Ida Bell Wells-Barnett “was an American investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement,” Wikipedia says, and “Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi.” “In 1883, Wells traveled on the Chesapeake, Ohio, & Southwestern Railroad between Memphis and Woodstock, where she worked as a teacher,” the National Park Service says. “She purchased a first-class ticket to sit in the ladies’ car, but the conductor ordered her to move to the smoking car,” in the words of the National Women’s History Museum; Wikipedia says the smoking car “was already crowded with other passengers.”
“When Wells refused, the conductor and two white passengers forcibly removed her,” the National Park Service says, and it quotes her own account: “I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand.” Wikipedia: “the conductor and two men dragged her out of the car.” “Wells sued the railroad and won a $500 settlement from the circuit court. In 1885, the state Supreme Court overturned the ruling,” the Park Service says; Wikipedia dates her win to December 24, 1884, and says “The railroad company appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court’s ruling in 1887.”
“In 1889, she became editor and co-owner with J. L. Fleming of The Free Speech and Headlight, a Black-owned newspaper established by the Reverend Taylor Nightingale (1844–1922) and based at the Beale Street Baptist Church in Memphis,” Wikipedia says; “In the late 1880s, the church also housed the newspaper office of Ida B. Wells,” says Wikipedia’s article on the church. On March 9, 1892, in Memphis, Wikipedia’s article on the People’s Grocery lynchings says, “black grocery owner Thomas Moss and two of his workers, Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell, were lynched by a white mob while in police custody.” Moss was “a friend of Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell,” and “Her writing took a pivotal turn in 1892 when her close friend Thomas Moss was lynched,” the National Women’s History Museum says. “The event led Wells to begin investigating lynchings,” in Wikipedia’s words. Her work “debunked the fallacy frequently voiced by whites at the time – that all Black lynching victims were guilty of crimes,” and “she concluded that Southerners accused Black men of rape to hide their real reasons for lynchings.”
“On May 21, 1892, Wells published an editorial in the Free Speech refuting what she called ‘that old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women,’” Wikipedia says. “A White mob ransacked the Free Speech office, destroying the building and its contents.” “Wells had been out of town, vacationing in Manhattan; she never returned to Memphis.” The National Women’s History Museum says “Wells-Barnett, who was visiting Oklahoma at the time, was forced to leave Memphis but remained firmly committed to anti-lynching activism.”
“Wells subsequently accepted a job with The New York Age and continued her anti-lynching campaign from New York,” Wikipedia says, and “On October 26, 1892, Wells began to publish her research on lynching in a pamphlet titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” which, the National Women’s History Museum says, “described how lynch mobs formed and the common excuses white officials used to justify these acts.” “She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),” Wikipedia says. In the NAACP’s own history, “On February 12, 1909, the nation’s largest and most widely recognized civil rights organization was born,” and “Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth.” “On May 4, 2020, she was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize special citation, ‘for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching,’” Wikipedia says; as NPR put it, “The Pulitzer Prize board awarded suffragist Ida B. Wells a special citation for her reporting on lynching.”
Fact check
The facts and where they come from
- She refused to stop writing, even after a mob destroyed her newspaper. Wikipedia: “Subjected to continued threats and criminal violence, including when a white mob destroyed her newspaper office and presses, Wells left Memphis for Chicago, Illinois,” and “Wells subsequently accepted a job with The New York Age and continued her anti-lynching campaign from New York.” 1
- Her name was Ida B. Wells. Wikipedia: “Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement.” 1
- She had a first-class ticket for the ladies’ car of a train. National Women’s History Museum: “She purchased a first-class ticket to sit in the ladies’ car, but the conductor ordered her to move to the smoking car.” National Park Service: “In 1883, Wells traveled on the Chesapeake, Ohio, & Southwestern Railroad between Memphis and Woodstock, where she worked as a teacher.” 54
- The conductor ordered her into the smoking car. Wikipedia: “a train conductor with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway ordered Wells to give up her seat in the first-class ladies car and move to the smoking car, which was already crowded with other passengers.” 1
- She refused, and bit his hand. National Park Service: “When Wells refused, the conductor and two white passengers forcibly removed her,” and, in her own words, “I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand.” 4
- He and two other men dragged her out. Wikipedia: “When Wells refused to give up her seat on September 15, the conductor and two men dragged her out of the car.” National Park Service: “the conductor and two white passengers forcibly removed her.” 14
- She sued the railroad and won, but a higher court reversed it. Wikipedia: “Wells won her case on December 24, 1884,” and “The railroad company appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court’s ruling in 1887.” National Park Service: “Wells sued the railroad and won a $500 settlement from the circuit court. In 1885, the state Supreme Court overturned the ruling.” 14
- In 1892, a mob lynched her friend Thomas Moss and two of his workers. People’s Grocery lynchings (Wikipedia): “The People’s Grocery lynchings of 1892 occurred on March 9, 1892, in Memphis, Tennessee, when black grocery owner Thomas Moss and two of his workers, Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell, were lynched by a white mob while in police custody”; Moss was “a friend of Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell.” National Women’s History Museum: “Her writing took a pivotal turn in 1892 when her close friend Thomas Moss was lynched.” 25
- So she began to investigate lynchings. Wikipedia: “The event led Wells to begin investigating lynchings.” 1
- She showed the excuses were often lies. Wikipedia: her work “debunked the fallacy frequently voiced by whites at the time – that all Black lynching victims were guilty of crimes,” and “she concluded that Southerners accused Black men of rape to hide their real reasons for lynchings.” National Women’s History Museum: Southern Horrors “described how lynch mobs formed and the common excuses white officials used to justify these acts.” 15
