Kingdom: I spoke in Pembroke Chapel the first Sunday night of my stay in Liver- pool. The pastor of the church, Rev. C. F. Aked, presided. Last Sunday afternoon to an audience of fifteen hundred men in the Congrega- tional church. Sunday night at the Unitarian church, Rev. R. A. Arm- strong presided. The Lord Mayor of Liverpool is a member of this con- gregation and consented to preside at my meeting but was prevented at the last minute from doing so. Roughly 140 pages of Crusade for Justice are filled with these details—the name of the meeting, the name of the city, the train she took to get there, the people who were the hosts, the newspaper that reported the convening, the discord or unplanned adjustments. For the reader eager to learn more about Ida B. Wells, legendary anti- lynching advocate, revolutionary, and iconic champion of justice, these lengthy accounts may be discouraging. But this is the book Wells set out to write. In the preface she tells of meeting a young woman who asked about her work and of realizing “there was no record from which she could inform herself. I then promised to set it down in writing so those of her generation could know how the agi- tation against the lynching evil began, and the debt of gratitude we owe to the English people for their splendid help in that movement.” In the very minutiae of her narrative, Wells is teaching us some- thing necessary yet easily forgotten about the work of social change. A project of this magnitude—battling against the frequent extra- judicial killing of Black people and the widespread casual view of such murder as socially acceptable—requires more than plati- tudes and easy pronouncements about hope. It is as mundane as it is taxing. It involves endless train rides alone to places where you are not wanted, figuring out how to breast- feed your child in a back room of a conference (“I honestly believe that I am the only woman in the United States who ever traveled throughout the country foreword ix with a nursing baby to make political speeches”), and navigating the petty disputes and flaws of the people who are supposed to be your allies. Rarely is this the story of political history we receive; our under- standing overflows with larger-t han-l ife tales of monumental men who, we are left to assume, changed the course of human civiliza- tion through sheer willpower. This book is not that. This is a book about a woman who sometimes did not have child care, who went on the road when she would rather have stayed home, who con- stantly fretted over fundraising, who sometimes offended people and sometimes was offended, who got seasick, who was told she would be nominated for a committee only to find out that W. E. B. Du Bois had removed her name from the roll without bothering to consult anyone. Ida B. Wells was a muckraker, and this is part of the muck. Certainly, if we make our way between the dates and the dis- patches, the trappings of a more orthodox autobiography are there. And there is so much that was remarkable about Ida B. Wells. More than a decade before Plessy v. Ferguson, she refused to move from a Whites-o nly train car, bit the conductor’s hand when he tried to forcibly remove her, and subsequently sued the railroad—a case that went to the state supreme court. She was a public intellec- tual by calling, beginning her work as an editor because she had “an instinctive feeling that the people who had little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way.” At a time when the ymca and the settlement house movement failed to serve Black people, especially those newly arrived in Chicago from the South during the Great Migration, she cofounded a reading room and social center where newcomers could find employment; get counseling, clothes, and housing assistance; and have a safe place to read and to establish social networks. The anti-l ynching work for which Wells is most famous was hardly an abstract exercise. She was personally traumatized by the same violent White supremacist fervor that motivated her writing. In 1892 the lynching of a Black grocery store owner and his two
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