SOURCE: Townes, Emilie Maureen. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Her Social and Moral Perspectives.” In Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope, pp. 107-30. Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1993.

[In the following full-length study of the ways Wells-Barnett's life typified the experience of African-American women reformers of her day, Townes examines the social and moral content of Wells-Barnett's writings.]

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an active participant in the women's club movement and other programs for social changes of her time. Her deep and abiding spirituality was forged in the Black Church of the South. Her rebellion against the traditional roles assigned to women emerged in her career as activist and newspaper journalist. She bowed to societal conventions surrounding domesticity and took time away from the socio-political world to raise her children, returning to her work as quickly as time and circumstance allowed. Her concern for decent jobs and wages for African-Americans found voice and action in the Negro Fellowship League.

Wells-Barnett responded to and helped shape her era. The greatest contribution she made to United States society as a whole was her untiring work in the anti-lynching movement. Her work in this movement was shaped by the political, social, cultural, and economic movements of her day. She attempted an integrated analysis of discrimination and violence, and sought to call the nation to task for violating its social principles regarding race.

EARLY YEARS: RELIGIOUS COMMITMENT AND SOCIAL CRITICISM

Wells created a standard for herself, her people, and United States society. Her earliest writings reflect a woman with a strong sense of Christian duty. The first of her two surviving diaries was written between 1885 and 1887. This early diary illustrates a young woman in her early twenties wrestling with her faith and her culture. It reveals some of the intensity of her internal struggle for moral rectitude and agency. The early diary also contains reflections on some of the later issues with which Wells would wrestle: clerical leadership, the mission of the church, lynching, Black unity, interracial marriage and sexuality, and Black womanhood.

CHRISTIAN DUTY

Wells' understanding of Christian duty was rooted in her belief in an immanent God in Christ. The mission of her Jesus was to offer salvation for sinners. She revealed much of her personal theology in commenting on Dwight Moody's preaching at a revival held in Memphis.

His style is so simple, plain and natural. He told the old, old story in an easy conversational way that charms the listener ere he is aware and the secret of his success is, I think—that he does not preach a far-away God—a hard to be reconciled Savior but uses a natural earnest tone and tells in a natural way without long drawn doctrine or finely spun theology or rhetoric the simple truth that Christ Jesus came on earth to seek and save that which was lost.¹

Wells' understanding of God and Christ was typical of both slave and free Blacks of her day who saw God as personal and just. Writing after a watch meeting at one o'clock in the morning, she gave the reader a lucid picture of her intensely personal experience of God and its importance for her integrity:

… and I felt lifted up and I thank God I opened my mouth and told of His wonderful mercies to me and my heart overflowed with thankfulness. … and tonight I came away after greeting them all and finding their hearts warm and inclined to me—with a lighter and more peaceful forgiveness with all mankind and I thank God for it. …²

Wells' words echo the rhythm and motion of slave worship and its evolution into the Black evangelical Christianity of the late nineteenth century. The slave tale told by Simon Brown also reveals an immanent God:

The folks would sing and pray and testify and clap their hands, just as if God was right there in the midst of them. He wasn't way off up in the sky. He was a-seeing everybody and a-listening to every word and a-promising to let His love come down.³

A strong sense of God's judgment and the necessity of right action in relation to God's will also pervades Wells' writing. Her commitment to Christian duty and responsibility is evident in her early years. In the midst of deciding whether she would remain in California with her aunt and sisters, Wells writes:

I know not if I will ever have another chance yet I try not to be rebellious but extract consolation out of the thought that my Heavenly Father will reward and bless me for doing what is right and just. And if I did nothing, sacrificed nothing in return for all that has been done for me, I could not expect his blessing and sanction. Help me and bring success to my efforts I pray.⁴

Her diary entries of January, 1887, reveal a fully developed and unequivocal understanding of moral action and Christian duty. Wells decided to teach a Sunday school class as a way to begin to work for God who had done much for her. She was disappointed with the way the Bible was taught and preached and hoped to influence her charges “in a small degree to think of better things.” She concluded her entry with a covenant plea and commitment.

