[In the following chapter from her biography of Wells-Barnett, McMurry discusses the social and rhetorical contexts of her subject's early anti-lynching lectures.]

Soon after moving to Memphis, Ida B. Wells had become active in the literary and dramatic circles of that city's vibrant black community. Almost immediately she had discovered her love of the platform and stage. Although she toyed with the idea of becoming an actress, like other young women of her era, Wells soon realized that the stage could not provide adequate respectability or remuneration. Very few women speakers could support themselves on the lecture circuits either; for a long time, women had rarely been allowed to speak out in public at all. Nevertheless, while earning her living teaching and writing, Wells utilized the available forums in Memphis and spent scarce dollars on elocution lessons.

Her journalistic ties eventually provided Wells with opportunities to exercise her oratorical skills beyond her home town, at regional and national meetings. Her first lectures outside of Memphis were at National Press Association conferences. Her speeches there and at the meeting of the Afro-American League at Knoxville in July 1891 gained favorable coverage in the press. After moving to New York, her first public speech appears to have been “The Afro-American in Literature,” given before the Concord Literary Circle of Brooklyn, New York, on 15 September 1892. Wells was said to have “completely captivated the large and cultivated audience.”¹

At the end of that month, Wells attended the National Press Association convention in Philadelphia. Usually a center of attention whenever she attended these meetings, Wells was proclaimed the “star of the convention,” elected treasurer of the group, and called on to speak. Described as “modest in appearance,” she was said to have “shone with intellectual brilliancy” and to have been “moved to grief” in relating the story of her exile. Before adjourning, the seventy-five delegates adopted a resolution to establish a fund “to prevent outrages on the Negroes in the South.”²

The National Press Association was notorious for failing to follow up resolutions with positive action. Prior to the meeting, the Atchison Blade predicted, “Now they will go to Philadelphia, read ably written papers on ‘The Race Problem,’ denounce southern lynchings, give a ball, drink wine, eat a delicious dinner, and then go to their various homes feeling good and as though they had actually accomplished something worth talking about.” Although the prophecy of the delegates' actions apparently proved true, the convention actually did lead to concrete action by a visitor at the meeting—Catherine Impey. An English Quaker, Impey was the editor of Anti-Caste, which was “Devoted to the Interests of the Coloured Races.” She not only attended the sessions at the convention but also was the guest of honor at a tea given by Fannie J. Coppin, at whose house Wells had previously stayed. Impey left the meeting with a pledge to help the antilynching cause and with the memory of meeting Wells. Several months later she would find a way to aid both the cause and Wells.³

Meeting Wells now was undeniably memorable. As capable as her earlier speeches may have been, the subject of lynching was decidedly more suited to the fire and drama of Wells's temperament. With the rape myth as the centerpiece of her antilynching arguments, however, she was in danger of being scandalized for speaking so openly about sexual matters. Although forces of urbanization and industrialism were lessening sexual taboos, the Comstock Law of 1873 still barred distribution of loosely defined “obscene literature and articles of immoral use,” and Margaret Sanger was forced to flee the country for giving out contraceptive information as late as 1914. Wells faced the dual suspicions of women speaking in public and of anyone speaking openly of rape. Fortunately, her first widely publicized address on lynching was made under the auspices of some of the most respectable women of her race. According to Wells, soon after her article in the New York Age, “two women remarked on my revelations during a visit with each other and said that the women of New York and Brooklyn should do something to show appreciation of my work and to protest the treatment I had received.”⁴

The two women were Victoria Earle Matthews, a fellow journalist, and Maritcha Lyons, a schoolteacher. They called a meeting, where the group decided to rally the women of New York and Brooklyn through a series of meetings held in churches. Out of those meetings emerged a plan to raise enough money to allow Wells to start a newspaper of her own. A group of these women, called the Ida B. Wells Testimonial Reception Committee, then organized a meeting in honor of Wells that was held at Lyric Hall on 5 October 1892.

The meeting was a huge success. Not only did most of the leading black women of New York and Brooklyn attend, but sizable delegations also came from Boston and Philadelphia—swelling the audience to over two hundred. Among the members of the black elite who attended were fellow journalist Gertrude Mossell, physician Susan McKinney, social activist Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, and the widow of the famous Episcopal clergyman, Henry Highland Garnet. In her autobiography, Wells recalled that these women “were all there on the platform, a solid array behind a lonely, homesick girl who was in exile because she had tried to defend the manhood of her race.” As Wells was thirty at the time and had traveled widely, her portrait of herself as a “lonely, homesick girl” reflects a desire to cast herself as a tragic heroine—perhaps like the heroic literary characters she had always read about.⁵

The event was well planned and executed. Advertising was provided free of charge by the black press; the New York Age and the New York Review gave extensive attention and support to the preparations. The committee spent over $150 to make the event successful and memorable. Gas jets spelled out “Iola” at the back of the stage, and programs were printed on miniature copies of the Free Speech. The ushers and committee members wore white silk badges lettered with “Iola.” Floral arrangements included a horn of plenty donated by the ushers. Victoria Earle Matthews presided over what Wells called “a beautiful program of speeches, resolutions, and music.”⁶

In her memoirs Wells recalled being terrified of giving her address to the assemblage. She admitted, “I had some little reputation as an essayist from schoolgirl days, and had recited many times in public recitations which I had committed to memory.” She also confessed to having made talks asking for subscriptions to her paper, but she insisted that this was the first time she “had ever been called on to deliver an honest-to-goodness address.” Wells avowed that although “every detail of that horrible lynching affair was imprinted on my memory,” she had “to commit it all to paper” so she would only have to read the words. Again, Wells appears to have played down her maturity and experience for dramatic effect. Her account portrayed a poignant pathos:

As I described the cause of the trouble at home and my mind went back to the scenes of the struggle, to the thought of the friends who were scattered throughout the country, a feeling of loneliness and homesickness for the days and the friends that were gone came over me and I felt the tears coming.

