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One Brave Black Woman's Struggle to be Heard, September 20, 2007
The end of the Civil War in 1865 marked a new beginning for freed slaves but merely having won their freedom did not guarantee their acceptance as equals by white society. In fact, southern whites almost immediately began a campaign to resubjugate blacks using every means at their disposal including lynching. While whites held out lynchings to be punishment for rapes of white women, they were in reality acts of terror by white mobs in the effort to reestablish white majority rule. Of those few who spoke out against these predations, one of the most effective was Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Patricia A. Schechter shows how Wells-Barnett, born a slave, became one of the best-known authorities on black lynchings and then a well-known activist and social reformer despite being a black woman with little financial support. And in doing so, she shows how Wells-Barnett worked within the restrictions of race and gender. While not a biography, Schechter includes sufficient details of Wells-Barnett's life to help understand her activist role in fighting lynching, working to help disadvantaged blacks, and win voting rights for women.
Wells-Barnett's journey to Memphis after her parents died was an effort to keep her siblings with her as a family. She worked as a teacher to provide an income but she used her ingenuity to bring in extra monies such as by organizing a dramatic club and putting on shows. But as she was intelligent, well-read, and hard-working she quickly understood that writing and public life were the best avenues for her, as a black woman, to better herself and further her goal of social change. She developed a sarcastic, mocking sense of humor which she employed in her ofttimes scathing and provocative articles and pamphlets which helped draw attention to controversial subjects. She bolstered her points of view by supplying statistics such as in her paper, Southern Horrors, showing that less than 30% of lynchings of black men involved the charge of rape vice the almost 100% claimed by whites.
As she was unmarried, she took great pains to ensure that her personal reputation was unsullied. She could not rely on male relatives to defend her honor so in addition to using her own rhetorical and writing skills, she sought the help of male friends. Having no husband to speak for her in a society which diminished the worth of an unmarried, black woman made her life difficult. As a black person, she demonstrated her concern with her physical safety as she sometimes carried a pistol and advocated armed resistance to defend against white predations. As part owner of a newspaper, she did not self censor her articles. In one she wrote just before she fled Memphis for New York, she asserted that black men who were lynched did not assault white women but rather were participating in liaisons. For this, her paper's office was attacked.
She became an effective and charismatic public speaker in the U.S. and then in England as she purposefully eschewed an emotionalist and demonstrative type of presentation but rather adopted a restrained and dignified manner. Her informal training as an actress helped her in her speaking engagements, and her ability to speak through tears added a dramatic touch to some speeches. She always had to remain cognizant of the fact that she was stepping away from the traditional role of a married black woman into a role of a black spokesman so had to ensure that she maintained her dignity and composure.
After she married in 1895, she continued her efforts in her new home of Chicago albeit her literary efforts after 1900 never equaled earlier ones. And male dominance of black civil right efforts intensified after WWI marginalizing her influence in antilynching efforts nationwide. Black men's and women's roles became different in the first two decades of the 19th century: "there emerged at the elite level a gender division of labor, which assigned political and intellectual leadership to men awhile entrusting to women a parallel role of prayer, education, and fundraising in female networks" (168). Her radicalism and uncompromising attitude further marginalized her as many male black leaders sought compromise and conciliation with whites versus confrontation while others urged blacks merely to uplift themselves. She "voted with her feet" when a church or organization pursued paths with which she disagreed. Also, while she helped found the NAACP, she withdrew her support as her activism was not appreciated as part of its progressive agenda. Wells-Barnett was marginalized as a militant leader and reverted to local or state venues for most of her work. She became very active in Chicago social and welfare groups to help poorer blacks emulating renewed black women's roles as wife and mother. Her participation in black women's suffrage was especially noteworthy even while her own political campaign failed. Her almost religious fervor to recruit all blacks to vote was one of her primary ways to fight white racism and terror. Clearly, Wells-Barnett did not willingly accept second class status to whites or to black men but her ofttimes confrontational approach, and uncompromising and provocative attitude, made her unpopular to some black men and organizations thereby diminishing her effectiveness.
Schechter presents a thorough study of this important early civil rights figure emphasizing how Wells-Barnett's race and gender influenced and constrained her efforts. Written for an academic audience knowledgeable about black activism during this era, she succeeds in dissecting Wells-Barnett's successes and failures relating them to her color and gender. Schechter could perhaps have been more successful had she presented additional biographical details to better understand Wells-Barnett motivations and as a person not just as a black activist. But anyone interested in how black women responded to both white racism and gender discrimination during this time will find much value in this book.
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