God help me to try. I shall begin this year with that determination, so that another year may find me with more to offer the master in the way of good works. God help me to be a Christian! To so conduct myself in my intercourse with the unconverted. Let it be an ever present theme with me, and O help me to better control my temper! Bless me for the ensuing year; let me feel that Thou art with me in all my struggles.⁵

By January 18, she had organized a class of young men who promised to come regularly on Sundays. However, her relationship with her brother who was in the class was strained. Some of the difficulties she would encounter in later life, as she tried to work with others toward her understanding of justice and moral rectitude, were revealed in her analysis of her relationship with her brother. Wells understood that she alternated between harshness, indifference, and repulsion in his regard. She asks, “God help me to be more careful and watchful over my manners and bearing toward him. Let not my own brother perish while I am laboring to save others!”⁶

In another set of entries during February, Wells encountered her humanity and her responsibility in a direct manner. After asking God to bless her in her undertakings and guard her against evil,⁷ she was brought up short by Mr. Dardis (apparently an authority figure to the young Ida Wells) who gave her a severe lecture on going to the theater. In reflecting on herself as both leader and role model, Wells revealed her humility as well as her resolve to put teaching and deed in harmony:

I had not placed so high an estimate on myself. He [Dardis] certainly gave me food for thought and hereafter when I grow weary or despondent and think my life useless and unprofitable, may I remember this episode, and may it strengthen me to the performance of my duty, for I would not willingly be the cause of one soul's being led astray. O thou, Help of the weak and helpless! Help me be firm and strong for the right and watchful for my own conduct.⁸

Later, as Easter neared and she heard a sermon on the cost of religion, she resolved to put away her plans for fun and pleasure during the Easter season. She would fast for her “many sins of dereliction and remain home to work, watch and pray, and praise for the wonderful goodness of my Father to an unworthy servant.”⁹

In an entry near the end of this diary, Wells reflected on her life and her future as she celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday. She found herself falling short of the mark, particularly where her education was concerned. She noted her “hunger and thirst after righteousness and knowledge” but felt that she was not as persistent as she should be in her pursuit of both. She asked God for the “steadiness of purpose” to acquire both and hoped that in ten years hence she would be “increased in honesty and purity of purpose and motive!”¹⁰

Wells was clear about the correct behavior God expected from a faithful Christian. She had a strong sense of personal sin and personal salvation. However, she did not remain individualistic in her approach to religion. Rather, she blended this forceful sense of personal responsibility for moral agency with a larger critique of worship and the role of clergy. She held her personal standard as the model of authentic moral action and Christian witness.

ROLE OF INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION

Wells could not accept segregated worship. After listening to Dwight Moody¹¹ preach in 1885, she was moved by his simple, yet eloquent message, and wrote:

I intended writing Mr. Moody a letter asking him why ministers never touched on that phase of sin—the caste distinction—practiced even in the churches and among christianity (?) but rather, tacitly conniving at it by assenting to their caste arrangements, and accepting it as a matter of course, instead of rectifying it—but I had no chance, and he left the city yesterday; so I know not where to address him.¹²

Wells echoed the words of Simon Brown again when he saw “so much pretending in the white man's religion that I felt better off being an honest sinner.”¹³ For Wells, even though she admitted to hearing a good sermon, she also “witnessed practical evidence of ‘white folks' Christianity,’ in the haste with which they passed us by when choosing a seat.”¹⁴ The reference to being “passed by” is an allusion to the fact that Blacks, both slave and free, were relegated to the back of the church or into the balcony in churches where whites and Blacks worshipped.

Like other African-Americans of her day, Wells could not understand or accept a Christianity which separated the people of God from one another on the basis of race. Wells held a high view of religion. For her, religion and the church constituted a living faith in a just God, faith in which the believer's action must conform to the teachings of the Bible. She did not suppose that the true believer made exceptions to the demands of the word of God. Rather, he or she lived the word and sought to embody God's presence in the world.

Her strong sense of moral agency extended to the clergy as well. She was biting and uncompromising in her estimate of a young preacher she encountered:

Went to service yesterday morning and found a very slender, puerile-looking, small specimen of humanity occupying the pulpit. His “talk” was premature somewhat, and yet applicable; his peculiarities and oddities certainly have the spice of novelty and daring which surprises too much for demur and carries one by storm almost against the judgment. …¹⁵

She returned that evening to hear him preach (her emphasis) and reached a conclusion about his fitness for ministry. Her evaluation was negative and to the point. She found his discourse to be:

A constant arraignment of the negro as compared to the whites, a burlesque of Negro worship, a repetition of what he did not believe in, and the telling of jokes together with a reiteration of his text “ye must be born again” made up his “sermon.”¹⁶

Further,

… he lacks some of the essential elements that compose a preacher; he seems to be wanting in stability, and there seems also, to my mind, to be a lack of reverence in touching and dealing with holy things; a disregard of the Father's command to “take off thy shoes; for the ground on which thou standest is holy.”¹⁷

In Wells' estimation, for a person to become an ordained minister demanded a serious commitment to adhere to the word of God and to be a model for the worshipper. She extended her personal high standards of moral rectitude further for the preacher than for the layperson.