A panic seized me. I was afraid that I was going to make a scene and spoil all those dear good women had done for me. I kept saying to myself that whatever happened I must not break down, and so I kept on reading. I had left my handkerchief on the seat behind me and therefore could not wipe away the tears which were coursing down my cheeks.

Wells continued to describe her attempts to signal behind her back to the women on the platform who could not see her face or tears, until finally Matthews brought her a handkerchief. “I kept on reading the story which they had come to hear,” Wells proclaimed.⁷

Wells remembered being “mortified” to have “not been able to prevent such an exhibition of weakness.” Her consternation appears genuine; over thirty years later she went to some length to explain why it happened. “It came on me unawares,” she declared. “It was the only time in all those trying months that I had yielded to personal feelings.” Wells noted that she had especially wanted to “be at my best in order to show my appreciation of the splendid things those women had done!” Their very kindness seems to have been the stimulus. Wells explained, “They were giving me tangible evidence that although my environment had changed I was still surrounded by kind hearts.”⁸

It is likely that the expression of acceptance by these black elite women did have a profound impact on Wells. Since the death of her parents, Wells had been a frequent target of salacious rumors, expelled from Rust College, fired from teaching, and run out of town. Respectability was among the highest goals of middle-class black women after the degrading experiences of slavery, and for Wells it had been especially elusive. Despite her religious devotion and high moral standards, something always seemed to happen to tarnish the reputation she worked so hard to maintain. While in Memphis, she had also despaired of her seeming inability to sustain close relationships with women. Without the backing of wealth and family, Wells had probably felt at times like an outsider in the elite social circles of Memphis. The endorsement of so many women—some of whom were undisputed members of the elite—was a precious gift at that point in her life.

One reason scandal haunted Wells was her frequent outbursts of anger, which led her to say things she soon regretted. Not surprisingly, emotional control came to be very important to Wells in her quest for respectability. “After all these years,” she wrote late in life, “I still have a feeling of chagrin over that exhibition of weakness. Whatever my feelings, I am not given to public demonstrations.” Interestingly, in the handwritten autobiography manuscript, she concluded the same paragraph, “And only once before in all my life have the tears forced their way uncontrollably to the surface when I was before the public.” In her final version, however, Wells changed the second half of the sentence to “had I given way to woman's weakness in public.”⁹ Accounts of her later speeches bear out this assertion; her oratory was usually described as forceful, earnest, and effective but also as quiet, educated, and unimpassioned.

Her reasons for ascribing what she considered “weakness” to her gender were as complex and contradictory as her own self-image often was. Even after overcoming numerous obstacles for more than a half century, Wells still blamed her infrequent moments of “weakness”—but not her strength—on her womanhood. When a woman as independent, liberated, and strong-willed as Wells could still belittle her sex, the power of patriarchy in the socialization of nineteenth-century women is abundantly evident. However, in the particular setting of her Lyric Hall speech, a failure to display emotion may have led the audience to question Wells's credibility or her femininity. Among her “sisters” Wells may have seemed unnaturally cold if she had not wept. Wells noted, “But the women didn't feel that I had spoiled things by my breakdown. They seemed to think that it made an impression on the audience favorable to the cause and me.”¹⁰

The reception was a financial success. The committee eventually tabulated the receipts as $613.90, out of which $150.75 was deducted to cover expenses. One of those expenditures was the purchase of a brooch in the shape of “a beautiful gold pen engraved with the legend ‘Mizpah,’” which was presented to Wells at the reception. On the back of the pen, according to the American Citizen, were engraved the words “Afro-American women of New York and Brooklyn Oct. 5 1892.” Wells prized this “emblem of my chosen profession” and claimed to have worn it “for the next twenty years on all occasions.” She was probably even more grateful, however, for the $450 that the women deposited in an account for her.¹¹

The meeting received favorable attention in the black press. The Washington Bee called it “one of the finest testimonials ever rendered an Afro-American.” The American Citizen described it as “one of the most successful affairs ever managed by the ‘fairer sex’” and proclaimed Wells worthy of the honor, declaring: “She is a heroine; would we had more with such zeal and nobility of womanhood.”¹² The New York speech brought not only praise but also invitations to speak. Indeed, Wells soon embarked on a frantic tour of eastern cities, where she lectured and was toasted and entertained. Her schedule caused the Atchison Blade to remark, “It's a wonder the eastern women haven't become jealous of the banquetting Miss Ida B. Wells is receiving. … Miss Wells tells our people to go west and grow up with the country and at the same time she goes east and grows up with beneficial banquets and fulsome adulation.”¹³