- When she wrote that in her paper, a white mob destroyed its office. Wikipedia: “On May 21, 1892, Wells published an editorial in the Free Speech refuting what she called ‘that old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women.’” … “A White mob ransacked the Free Speech office, destroying the building and its contents.” Wikipedia: the paper was “based at the Beale Street Baptist Church in Memphis.” Beale Street Baptist Church (Wikipedia): “In the late 1880s, the church also housed the newspaper office of Ida B. Wells, the famous civil rights journalist.” 13
- She was away, and was forced out of Memphis. Wikipedia: “Wells had been out of town, vacationing in Manhattan; she never returned to Memphis.” National Women’s History Museum: “Wells-Barnett, who was visiting Oklahoma at the time, was forced to leave Memphis but remained firmly committed to anti-lynching activism.” 15
- But she kept writing, and published Southern Horrors. Wikipedia: “On October 26, 1892, Wells began to publish her research on lynching in a pamphlet titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” and “Wells subsequently accepted a job with The New York Age and continued her anti-lynching campaign from New York.” 1
- In 1909, she helped found the NAACP. Wikipedia: “She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).” NAACP: “Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth,” and “On February 12, 1909, the nation’s largest and most widely recognized civil rights organization was born.” 16
- In 2020, she got a special Pulitzer citation for the reporting a mob tried to silence. Wikipedia: “On May 4, 2020, she was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize special citation, ‘for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.’” NPR: “The Pulitzer Prize board awarded suffragist Ida B. Wells a special citation for her reporting on lynching.” 17
Sources
- Ida B. Wells Wikipedia
- People’s Grocery lynchings Wikipedia
- Beale Street Baptist Church Wikipedia
- Places of Ida B. Wells National Park Service
- Ida B. Wells-Barnett National Women’s History Museum
- Our History NAACP
- 2020 Pulitzer Prize Winners Include ‘This American Life’ (May 4, 2020) NPR
Notes
The train ride’s date: September 15, 1883 (Wikipedia; the National Park Service says “In 1883”) or May 4, 1884 (the National Women’s History Museum: “On May 4, 1884, Wells-Barnett undertook her commute to Shelby County on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad”); Wikipedia says she was also ordered out on May 4, 1884. The Short gives no year. The railroad is the “Chesapeake and Ohio Railway” in Wikipedia and the “Chesapeake, Ohio, & Southwestern Railroad” in the National Park Service’s account; the stock certificate shown is the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern’s.
Who removed her: “two white passengers” (National Park Service) or “two men” (Wikipedia); the Short says “two other men.” The reversal came in 1885 (National Park Service) or 1887 (Wikipedia), so the Short says only that a higher court reversed it.
Moss’s companions: Wikipedia names them Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell, workers at his grocery; the National Women’s History Museum calls them “Henry Steward” and co-owners. The Short says “two of his workers” and names neither.
The office: Wikipedia says the mob “ransacked the Free Speech office, destroying the building and its contents”; the National Women’s History Museum says it “set fire to the Free Speech office.” The Short says “destroyed,” which both support. Where she was: New York (Wikipedia) or Oklahoma (the National Women’s History Museum), so the Short says “She was away.” Wikipedia adds that “no copy of the Memphis Free Speech survives,” so no page of it is shown.
The NAACP: Wikipedia calls her “one of the founders” and the NAACP names her among the signers of the 1909 call, but she was left off its “Founding Forty” list (the National Women’s History Museum: “Despite her leadership, Wells-Barnett was excluded from the list”; Wikipedia: “there are differing in accounts for why Wells’s name was excluded from the original list of founders of the NAACP”). The Short says she helped found it.
The Pulitzer was a special citation, not a regular prize, and the Short says so. “The reporting a mob tried to silence” ties the citation, for her reporting on lynching, to the mob that destroyed her paper’s office after she wrote about lynching.
Left out for length: her lecture tours in Britain (1893–94), A Red Record (1895), her move to Chicago and her marriage to Ferdinand Barnett (1895), the 1913 suffrage parade and her firing as a teacher in 1891.
Pictures: Ida B. Wells herself is in Mary Garrity’s photograph of about 1893 (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian; restored by Adam Cuerden), an engraved portrait of 1891 (Library of Congress) and her portrait in L. A. Scruggs’s Women of Distinction (1893). The stock certificate, dated August 18, 1882, is the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad’s, and The Smoking Car is a print of 1884 (Library of Congress); both show the period, not her own train. The church is the Beale Street Baptist (First Baptist) Church in Memphis, which housed her paper’s office in the late 1880s, photographed many years later by the Historic American Buildings Survey; it is not shown as the building the mob destroyed. Memphis is Albert Ruger’s bird’s-eye view of 1870 and an engraving of Madison Street from King’s Hand-book of the United States (1891); neither shows the lynching or the mob. The cover of Southern Horrors (New York Age Print, 1892) carries her portrait, and The Crisis is the NAACP’s magazine, whose first issue came out in November 1910, a year after the founding. No picture of a lynching or of violence is shown.
Photo credits
The archive photos in this story
All the photographs and illustrations in this story are in the public domain. Tap one to enlarge it, or follow the link to its Wikimedia Commons page for the full record. The narration, captions and graphics in the Short are our own; its music and sound effects are credited below.
Music and sound effects
Music: Beethoven, Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 (Musopen Symphony Orchestra, CC0); Mussorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain (1886 version) (Musopen, public domain); Brahms, Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68: IV. Adagio - Piu andante - Allegro non troppo, ma con brio (Musopen Symphony Orchestra, CC0).
Sound effects: Freesound, CC0.
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