As biting as she could be in her condemnation, she also could be magnanimous in her praise. Writing over a year later, she wrote with delight about the preacher of her church. She found him to be “the most energetic man I know. He has made the waste places blossom as a rose and the church is beginning to look up.” Wells marveled at his ability to handle difficult congregants and keep them involved in the life of the church. She ends this entry with the observation that “he is certainly a splendid judge of human nature.”¹⁸

Wells' words reveal her standards for leadership. Ultimately, the preacher needed to be a good judge of human nature who could lead the church in its mission. The preacher must show stability to provide the members of the church with a firm model of moral agency. The preacher could not shy away from belligerent behavior. He must address it directly while bringing the difficult person or persons into fellowship with the whole church. Wells held the ordained minister in high regard. Her personal code of moral conduct demanded much of herself and others.

LYNCHING

Wells' early diary also reveals her growing concern against lynching and the brutalization of Blacks by whites. Writing in March of 1885, she reflected on the shooting of thirteen Black men in Carroll County, Mississippi:

O, God when will these massacres cease—it was only because they had attempted to assassinate a white man (and for just cause I suppose). Colored men rarely attempt to wreak vengeance on a white one unless he has provoked it unduly.¹⁹

A year and one half later, Wells expressed her outrage in print when she learned of a Black woman who was accused of poisoning a white one. The Black woman was:

taken from the county jail and stripped naked and hung up in the courthouse yard and her body riddled with bullets and left exposed to view! O my God! can such things be and no justice for it? The only evidence being that the stomach of the dead woman contained arsenic and a box of “Rough on Rats” was found in this woman's house, who was a cook for the white woman. It may be unwise to express myself so strongly but I cannot help it and I know not if capital may not be made of it against me but I trust in God.²⁰

In the face of this growing onslaught against the humanity of African-Americans, Wells rejoiced at the growing unity she perceived forming among Blacks of that period. In 1887, she wrote that Blacks were beginning to think and realize that only in unity can there be strength. She also revealed her penchant for action, noting that “the men of the race who do think are endeavoring to put their thoughts in action to inspire those who do not think.”²¹ For her, Black people had to unite if they were to survive. The most effective spokespersons for Black people were those Blacks who evaluated what needed to be done and then drew a blueprint for action.

WOMANHOOD

Wells was a true spokesperson of the women of her period. She adhered to the ideal of the cult of true womanhood and its emphasis on virtue for women. She recorded a defense made by the editor of one of the local Memphis papers, The Scimitar, on behalf of “respectable” Black people and added that his defense included Black womanhood:

it was not now as it had been that colored women were harlots etc., whose virtue could be bought, that there were as decent among them as among their own race; that there were some who were disgraces to their race, but that the white race had no room to talk, the same was true of them.²²

Although she was intolerant of immorality, Wells defended the reputation of a “silly woman” who engaged in an extramarital affair with an “equally scatterbrained boy” who boasted about their relationship. The young man was killed by the brother of the woman and Wells wrote:

It seems awful to take human life but hardly more so than to take a woman's reputation and make it the jest and byword of the street; in view of these things, if he really did them, one is strongly tempted to say his killing was justified.²³

Wells equated murder with the sullying of a woman's reputation. She hedged somewhat on vindicating the actions of the outraged brother. Her general tone was sympathetic toward the woman, but less so for her unfortunate lover.

Like many women of her day, Wells utilized her strong sense of Christian duty in the public realm. She did so from the understanding that women must be in the world of thought and action. When she was called to respond to the theme of women and journalism at a newspaper convention, she lamented over what she did not say because she was surprised at the request.

I offered no word of thanks on behalf of my sex for the flattering encomiums bestowed on them by our editors and the hearty welcome accorded our entrance into this field. I wished and may never have a more favorable opportunity to urge the young women to study and think with a view to taking place in the world of thought and action. The suddenness of the thing drove everything out of my head but I will remember next time.²⁴

Wells developed and expanded these themes found in her early diary in her later adult professional public and private writings. These early concerns and attitudes matured and set the tone for her perceptions of the growing industrial order surrounding her. This emerging order with its understanding of religion, work, class, and roles was complex. However, Wells held to her early ideals. They became her guides as she faced change and resistance to change. Her perception of justice and duty, evidenced so early in her diary, never wavered in adulthood. Throughout her life, she responded to lynching and violence, Christian duty and responsibility, leadership, and the role of religion out of the stance of her early years.

MATURE YEARS: SOCIAL CRITIC AND ACTIVIST

In her mature writings, Wells amplified the themes of her younger years. Throughout her later articles and autobiography she continued to stress Christian duty and the role of the church. Her anti-lynching stance evolved into a crusade of national and international scope. She held high her ideals for womanhood and was outspoken in her view of leadership.