Somewhere along the way, in such cities as Boston; Wilmington, Delaware; Chester, Pennsylvania; New Bedford, Massachusetts; Providence, and Newport, Rhode Island; New York; and Washington, D.C., Wells encountered Frederick Douglass. He apparently praised her article on lynching because on 17 October, Wells wrote to ask him “to put in writing the encomiums you were pleased to lavish on my article on Lynch Law in June 25 issue of the Age.” She explained that she was preparing that article for publication as a pamphlet and would “feel highly honored” if Douglass would write his opinion of it to serve as an introduction.¹⁴

Douglass promptly replied. His 25 October letter was included in Wells's pamphlet Southern Horrors, Lynch Law in All Its Phases, which was released soon afterward. Douglass strongly praised Wells's work:

Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with painstaking fidelity and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.

Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only half alive, if the American clergy were only half christianized, if American sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame and indignation would rise to heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.¹⁵

Douglass clearly recognized the power of personal experience; his accounts of his life as a slave had been among the most potent antislavery tools. He also highlighted an effective component of Wells's talks and writings—her decision to use white sources for “naked and uncontradicted facts.”

Southern Horrors was dedicated to the women who had given the New York testimonial. Their contributions paid for its printing, so she did not have to engage in extensive fund-raising activities for printing costs, as she often did for later pamphlets. Wells was also grateful to be able to borrow some of their respectability. In her preface the assertion, “It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed,” acknowledged that the subject was not totally proper for a woman. “Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning,” Wells explained, “and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.” The black press praised the pamphlet. The Chicago Conservator wrote, “We commend it to all who desire to give this phase of the Southern question serious thought.”¹⁶ Wells must have been exhilarated by the show of support by Douglass, the New York women, and the press; nevertheless, her next speech was a disappointment.

On 31 October Wells spoke at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church in Washington, D.C. Although the meeting was given extensive advertising and support by the Washington Bee as well as by Frederick Douglass and T. Thomas Fortune, the turnout was quite small. An advertisement noted that Mary Church Terrell would preside and Fortune would introduce Wells. The lecture was scheduled for 8:00 p.m., and the cost of admission was set at twenty-five cents. Though the Bee called for a turnout of “three to four thousand” and proclaimed it “the duty of every citizen to go and hear her,” the Cleveland Gazette reported that the meeting “was not a financial success” and noted that “fashionable colored society did not turn out en masse.” Some blamed the failure on Fortune's connection with the event, because of his unpopular political support of the Democrats. J. E. Bruce, however, declared that “the Washington Negro is no good.” Douglass was embarrassed by the reception Wells had received and promised to reschedule and deliver a larger crowd.¹⁷

Before Washington hosted Wells again, however, she returned to Philadelphia for the November convention of the A.M.E. Church. After a number of bishops had spoken, including Henry McNeal Turner, Wells went to the podium. Her efforts won effusive praise. In his account of the convention, A.M.E. Church Review editor Dr. H. T. Johnson noted,

the climax of which was capped by the dauntless but exited “Iola,” whose unique and inimitable speech won the conference, and so excited sympathy in her behalf that it were [sic] well for her Memphian adversaries that they were in their distant safety in the lower regions of the Mississippi Valley.¹⁸

In a later account of this Philadelphia visit, Wells recalled that she had stayed at the home of William Still, the great operator and chronicler of the “Underground Railroad,” which had aided slaves escaping to freedom. While Wells was at the Still house, Catherine Impey came to call, and they discussed the lynching plague. Impey expressed shock over Wells's lynching stories and white indifference to such occurrences. Wells noted, “She was especially hurt that this should be the fact among those of her own sect and kin. We deplored the situation and agreed that there seemed nothing to do but keep plugging away at the evils both of us were fighting.”¹⁹ Thus another link was forged in the chain that would tie their efforts together and move their labors across the sea.

News of the testimonials for Wells and her lectures on the Memphis lynching trickled back to the white community of Memphis. Retaliation was vicious. In December the Memphis Commercial launched an attack on her credibility and morality. The paper claimed “this Wells wench” had not even written the infamous editorial bringing her such attention. Instead it depicted her as “the mistress of the scoundrel” who authored it and implied she was raising money for personal gain under false premises. The lowest blow was the charge that she was a “black harlot” seeking a white husband.²⁰

The Commercial described her audience as members of Boston's “effete civilization” made up of “thin-legged scholars” and “glass-eyed females.” The reference to Boston was natural. Of all the towns Wells visited, none welcomed her more warmly. She made at least three visits to Boston from November 1892 to March 1893. On Thanksgiving morning, Wells spoke at the Women's Department of the Mechanics' Fair, and she returned in January to address the Moral Educational Association at the Ladies' Physiological Institute. That month she also lectured a large crowd at Wesleyan Hall on “Sufferings of the Colored People of the South.” The next month, in response to the Commercial's attack on Wells, the black women of the city organized to show their support for her. They formed a local branch of the National Colored Women's League, chose Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin as president, and unanimously adopted resolutions condemning “the foulest aspersion of one of the daily papers of Memphis.” They recorded “our indignation at the slander” and asserted “our confidence in Miss Wells' purity of purpose and character.”²¹

