Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells

by Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Wells determined to carry on with as much vigor as ever. “They had made me an exile and threatened my life for hinting at the truth. I felt that I owed it to myself and my race to tell the whole truth.”

In 1909 a Black man was brutally lynched in Cairo, Illinois—hanged, shot more than five hundred times, dragged through the streets for the amusement of onlookers, decapitated, and burned. Wells, by then the mother of four young children, at first refused to go and investigate. Her ten-year-old son awakened her in the middle of the night, saying her husband wanted her to get on the train. “Mother,” he said, “if you don’t go nobody else will.”

Despite all this, when Wells was hospitalized and bedridden for several weeks in 1920, she felt dissatisfied when reflecting on her life. “All at once the realization came to me that I had nothing to show for all those years of toil and labor.”

Generations after the passing of Ida B. Wells, her battle continues. We still fight in defense of Black people’s

basic humanity, our right to a fair application of the laws of the land, and our right to not be brutally murdered in public. In light of this continued struggle, maybe we don’t need more moving oratory or another inspirational fable about mythological people. Maybe we just need the whole truth.

On one occasion, when a large number of white youths followed the boys home and stood outside the house jeering and threatening, Mrs. Barnett repeated the assertion that she frequently made during her anti-lynching crusades: that she had but one life to give, and if she must die by violence, she would take some of her persecutors with her. She kept a pistol available in the house and dared anyone to cross her threshold to harm her or any member of her family.

Ida Wells was not only opposed by whites, but some of her own people were often hostile, impugning her motives. Fearful that her tactics and strategy

might bring retribution upon them, some actually repudiated her.

The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival. There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms. The white mob could help itself to ammunition without pay, but the order was rigidly enforced against the selling of guns to Negroes. There is therefore only one thing left that we can do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons.

I had bought a pistol the first thing after Tom Moss was lynched, because I expected some cowardly retaliation from the lynchers. I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.

No torture of helpless victims by heathen savages or cruel red Indians ever exceeded the cold-blooded savagery of white devils under lynch law.

The more I studied the situation, the more I was convinced that the Southerner had never gotten over his resentment that the Negro was no longer his plaything, his servant, and his source of income.

I found that in order to justify these horrible atrocities to the world, the Negro was being branded as a race of rapists, who were especially mad after white women. I found that white men who had created a race of mulattoes by raping and consorting with Negro women were still doing so wherever they could, these same white men lynched, burned, and tortured Negro men for doing the same thing with white women; even when the white women were willing victims.

I beg space to answer that question. Resentment because of the freedom and citizenship of the Negro race has been constantly shown by southern whites. In the ten years succeeding the Civil War thousands of Negroes were murdered for the crime (?) of casting a ballot. As a consequence their vote is entirely nullified throughout the entire South. The laws of the Southern states make it a crime for whites and Negroes to intermarry or even ride in the same railway carriage. Both crimes (?) are punishable by fine and imprisonment. The doors of churches, hotels, concert halls and reading rooms are alike closed against the Negro as a man, but every place is open to him as a servant.

His address to our people, delivered at Bethel A.M.E. Church, was eloquent with plain facts and deductions from those facts as applied to our race. Among other things, he said: “During my stay here in your city I have been visited by several groups of your people—all of whom have recited the story of the wrongs and injustices heaped upon the race; all of them appealing to me to denounce these outrages to the world. I have asked each delegation ‘What are you doing to help yourselves?’ Each group gave the same answer, namely, that they are so divided in church, lodges, etc., that they have not united their forces to fight the common enemy. At last I got mad, and said, ‘You people have not been lynched enough! You haven’t been lynched enough to drive you together! You say you are only ten millions in this country, with ten times that number against you—all of whom you say are solidly united by race prejudice against your progress. All of you by your own confession stand as individual units striving against a united band to fight or hold your own. Any ten-year-old child knows that a dozen persons fighting as one can make better headway against ten times its number than if each were fighting singlehanded and alone.’ “What you need in each community is a solid organization to fight race prejudice wherever shown. That organization should be governed by a council of your best men and women. All matters affecting your race welfare should be passed on by that council and loyally obe...