Wells combined penetrating social analysis with decisive action. The high moral code she set for herself and others was a motivating force in her crusade for justice. Through the Black religious and social protest tradition, Wells combined a deep spirituality with a strong sense of social responsibility and witness.

CHRISTIAN DUTY

Wells expanded her early views of Christian duty to address social responsibility. In reference to lynching, she refused any attempt to paint it as a problem distinctive to the African-American community:

Lynching is no longer “Our Problem,” it is the problem of the civilized world, and Tennessee could not afford to refuse the legal measures which Christianity demands shall be used for the punishment of crime.²⁵

While acknowledging that Blacks are capable of committing crimes, she refused to accept that the thousands who were hanged, shot, and burned alive were guilty in each case.

For her, Blacks as well as whites, had to take responsibility for eradicating lynching and mob rule from the American scene. Wells believed in the power of truth. For her, facts wore well in the face of misrepresentation and deception.

“What can I do to help the cause?” The answer is always this, “Tell the world the facts.” When the Christian world knows the alarming growth and extent of outlawry in our land, some means will be found to stop it.²⁶

She assumed the moral rectitude of the representatives of Christianity:

When I present our cause to a minister, editor, lecturer, or representative of any moral agency, the first demand is for facts and figures. … The preachers, teachers, editors and humanitarians of the white race, at home and abroad, must have facts laid before them, and it is our duty to supply these facts.²⁷

In A Red Record, Wells offered five lines of responsible action.²⁸ First, the reader should make known the facts of lynching which Wells-Barnett presented in the pamphlet itself.

Second, the reader should be active in getting “churches, missionary societies, Y.M.C.A.'s, W.C.T.U's and all Christian and moral forces in connection with your religious and social life” to pass resolutions of condemnation and protest every time a lynching takes place. Further, such resolutions must be sent to the places where lynchings occur.²⁹ She was clear about the duty of the church and other religious institutions regarding lynching. These organizations were to take the lead in agitating for an end to mob rule and violence. Wells assumed the moral agency of religious institutions as voices of protest in the face of injustice.

Third, Wells used an economic argument. She suggested that the reader protest the loss of capital in any given area where lynch law and mob violence occur.³⁰

Fourth, she urged the reader to think and act for “it is the white man's civilization and the white man's government which are on trial.”³¹ She maintained that the eradication of lynching was key to whether civilization or anarchy would prevail in the United States. Wells was sharp in her estimate of Christianity and:

… whether the precepts and theories of Christianity are professed and practiced by American white people as Golden Rules of thought and action, or adopted as a system of morals to be preached to heathen until they attain to the intelligence which needs the system of Lynch Law.³²

Finally, she urged agitation on behalf of a bill in Congress that would create a commission to study the charges of rape and the cases of lynching. She ended with a strong statement of the responsibility of the people and the government to maintain law and order and reminded the reader:

The colored people of this country who have been loyal to the flag believe the same, and strong in that belief have begun this crusade.³³

ROLE OF INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION

Wells maintained a living faith. Christianity was not a concept for her, it was her faith. She could not suffer in silence as the religion that gave her strength and comfort was abused and mocked. She wrote:

Civilization cannot burn human beings alive or justify others who do so; neigh can it refuse a trial by jury for black men accused of crime, without making a mockery of the respect for law which is the safeguard of the liberties of white men. The nation cannot profess Christianity, which makes the golden rule its foundation stone, and continue to deny equal opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the black race.³⁴

Wells' estimate of the church was as stringent as her standards for its clergy. In an article in the Daily Inter Ocean, Wells was scathing in her estimate of white Christianity in the face of unbridled and rampant lynchings. She wrote with an impassioned pen:

they are too busy saving the souls of white Christians from future burning in hell-fire to save the lives of black ones from present burning in the flames kindled by the white Christians. The feelings of the people who do these acts must not be hurt by protesting against this sort of thing, and so the bodies of the victims of mob hate must be sacrificed, and the country disgraced, because of that fear to speak out.³⁵

With incredulity, she attacked segregated worship by relating the story of a young mulatto man who was dragged from “one of the leading churches in Memphis, Tenn., by a policeman and shut up in the station-house all day Sunday for taking a seat in the church …”³⁶

Her Daily Inter Ocean articles did not allow Wells' British audience to succumb to the false belief that this behavior was confined to the South. She related similar cases in the North and the North's tacit approval of southern behavior. She remarked, “as far as I knew the principle has always yielded to prejudice in the hope of gaining the good will of the south.”³⁷ Wells extended her judgment to the YMCA and the WCTU and noted that these organizations bent to the rule of expediency as well:

He [a clergy from England attending a national YMCA convention in the United States] was told that there had been a few [Blacks] in previous meetings, but this particular year (I forget which one) special effort had been made to get Southern delegates to be present, so no colored ones had been invited. These were the only terms upon which the YMCA and WCTU had obtained a foothold in the South, and they had consented to the arrangement which shut the negro out. They continually declared the negro degraded, intemperate, and wicked and yet shut him out from all influences in which he might become better.³⁸

Convinced that religion must be put into action if it is to have any impact on the social fabric of society, she again voiced the theme of a living faith:

When our Christian and moral influences not only concede these principles theoretically but work for them practically, lynching will become a thing of the past, and no governor will again make a mockery of all the nation holds dear in defense of lynching for any cause.³⁹

Arguments grounded in the rationale of expediency held no force or persuasion for Wells. Her religious faith remained simple, plain and natural. She had no use of, or belief in, a God or a faith that was distant. The God she knew, felt, experienced, and sought to embody “came to earth to seek and save that which was lost.”⁴⁰ Wells viewed lynching and the toleration, if not justification, of it as supreme social evil.

ANTI-LYNCHING CRUSADE

Wells did not tolerate apathy or difference by African-Americans any more than the apathy of the religious institutions of her day. In 1893, as the toll for lynching mounted, Wells did not disguise her outrage and anger with the lack of unity or protest by Blacks.

Our race still sits and does nothing about it and says little except to doubt the expediency of or find fault with the remedy proposed, no plan of raising money by which the things can be investigated, the country aroused and the temple of justice, the pulpit and the press besieged until public opinion shall demand a cessation of the reign of barbarism, lynch law and stake burning.⁴¹

The proposed remedy was the creation of a federal commission to study the lynch law and to make recommendations for its eradication. Wells was a supporter of this plan and used her column to give it a national voice among the Negro press of her day. Wells criticized the nascent Black accommodationist movement with its call to

sacrifice its [the race] political rights for the sake of peace. They honestly believed the Negro should fit himself for government and when he should do so, the objection to his participation in politics would be removed. This sacrifice did not remove the trouble nor move the South to do justice. One by one the Southern states have legally disfranchised the Negro.⁴²

Her estimate of the effectiveness of the accommodationist stance is clear from the passage. Wells saw no benefit resulting from the forfeiture of rights or dignity. She was unwilling to deem the position as resulting from lack of thought, but wished to point out the bankruptcy of such an approach.

Unequivocal in her judgment of the motives of white lynchers, Wells noted that “white men down there [the South] do not think any more of killing a negro than they do of slaying a mad dog.” The lynching she referred to in the article involved the lynching of Black men charged with burning barns. The incident proved that Blacks were lynched for crimes other than rape or alleged rape of white women. She closed the article with “An excuse is made by the whites for the purpose of shielding themselves and leaving them free to murder all the negroes they wish.”⁴³

Further Wells-Barnett saw lynching as representing

the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly vow that there is an “unwritten law” that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal.⁴⁴

In this, her most systematic and thorough article on lynching, Wells-Barnett was eloquent in her outrage as she recounted the rationale for lynching. She attributed its beginning to Reconstruction and gains made by Black people during the period. Wells noted that “one Southern State after another raised the cry against ‘negro domination’ and proclaimed there was an ‘unwritten law’ that justified any means to resist it.”⁴⁵ She went on to equate the horrors of lynching with that of the Spanish Inquisition and the barbarism of the Middle Ages.

Wells rejected the notion that Blacks were naturally immoral and incapable of civilized behavior. Rather, she developed an interesting twist on the ability of whites to model proper conduct or misconduct by noting that “the negro has been too long associated with the white man not to have copied his vices as well as his virtues.”⁴⁶ Wells further noted that Black women have long been the victim of rape at the hands of white men. She ends with the piercing observation that “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.”⁴⁷ In short, what Blacks asked for was equal justice.

Four viewpoints in regard to lynching were proposed by Wells. The first centered on consistency.⁴⁸ She appealed to the national record of speaking out on behalf of “the Armenian Christian, the Russian Jew, the Irish Home Ruler, the native women of India, the Siberian exile, and the Cuban patriot.”⁴⁹

Second, Wells appealed to economy. She noted that the United States must pay compensation to other countries for any of their citizens who are lynched because the government was unable to protect the populace or serve justice.⁵⁰

Third, she regarded the country's honor. She abhorred the government's acceptance that it cannot protect “its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders.”⁵¹

Finally, she appealed to love of country:

With all the powers of government in control; with all laws made by white men, administered by white judges, jurors, prosecuting attorneys, and sheriffs; with every office of the executive department filled by white men—no excuse can be offered for exchanging the orderly administration of justice for barbarous lynchings and “unwritten laws.” Our country should be placed speedily above the plan of confessing herself a failure at self-government.⁵²

Ultimately, Wells rested her argument on moral agency. In response to Jane Addams' article, which condemned lynching but accepted the argument that Black men were guilty of rape, Wells called for Christian and moral forces to insist that “truth, swift-winged and courageous, summon this nation to do its duty to exalt justice and preserve inviolate the sacredness of human life.”⁵³

Again, she did not allow the North to escape its moral responsibility. She accused the North of surrendering its position of moral rectitude. She condemned the North's

lethargic attitude toward the lynching evil. The belief is often expressed that if the North would stand as firmly for principle as the South does for prejudice, lynching and many other evils would be checked.⁵⁴

Wells believed in the country's ideals and considered them to be one with Christian belief and doctrine.

In the celebration of the fiftieth year of the Negro's freedom, does it seem too much to ask white civilization, Christianity and Democracy to be true to themselves on this as all other questions? They can not then be false to any man or race of men. Our democracy asserted that the people are fighting for the time when all men shall be brothers and the liberty of each shall be the concern of all. If this is true, the struggle is about to take in the Negro.⁵⁵

Throughout her writings, Wells was clear to note the responsibilities of the United States as a Christian nation. Wells wrote during a period in which the nation was considered the political expression of Christianity, nationally and internationally. There was no real separation between public religion and the government. Wells drew no such distinction in her writings.

Her strong sense of moral conduct grew not only from her early experiences in the church and her religious upbringing, but was a product of the national, religious, and political consciousness of her era. She sought justice and the equal application of the law for Blacks and whites alike. She did not doubt that some African-Americans committed crimes which demanded punishment. However, she held firmly to the principle of due process. The guilty must be punished, the innocent must be set free. The courts of this nation must be allowed to carry out justice.

A 1891 article in The Free Speech showed yet another facet of her moral code. The article defended the use of retaliatory violence by Blacks to the crime of lynching. It is not certain that Wells was the writer, but it is most certain that such an article would not appear in the paper without her knowledge or approval. In part, the article noted:

The whites control all the machinery of government of the South. It is systematically used against the blacks. As if this were not enough, irresponsible parties lynch black men for and without provocation, a party of Alabamians recently lynched a black man for the fun of the thing. The way to prevent retaliation is to prevent lynching. Human nature is human nature.⁵⁶

Hence, in the absence of law and order and an effective judicial system, retaliatory violence may be the only solution to lynching. Wells noted in her autobiography that she bought a pistol after the lynching of a close family friend, Tom Moss, because of the threat to her when she refused to stop calling attention to the lynching and the need to bring the lynchers to justice.⁵⁷

Although her preference was to work through the established systems of government and due process, Wells was pragmatic in the face of social evil. When faced with a complete rejection of her rights, she prepared to defend herself. She was not so caught up in the United States ideal that she could not intuit the personal danger to herself and to others who sought justice in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

WOMANHOOD

As strong of character as Wells was, she remained wedded to the ideal of the cult of true womanhood. She believed, as did countless Black and white women of her day, that women were the repositories of moral integrity and virtue. Writing in The New York Age, she painted the picture of the ideal southern Black woman:

As a miser hoards and guards his gold, so does she guard her virtue and good name. For the sake of the noble womanhood to which she aspires, and the race whose name bears the stigma of immorality—her soul scorns each temptation to sin and guilt. She knows that our people, as a whole, are charged with immorality and vice; that it depends largely on the woman of today to refute such charges by her stainless life. … She strives to encourage them [men] all things honest, noble and manly …⁵⁸

The themes of the cult are captured in these few phrases: a woman's virtue and good name, a woman's responsibility to be the paragon of moral conduct, her duty to encourage men to a higher moral life. Over thirty years later, Well-Barnett had not lost these standards. She passed them on to her two young daughters, Ida and Alfreda:

I know my girls are true to me, to themselves and their God wherever they are, and my heart is content. I have had many troubles and much disappointment in life, but I felt that in you I have an abiding joy. I feel that whatever others may do, my girls are now and will be shining examples of noble true womanhood. And so mother's heart is glad and happy when she thinks of her daughters, for she knows that wherever they are and whatever they are doing they are striving to please her and reach the ideal of true womanhood.⁵⁹

Wells-Barnett blended the strong influence of the cult of true womanhood with an equally strong sense of Christian duty. Her views on motherhood reveal the strong influence of its ideals. Writing after the birth of her children, Wells stated:

… I had to become a mother before I realized what a wonderful place in the scheme of things the Creator has given woman. She it is upon whom rests the joint share of the work of creation, and I wonder if women who shirk their duties in that respect truly realize that they have not only deprived humanity of their contribution to perpetuity, but that they have robbed themselves of one of the most glorious advantages in the development of their own womanhood.⁶⁰

Later, she wrote with pride of Madame C. J. Walker who amassed a fortune selling Black hair care products. Wells-Barnett was among Walker's doubters when she predicted her success in the hair care industry. Wells-Barnett noted Walker's meager education, but also that Walker “was never ashamed of having been a washer-woman earning a dollar and a half a day. To see her phenomenal rise made me take pride anew in Negro womanhood.”⁶¹

As late as March of 1930, she spent time “reviewing [her] campaign and urging women voters to do their Christian duty and vote for race women on Primary Day April 8th.”⁶² Christian duty and womanhood were tied to justice and moral agency. True womanhood meant virtue and right action both in the private and public realms. Wells did not believe that woman's moral influence could be limited. A woman must never content herself with her own salvation. She was responsible for her race as well.

LEADERSHIP

Wells was moving in her appeals to the conscience of the leaders of the land. She held “men who stand high in the esteem of the public for christian character, for moral and physical courage, for devotion to the principles of equal and exact justice to all, and for great sagacity,”⁶³ accountable for the continued lawlessness in the land as the death toll from lynching mounted.

[They] stand as cowards who fear to open their mouths before this great outrage. … their tacit encouragement, their silent acquiescence, the black shadow of lawlessness in the form of lynch law is spreading its wings over the whole country.⁶⁴

Wells held African-American leadership responsible. She believed that if Blacks possessed self-respect, the friction between the races would be reduced.⁶⁵ She disapproved of Black compromise in the face of lawlessness and lynching. Referring to the Tom Moss lynching, she believed that “the Afo-American ministers, newspapers, and leaders counselled obedience to the law which did not protect them. Their counsel was heeded and not a hand was uplifted to resent the outrage.”⁶⁶

She had no patience for cowardice and believed that part of racial pride and leadership was tied to defending life and limb against racist hostility. Expanding on this theme, Wells wrote:

… a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yield and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.⁶⁷

Writing in May of 1893, Wells held the ideal that the United States had a distinct place within civilization as a Christian nation. She referred to the United States as “this Christian nation, the flower of the nineteenth century civilization” that could not stop the slaughter of Blacks.⁶⁸ Wells saw the irony of a federal government that maintained it was powerless, but state troops could shoot Blacks “like cattle, when in desperation the black men attempt to defend themselves, and then tell the world that it was necessary to put down a ‘race war.’”⁶⁹

Wells was making a moral appeal based upon the ideals of the country. By referring to the United States as both a Christian nation and the flower of civilization, she addressed the conscience of the country and its duty to provide moral leadership. She was certain that when the people and the government of the land lived up to the established social mores “a sentiment against lynch law as strong, deep and mighty as that roused against slavery prevails.” She concluded “I have no fear of the result.”⁷⁰

Later, in 1900, Wells again appealed to the national character and the Christian and moral forces of the nation. She pointed out that Blacks were denied access to newspapers, religious periodicals, and magazines to refute the slander that appeared on their pages from white authorities from the South. She even noted that the “leading pulpits of the country are open to stories of the negro's degradation and ignorance but not to his defense from slander.”⁷¹

Wells was clear about the locus of leadership in the African-American community. She commissioned Black preachers, editors and teachers to “charge themselves with the responsibility” of agitating for a restoration of the peace and due process along with their white counterparts.⁷² She placed responsibility squarely in the hands of white leaders, as they worked within their spheres of influence, just as Black leadership worked within its domain.

Not until the white editors, preachers and teachers of the country join with him [the Negro] in his fight for justice and protection by law can there be any hope of success.⁷³

Wells-Barnett could not tolerate Booker T. Washington's model of leadership. She decried his proclivity for telling “chicken jokes” which she, and other Black leaders, felt were detrimental to Black social uplift. When Julius Rosenwald asked Wells-Barnett if African-Americans had accepted Washington as their leader, she responded that although he was respected, not everyone agreed with Washington's accomodationist position. She likened Washington's remarks to Rabbi Hirsch, who was a leading Jew in the city of Chicago, telling Gentile audiences stories about Jews burning down their stores to collect the insurance. She ended their exchange:

I am sure you would not, and a great many of us cannot approve Mr. Washington's plan of telling chicken-stealing stories on his own people in order to amuse his audiences and get money for Tuskegee.⁷⁴

School teachers, press, and pulpit provided the key leadership positions in United States society. Wells earnestly believed that persons in these areas of leadership must be united in a “vigorous denunciation of all forms of lawlessness and earnest, constant demand for the rigid enforcement of the law of the land.”⁷⁵ Wells clearly saw moral agency and justice as the responsibility of leadership. Anyone or any group which did not have the dignity of the person and respect for the law as part of its agenda could not provide valid leadership.