Her visit to Boston in mid-February 1893, however, was her greatest triumph. “It was during this visit to Boston,” Wells recalled, “that I had my first opportunity to address a white audience.” A famous preacher of that day, Joseph Cook, sponsored a lecture series titled the “Boston Monday Lectures” at Tremont Temple and invited Wells to speak on 13 February. Her speech was covered in the white newspapers of the city and later printed in the May 1893 edition of Our Day. As the only known talk preserved in full text, it illumines Wells's oratorical approach for speeches on lynching for white audiences. Regarding her lecture tour, Wells later claimed, “In these meetings I read my paper, the same one that I had read at the first meeting in New York.”²² While this is substantially true, the Tremont Temple speech shows that the talk was updated as new lynchings occurred and was modified to suit the various audiences.

Wells began with her standard disclaimer that she approached the subject “through no inclination of my own, but because of a deep-seated conviction that the country at large does not know the extent to which lynch law prevails.” She proclaimed faith in the decency of white Americans by asserting that “the apathy and indifference” over mob rule had to be the result of “ignorance of the true situation.” As Martin Luther King, Jr., would later do, Wells appealed to both whites' consciences and self-interests—by holding up American ideals.

Repeated attacks on the life, liberty and happiness of any citizen or class of citizens are attacks on distinctive American institutions; such attacks imperiling as they do the foundation of government, law and order, merit the thoughtful consideration of far-sighted Americans; not from a standpoint of sentiment, not even so much from the standpoint of justice to a weak race, as from a desire to preserve our institutions.²³

Wells then described the “omnipresent and all-pervading” impact of the “race problem or negro question,” calling it “Banquo's ghost of politics, religion, and sociology.”²⁴

With the sentence, “Born and raised in the South, I had never expected to live elsewhere,” Wells moved into the body of her speech—an account of her life, the triple lynchings, and her exile. She recognized the emotional impact of a well-told story and infused it with details that gave the narrative richness and texture. She told of how she had worked as a teacher and journalist in the faith that the “doctrine of self-help, thrift and economy” provided the key to acceptance and justice for her people. In the beginning, Wells asserted, “This sentiment bore good fruit in Memphis. We had nice homes, representatives in almost every branch of business and profession, and refined society.” Although proscribed by segregation, black Memphians believed the city would remain free of lynchings. “But there was a rude awakening,” Wells continued, launching into her account of the lynchings. One of her longest descriptions of those events, it was filled with heartrending details. “The baby daughter of Tom Moss,” Wells declared, “too young to express how she misses her father, toddles to the wardrobe, seizes the legs of the trousers of his letter-carrier uniform, hugs and kisses them with evident delight and stretches up her little hands to be taken up into the arms which will nevermore clasp his daughter's form.”²⁵

Wells further described the responses of the black community to the lynchings. She admitted that they considered vengeance but realized it would mean “certain death for the men, and horrible slaughter for the women and children.” She reminded her audience, “The power of the State, county and city, the civil authorities and the strong arm of the military power were all on the side of the mob and lawlessness.” Instead they decided to leave, and white Memphians felt the impact of their departure. “There were a number of business failures and blocks of houses were for rent,” Wells explained. “To restore the equilibrium and put a stop to the great financial loss,” she continued, “the next move was to get rid of the Free Speech,—the disturbing element which kept the waters troubled.”²⁶

After detailing the events that led to her exile, Wells assured her audience, “The lawlessness here described is not confined to one locality. In the past over a thousand colored men, women and children have been butchered, murdered and burnt in all parts of the South.” She then described a number of grisly lynchings and listed the statistics from 1882 to 1892. Her account made clear that “neither age, sex nor decency are spared” and that in only one-third of lynchings were charges of rape even made. Lynchers had come to believe nothing would be done to punish them. Wells cried that:

So bold have the lynchers become, masks are laid aside, the temples of justice and strongholds of law are invaded in broad daylight and prisoners taken out and lynched, while governors of states and officers of law stand by and see the work well done.

And yet this Christian nation, the flower of the nineteenth century civilization, says it can do nothing to stop this inhuman slaughter. The general government is willingly powerless to send troops to protect the lives of its black citizens, but the state governments are free to use state troops to shoot them down like cattle, when in desperation the black men attempt to defend themselves, and then tell all the world that it was necessary to put down a “race war.”²⁷

Wells then compared slavery with lynching and the nation's reaction to it. She noted that few had been willing to confront the evil of human bondage for many years. Only the martyrdom of white abolitionists and threats to freedom of speech convinced the nation “that slavery was not only a monster [but also] a tyrant.” Wells proclaimed, “The very same forces are at work now as then.” After appealing to the abolitionist sentiment of white Bostonians, Wells blamed the North's current moral blindness on a desire to prevent another Civil War. However, the efforts to win back the allegiance of the South had failed, she explained:

With all the country's disposition to condone and temporize with the South and its methods; with its many instances of sacrificing principle to prejudice for the sake of making friends and healing the breach made by the late war; of going into the lawless country with capital to build up its waste places and remaining silent in the presence of outrage and wrong—the South is as vindictive and bitter as ever.²⁸

Wells not only defined the problem for her audience but also provided a solution. “Do you ask a remedy?”, she asked, then answered, “A public sentiment strong against lawlessness must be aroused. Every individual can contribute to this awakening. When a sentiment against lynch law as strong, deep and mighty as that aroused against slavery prevails, I have no fear of the result.” Wells then appealed to Republican party strength in Boston by blaming the party's defeat in the 1892 presidential election on its failure to meet “the issues squarely for human rights.” She closed with a ringing appeal and reference to white abolitionists.

The voice of the people is the voice of God, and I long with all the intensity of my soul for the Garrison, Douglas [sic], Sumner, Wittier, and Phillips who shall rouse this nation to a demand that from Greenland's icy mountains to the coral reefs of the Southern seas, mob rule shall be put down and equal and exact justice be accorded to every citizen, who finds a home within the borders of the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Then no longer will our national hymn be sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, but every member of this great composite nation will be a living, harmonious illustration of the words, and all can honestly and gladly join in singing:

My country! 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty
          Of thee I sing.
Land where our fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountain side
          Freedom does ring.(29)

Her words are eerily prophetic of King's “I Have a Dream” speech during the “March on Washington” in 1963. Both orators, like Thomas Jefferson, realized that effective propaganda appeals to deeply felt values and “self-evident truths.” Both drew from the Bible and hymns as well as patriotic songs and literature. Wells's description of “this great composite nation” celebrates the cultural diversity with which the United States continues to struggle.

Following her speech, the audience at Tremont Temple passed resolutions of support and pledged to work “to arouse public sentiment in indignant condemnation of the increasing prevalence of lynch law in our land.” The resolutions referred to Wells's “pathetic and unimpassioned recital of the horrible atrocities perpetuated in various parts of the South” and expressed “thanks to this cultivated Christian lady for the important information she has imparted.” The audience further declared “our admiration for her intelligent, reasonable and heroic advocacy of the rights of American Citizens and our sympathy with her and her people in the injustice they are suffering.” Such a public display of support helped rehabilitate Wells's reputation of respectability after the attack by the Memphis Commercial. During the next three days, Joseph Cook continued to demonstrate his approval by accompanying Wells at her lectures at Charles Street A.M.E. Church and at Malden.³⁰

The black press also came to the defense of Wells. The Topeka Weekly Call criticized the Commercial for “wantonly and ruthlessly slandering the good name of Miss Ida B. Wells.” It labeled the attack on her as “evidence that boasted southern chivalry is a thing of the past.” The Weekly Call proclaimed, “Miss Wells is a lady, the peer of any in the land and the superior of many whose only stock in trade is a white skin.” Whites, not Wells, were guilty of “inhuman brutality and insensate laciviouness [sic] and lecherousness.”³¹

Wells was not only personally outraged by the Commercial article but also recognized that besmirching the morality of black women was an important component of the racist ideology used to justify white Southerner's actions. She decided to confront the Commercial's aspersions with legal action. As she began her search for an attorney to file libel charges, Wells remembered her disappointment with the representation of black lawyer T. F. Cassells during her suit against the railroad in 1884. She also felt that the leading attorneys of Memphis—both black and white—were hostile to her. Cassells had not forgiven her for replacing him with a white lawyer, and J. T. Settle continued to resent her criticisms of him in the Free Speech.

When Wells realized the need to go outside of Memphis for representation, she thought of Albion Tourgee. In her twenties she had read his book, Bricks without Straw, about Reconstruction and race relations. A white Chicago lawyer, Tourgee was well-known among African Americans for founding a civil rights organization and for confronting racial issues in his “Bystander” column in the Chicago Inter-Ocean. Wells had been pleased to receive a congratulatory letter from him about her lynching article in the New York Age. She had also distributed information about Tourgee's National Citizens' Rights Association among the black women of New York.³²

When Wells wrote Tourgee in February, she referred to her dilemma in obtaining representation by Memphis attorneys. He evidently questioned her about it, for she later explained the situation more fully and noted of Settle and Cassells, “Both are sycophants and do not half defend their clients.” Wells asked whether Tourgee believed she could succeed in getting “vindication” of her character. Although Tourgee declined to represent Wells because of financial constraints, he did give her advice. He thought that filing her complaint in Chicago would give her a better chance of a fair trial and a “very large verdict.” To win, however, he noted her need to prove she had not engaged in an affair with Taylor Nightingale, and also to “deny and sustain a denial of impropriety with any man.”³³

Most important to Wells, Tourgee recommended another Chicago attorney to handle the case—Ferdinand L. Barnett. A native of Nashville, Barnett was a graduate of Union College of Law in Chicago. He owned the Chicago Conservator, practiced law with S. Laing Williams, was active in Republican party affairs, and held a number of government appointments.³⁴ Although he had been a supporter of the antilynching movement and Wells, he apparently knew little of her personally when he took the case. After Tourgee cautioned him to be sure of the facts before he proceeded, Barnett expressed faith that “the libelous article was entirely without foundation” but assured Tourgee he would “find out before we take any steps in the matter.” His conversations with her friends from Memphis and Wells's willingness for him to consult such “enemies” as Cassells, convinced Barnett of her integrity; however, he and Wells eventually decided not to pursue the case because they feared the damage that a loss would cause.³⁵ Nevertheless, working on the case together proved to be the start of a relationship that would flower into romance.