Notes

1. Ida B. Wells, Diary, 8 February 1885, Special Collections, Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago.

2. Ibid., 1 January 1886.

3. William John Faulkner, ed., “How The Slaves Worshipped” in The Days When the Animals Talked: Black American Folktales and How they Came to Be (Chicago: Follett Publishing, 1977), 54.

4. Wells, Diary, 14 September 1886.

5. Ibid., 3 January 1887.

6. Ibid., 18 January 1887.

7. Ibid., 14 February 1887

8. Ibid., 20 February 1887.

9. Ibid., 28 March 1887.

10. Ibid., 16 July 1887.

11. Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-99) was one of the greatest revivalists of the nineteenth century. His theology was a blend of optimism and a strong evangelical impulse.

12. Ibid., 8 February 1885.

13. Faulkner, 52.

14. Wells, Diary, 28 November 1886.

15. Ibid., 1 February 1886.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 24 April 1887.

19. Ibid., 18 March 1885.

20. Ibid., 4 September 1886.

21. Ibid., 18 April 1887.

22. Ibid., 4 December 1886.

23. Ibid., 8 February 1887.

24. Ibid., 12 August 1887. This convention was composed of writers, editors, and publishers of Negro papers. It was held in Louisville, Kentucky. In her autobiography, Wells writes “I went to Louisville to the first press convention I had ever attended and was tickled pink over the attention I received from those veterans of the press.” Crusade, 32. She also notes that she was the first woman representative at the convention. In 1889, Wells was elected secretary to the National Press Association.

25. Wells, A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States, 1892-1893-1894 (Chicago: Donohue and Henneberry, Printers, Binders and Publishers, 1894; reprint, New York: Arno Press, On Lynching: Southern Horrors, A Red Record, Mob Rule in New Orleans, 1969), 73.

26. Ibid., 101.

27. Ibid. A strong argument can be made that Wells placed extremely high expectations on the role of religion and Christianity in shaping public opinion. However, when viewed within her context, her heavy reliance on the “Christian and moral forces” of society to shape, change, and motivate public moral agency is in consonance with the impact of evangelical religion in her era.

28. Ibid., 97-99.

29. Ibid., 97.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., 98.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid., 99.

34. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “Our Country's Lynching Record,” Survey, 1 February 1913, 574.

35. Wells, Daily Inter Ocean, 19 May 1894.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. Wells, “Our Country's Lynching Record,” 574.

40. Wells, Diary, 8 February 1885. Wells makes these observations after hearing Dwight Moody preach at a revival in Memphis.

41. Wells, “The Reign of Mob Law, Iola's Opinion of Doings in the Southern Field,” New York Age, 18 February 1893. TMs, Special Collections, Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago.

42. Wells, The Weekly Call (Topeka, Kansas), 22 April 1893.

43. Wells, “Ida B. Wells Speaks” handwritten draft dated 2 September. No year given, no paper cited. Special Collections, Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago.

44. Wells, “Lynch Law in America,” The Arena, January 1900, 15.

45. Ibid., 17.

46. Ibid., 21.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid., 22.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid., 23.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid., 24.

53. Wells-Barnett, “Lynching and the Excuse For It,” The Independent, 16 May 1901, 1136.

54. Wells-Barnett, “Our Country's Lynching Record,” 574.

55. Ibid.

56. The New York Age, 19 September 1891 and Weekly Avalanche (Memphis), 6 September 1891.

57. Wells, Crusade, 62. “I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit.”

58. Wells, New York Age, 18 February 1888.

59. Wells, Handwritten letter to her daughters regretting her inability to be with them to help celebrate Halloween, 30 October 1920, Special Collections, Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago.

60. Wells, Crusade, 251.

61. Ibid., 378.

62. Wells, Diary, 25 March 1930.

63. Wells, Southern Horrors, 14.

64. Ibid.

65. Ibid., 18.

66. Ibid., 19.

67. Ibid., 23.

68. Wells, “Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” Our Day, 11, no. 65. (May 1893): 344.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid., 346.

71. Wells, “The Negro's Case in Equity,” The Independent 26 (April 1900): 1010.

72. Ibid., 1011.

73. Ibid.

74. Wells, Crusade, 331.

75. Wells-Barnett, “How Enfranchisement Stops Lynchings,” Original Rights Magazine, June 1910, 46.