Perhaps because of the attack on Wells, the black community of Washington, D.C., rallied to support her return engagement at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church on 3 February. Douglass's promise to Wells that if she came back, he would guarantee a large crowd came true; the church filled with what Wells called “one of the biggest audiences I had ever seen.” Douglass's success was partially due to his recruitment of the city's prominent black women to take a role in the event. Douglass presided, aided by Anna J. Cooper, the principal of Washington's black high school, and Lucy Moten, the head of Miner Normal School. Mary Church Terrell, perhaps the city's most prominent black woman, introduced each speaker.³⁶

The daughter of Robert Church of Memphis, Terrell had first met Wells while they were both in their twenties. Wells had thought them kindred spirits before Mollie had left to tour Europe and then married Robert Terrell, who became a judge in Washington. Although the two women did share many interests and goals, the friendship never blossomed—but rivalry grew abundantly. Many years later Terrell considered Wells an ingrate and claimed to a friend, “I did everything I could for that lady years ago when she had very few friends.” Terrell's words that night in Washington were certainly supportive: “We admire Miss Wells for her undaunted courage, and laud her zeal in so worthy a cause, we encourage her ambition to enlighten the mind and touch the heart by a thrilling … recital of the wrongs heaped upon her oppressed people in the South.” Terrell continued to extend Wells “a cordial welcome” and to “offer her our hearty support.” Nevertheless, the bulk of her introduction was comprised of her own indictment of lynching as well as more fulsome and extensive praise for the other speaker, T. Thomas Fortune.³⁷

In her autobiography, Wells did not allude to their rivalry and noted that Terrell “was president of the Bethel Literary and was just beginning her public career” at the time of the introduction. She also noted that Terrell was the daughter of Robert Church, “who had shown himself a friend while I was a teacher in Memphis,” which was probably an allusion to his loan to her when she was in California. All in all, Wells was thrilled by the event, writing that it “ended in a blaze of glory and a donation of nearly two hundred dollars to aid the cause.”³⁸

Wells soon found a use for the purse. While she was in Washington, she learned of a particularly gruesome lynching in Paris, Texas. The New York Times provided the grisly details of the death of Henry Smith, who was accused of assaulting a four-year-old girl. After his capture, the train carrying the prisoner was met by a “mass of humanity 10,000 strong.” Smith was placed on a scaffold “within view of all beholders” and “tortured for fifty minutes by red-hot irons being thrust against his quivering body.” Thinking him dead, the crowd doused him with kerosene and set him on fire. When Smith “wriggled and tossed out” of the fire, he was shoved back in, twice. The Times further noted “the vast crowd still looked calmly on” and reported the presence of participants from eight other cities, including Dallas, Fort Worth, and Texarkana.³⁹

In her autobiography, Wells elaborated on the lynching. She told of how “the mob fought over the hot ashes for bones, buttons, and teeth for souvenirs” and recounted a mother's calm response to her eight-year-old daughter's words, “I saw them burn the nigger, didn't I Mamma?” (Wells also described the lynching during her Boston speech in mid-February as evidence of the corrupting influence of mob law.) Suspicious of the charges against Smith, she decided to use the money raised at the Washington meeting to investigate the lynching. “I had said in newspaper articles and public speeches,” Wells declared, “that we should be in a position to investigate every lynching and get the facts for ourselves.” She used the money “to have Pinkerton's [detective agency] send an honest, unprejudiced man from the Chicago office to bring unbiased facts.” Although Wells was disappointed with the quality of the report, the Paris lynching launched another phase of her antilynching crusade, and she continued to investigate lynchings for many years.⁴⁰

The visit to the nation's capital also raised Wells's hopes that she might get the attention of the men who governed the nation. In May 1892, President Benjamin Harrison had penned a timid reply to a memorial against lynching from the black Virginia Baptist Convention. Some began to look to Congress. Before Wells's lecture, the Washington Bee predicted, “Several members of Congress will be present.” Immediately afterwards, the Christian Banner noted that Wells “is stiring [sic] up the country” about lynching and reported, “it is possible she will get a hearing before a Congress committee appointed for that purpose.” The report probably referred to an unsuccessful attempt by Frederick Douglass and some Washington women to get Wells a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.⁴¹ The inability to get the federal government to move against lynching continued to frustrate the antilynching movement until its death.

By this time Frederick Douglass had become an important ally to Wells. She visited his home on several occasions and won his gratitude by treating his second wife with respect. Following the death of his first wife in 1882, Douglass married a white coworker, Helen Pitts, in 1884. Many African Americans echoed the words of a writer in the Pittsburgh Weekly News: “We have no further use for him. His picture hangs in our parlor, we will hang it in the stables.”⁴² According to Wells, Douglass told her that except for Charlotte Forten Grimke, whose husband Francis had married the Douglasses, Wells was the only black woman to treat Helen “as a hostess has a right to be treated by her guest.” “I, too,” Wells wrote, “would have preferred that Mr. Douglass had chosen one of the beautiful, charming colored women of my race for his second wife. But he loved Helen Pitts … and it was outrageous that they should be crucified by both white and black people for doing so.”⁴³

Well's support for the couple is easily understandable because she had also felt the sting of public disapproval by both whites and African Americans. Their union also upheld her contentions about interracial sex: She noted that they sought to “live together in the holy bonds of matrimony rather than in the illicit relationship that was the cause of so many of the lynchings I had noted and protested against.”⁴⁴ Finally, like Douglass, Wells remained at heart an integrationist. Militancy was often coupled with support for integration in that era. Only in the next century would militancy become synonymous with separatism.

Perhaps the criticism he received made Douglass more sensitive to the plight of Wells. At any rate, their relationship seems to have flowered after the slanders in the Commercial. A year later, Wells reminded Douglass, “At that juncture you comforted me with your counsel and gave me your protection.”⁴⁵ Although sometimes disappointed in the extent of protection and defense provided by Douglass, Wells appears to have reciprocated his support. In several instances, Wells sought to counter rumors critical of Douglass. In February 1893, she wrote Douglass that “many people in Boston asked me as to the truth of the published account that you had given a thousand dollars toward Will Cook's World's Fair Concert Co.” After assuring Douglass that to have done so would be all right, Wells continued, “if not, the use of your name is misleading many.” Eight months later, the Indianapolis Freeman noted, “Ida B. Wells denies that Frederick Douglass is an applicant for political office.” Wells lamented, “I think this nagging of Mr. Douglass should cease.”⁴⁶

Wells's reference to Will Cook reflects a common interest that drew her closer to Douglass. To celebrate the voyage of Christopher Columbus, a world's fair, the World's Columbian Exposition, opened in Chicago on 12 October 1892. From its beginning, the fair provoked anger and controversy among African Americans. Issues included the fair's omission of black contributions to the United States, its failure to note racist activities, and the holding of a segregated “Negro Day”—at which the celebrated black violinist Will Cook was to perform. According to the Cleveland Gazette, it was at Wells's October lecture in Washington that Douglass conceived the idea of “an exposition, by paintings, drawing and written accounts of lynchings, hangings, burnings at the stake, whippings and all southern atrocities” to be held concurrently with the Chicago fair.⁴⁷ Wells wholeheartedly agreed, and the result would be a joint pamphlet, but first Wells was sidetracked by an offer too appealing to refuse.

The gruesome nature of the lynching in Paris, Texas, had drawn attention abroad. Among those who reacted was Isabelle Fyvie Mayo, a Scottish author who provided shelter to students from Ceylon and India. She and Anti-Caste editor Catherine Impey had been corresponding for some time about racial issues. In March 1893, Mayo invited Impey to Scotland to get to know a fellow opponent of the caste system in India. Having just received news of the Paris lynching, Mayo asked Impey, as Wells told it, if she had learned during her American travels “why the United States of America was burning human beings alive in the nineteenth century as the red Indians were said to have done three hundred years before.”⁴⁸

Impey's reply caused Mayo to inform the British public of the outrages. Impey asserted, “The chief difficulty over here is that people don't know & therefore don't care about the matter.” As a remedy, the two women decided to form an “Emancipation” organization to attack all the evils of caste. Although they intended to “declare war against it any & everywhere,” they agreed to begin combat against lynching in America, because the “evil is so glaring, so terrible.” Some asserted that lynching was “purely an American question,” but Impey proclaimed, “where evils of such magnitude exist—& helpless people suffer wrongs unspeakable—we can't stand on ceremony.” Based on Impey's contacts with Wells in Philadelphia, they decided to ask Wells to come and help them launch their movement. Mayo agreed to pay Wells's expenses, and Impey drafted the invitation on 19 March 1893.⁴⁹

In her letter Impey declared, “Our English press has been getting hold of some of those Texas lynchings, and our people are beginning to feel that there is something very wrong somewhere.” She urged Wells to aid them “to set on foot a living effort to remedy the cruel wrongs now suffered.” The letter reached Wells while she was visiting Frederick Douglass. According to Wells's autobiography, Impey noted that Douglass was too old to come and asked Wells to do so or to ask Douglass to suggest someone else. Douglass told Wells, “You go, my child; you are the one to go, for you have a story to tell.”⁵⁰

Wells already recognized the potential of drawing the English and Scots into the antilynching movement—as Douglass had once done for the abolitionist movement. Her pamphlet Southern Horrors had been republished in London in 1892 as U.S. Atrocities. The invitation was “like an open door in a stone wall” to Wells. She had despaired the failure of white northern newspapers to mention her movement; all had ignored her except those in Boston. She hated to interrupt her work on the world's fair pamphlet, and she also had to cancel plans to confront a meeting of southern governors in Richmond that month.⁵¹ Nevertheless, she felt compelled to respond to the call. On 5 April 1893, Wells embarked on a journey across the sea that would catapult her and the antilynching movement to widespread prominence.

Notes

1. Washington Bee, 29 October 1892. This speech is noted in the advertisement for another lecture to be held in Washington on 31 October 1892.

2. Cleveland Gazette, 15 October 1892; Washington Bee, 29 October 1892; Indianapolis Freeman, 8 October 1892.

3. Atchison Blade, 24 September 1892; Detroit Plaindealer, 14 October 1892; Indianapolis Freeman, 15 October 1892.

4. Alfreda M. Duster, ed., Crusade for Justice, The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 78.

5. Ibid., p. 79.

6. Ibid.; Detroit Plaindealer, 1 October, 16 December 1892.

7. Duster, Crusade, pp. 79-80.

8. Ibid., p. 80.

9. Ibid.; holograph manuscript in Ida B. Wells Papers, University of Chicago Library.

10. Duster, Crusade, p. 80.

11. (Kansas City) American Citizen, 21 October 1892; Mrs. N. F. Mossell, The Work of the Afro-American Woman, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Geo. S. Ferguson, 1908), p. 34; Duster, Crusade, p. 80; Detroit Plaindealer, 16 December 1892.

12. Washington Bee, 29 October 1892; American Citizen, 21 October 1892.

13. Atchison Blade, 10 December 1892.

14. Ida B. Wells to Frederick Douglass, 17 October 1892, Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.

15. Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors, Lynch Law in All Its Phases, reprinted in Trudier Harris, comp., Selected Works of Ida B. Wells-Barnett (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 15-16.

16. Ibid., pp. 14-15; as reported in Parsons (Kansas) Weekly Blade, 4 February 1893.

17. Washington Bee, 29 October 1892; Cleveland Gazette, 19 November 1892; Duster, Crusade, p. 82.

18. Monroe A. Majors, Noted Negro Women, Their Triumphs and Activities (Chicago: Donohue & Henneberry, 1893), p. 193.

19. Duster, Crusade, p. 82. At about this time, Wells sent a copy of Anti-Caste to a woman in Texas who requested a copy. Mrs. M. R. Rogers Webb to Albion Tourgee, 25 November 1892, Albion Tourgee Papers, microfilm edition, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

20. Memphis Commercial, 15 December 1892.

21. Memphis Commercial, 15 December 1892; Mossell, The Work of the Afro-American Woman, p. 34; Majors, Noted Negro Women, p. 193; Indianapolis Freeman, 25 February 1893; American Citizen, 25 November 1892; Cleveland Gazette, 11 February 1893.

22. Duster, Crusade, pp. 81-82.

23. Ida B. Wells, “Lynch Law in all Its Phases,” Our Day (May 1893), pp. 333-337, reprinted in Mildred I. Thompson, Ida B. Wells-Barnett: An Exploratory Study of an American Black Woman, 1893-1930 (New York: Carlson Publishing, 1990), p. 171.

24. Ibid., p. 172.

25. Ibid., pp. 172-176.

26. Ibid., pp. 176-177.

27. Ibid., pp. 177-183.

28. Ibid., pp. 183-185.

29. Ibid., pp. 185-187.

30. American Citizen, 24 February 1893; Indianapolis Freeman, 25 February 1893.

31. Topeka Weekly Call, 8 January 1893.

32. Ida B. Wells to Albion Tourgee, 2 July, 3 November 1892, Tourgee Papers.

33. Ida B. Wells to Albion Tourgee, 10, 22 February 1893; Albion Tourgee to Ida B. Wells, undated draft, Tourgee Papers.

34. Cleveland Gazette, 26 February 1887; Indianapolis Freeman, 22 June 1895.

35. Ferdinand Barnett to Albion Tourgee, 23 February, 4 March 1893, Tourgee Papers.

36. Duster, Crusade, p. 83; Mary Church Terrell, “Introducing Ida Wells Barnett—To deliver an Address on Lynching, ca. 1893,” holograph manuscript, Mary Church Terrell Papers, Library of Congress.

37. Ibid.; Mary Church Terrell to Lethia Fleming, 19 October 1920, Terrell Papers. For the context of that letter see the letter from Fleming to Terrell, 16 October 1920.

38. Duster, Crusade, p. 83.

39. New York Times, 2 February 1893.

40. Duster, Crusade, pp. 84-85.

41. Washington Bee, 28 January 1893; Christian Banner, quoted in American Citizen, 17 February 1893; New York Times, 28 May 1892; Cleveland Gazette, 4 June 1892; Ida B. Wells to Frederick Douglass, 14 November 1894, Frederick Douglass Papers.

42. William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (New York: Norton, 1991), p. 320.

43. Duster, Crusade, pp. 72-73.

44. Ibid., p. 72.

45. Ida B. Wells to Frederick Douglass, 20 December 1893, Frederick Douglass Papers.

46. Ida B. Wells to Frederick Douglass, 24 February 1893, Frederick Douglass Papers; Indianapolis Freeman, 21 October 1893; Cleveland Gazette, 21 October 1893.

47. Cleveland Gazette, 26 November 1892; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, pp. 366, 370; Indianapolis Freeman, 26 November 1892.

48. Duster, Crusade, pp. 85-86.

49. Catherine Impey to “My dear Friends,” 21 March 1893, Tourgee Papers; Catherine Impey to Mrs. Tourgee, 12 April 1893, Tourgee Papers.

50. Letter published in Topeka Weekly Call, 15 April 1893; Duster, Crusade, pp. 85-86.

51. Duster, Crusade, pp. 85-86. Portions of this pamphlet have been reprinted in Bert James Loewenberg's and Ruth Bogin's, Black Women in Nineteenth-Century Life (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), pp. 253-262.