Just a quick warning before we start the show. There is sensitive content in this episode about racial terrorism and lynching, so if there are young ears around, please take that into consideration. My partner, my friend, and I drove over to Montgomery, Alabama to visit the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, or as it's better known,
the National Lynching Memorial. As we walked through the memorial, America's legacy of racial terrorism and extra judicial murder literally hung over our heads like a dark cloud. We passed beneath the names of thousands of black people in America who died as victims of lynching, the memory of their lives engraved on still sculptures that seemed so heavy, so monumental, that they could fall on us at any moment, but they weren't going to the United States has a tendency
not to reckon with the horrors of its past. There's a good chance the lynching epidemic will continue to be thought of as a stain on the fabric of American history or a fortunate part of America's past, depending on your perspective, rather than an institutional, ill and shape shifting social monster that remains part of our national consciousness. Somehow people think lynching should be left in the past, and that having a lynching memorial is just pouring salt on
old wounds. Yet we're still having conversations about whether Confederate statues need to be taken down anyway. What these critics fail to realize, or what they choose to ignore, is that lynching continued into the twenty one century, though numbers have decreased. I'm only about three generations removed from the time when lynching was at its peak in the United States at the end of the eighteen hundreds, and the extra judicial killing of black people persists to this day.
Lynching was just declared a federal hate crime in I will not be the one to pretend that mob violence and mandated murder based on race has no effect on the American psyche and systems. And that's not to mention how many black people had their futures ripped away from them and lost their ability to build families because lynching black people for doing things like standing around was just how it was. There is no justification for these murders that could stand up to a test of logic or justice.
White folks gathered to watch black bodies hang, gazing in glee and reveling in white supremacy as they watched the life drain out of adults and children alike, their limp corpses swaying gently from a tree branch. Sometimes victims were dragged behind cars. Sometimes the lynched were castrated before they were killed. Mothers, police officers, teachers, and other supposedly upstanding
members of the community attended lynching parties. When Henry Smith was accused of raping and murdering a white girl in three he was paraded around town on a float, then tortured with hot irons soaked with kerosene, then set on fire in front of a crowd of thousands. After he died, people grabbed pieces of his burned body as keepsakes, and photographs of the lynching were sold as postcards. If you live in the United States, you might already know the
history of the country's lynchings. If you don't, you may be familiar with a history of extra judicial punishment and murder present in your country's history. But I give you these brutal images to remind you how normal and it accepted it was in America to lynch black people, to inspire fear in their hearts, maintain a system of racial
supremacy and inferiority, and rich society of perceived undesirables. I cannot downplay the horrifying regularity of unjust killings based on skin color, and how often they were committed for petty crimes or no crimes at all. To stand against lynch ings and to call attention to the injustice of white mob violence was to oppose with the oppressive majority considered
right and fair. But as journalists and anti lynching activists, Ida Bell Wills Barnett once wrote, the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them. I'm Eve Jeff Coote and This is Unpopular a podcast about the people in history who didn't let the threat of persecution keep m from speaking truth to power. Today we turn our attention to the story of Ida B. Wells, a pioneer in journalism who was extremely famous in America and at the same time was on many folks most
hated list. Ida Bell Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July six, eighteen sixty two, just half a year before you, as President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Her mother was named Elizabeth Bell Wells and her father was named James Wells, and she was the oldest child out of eight siblings, including one child who died not long after birth. But as the United States went through
a huge transitional period, so did Ida's family. James, a carpenter, started his own business in eighteen sixty seven and became involved in reconstruction, politics, and education, and Elizabeth was a cook. Ida attended Shaw University now called Rust College, a school founded for formerly enslaved black people, where her father served on the first board of trustees. Ida was an avid reader, soaking up the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Alcott, and Bronte.
But just after Ida turned sixteen in eighteen seventy eight, Ida's parents and her infant brother, Stanley, died of yellow fever as an epidemic struck the area. At that point. Ida refused to let her siblings get split up, and she began taking care of her brothers and sisters and got a job as a teacher in a rural school about six miles outside of Holly Springs. But her time in Holly Springs after her parents death was rough and Even in these years of early adulthood, Ida was the
target of townsfolks derision. When she was seen asking Dr. D. H. Gray for the money her father had entrusted to the children before he died. People in the town began questioning her motives for choosing to take care of the family and spreading rumors that she was sexually involved with the doctor.
On top of the slander, Ida had to stay with local families while she taught outside of Holly Springs during the week days, and she came home to a boatload of housework on the weekends, and her sister Eugenia died. Then her grandmother, who took care of her siblings while she was away, had a stroke. In the early eighteen eighties, Ida welcomed and escaped from life in Holly Springs. She moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with her two youngest sisters to
live with an aunt. She began teaching in Tennessee, and she started taking summer classes at Fisk University in Nashville. Ida was already outspoken, but it was during her early years in Tennessee when Ida's activism got a lot of attention. On May four, four, she wrote a first class rail car traveling from Memphis to Woodstock, where she taught at
a public school. Even though she had purchased a ticket for the so called ladies car, the conductor ordered Ida out of the coach, telling her it was for white people only and that she needed to go to the smoke Field colored car. The Civil Rights Act of eighteen seventy five had made equal treatment on public transportation the law, but in October eighty three, the U. S. Supreme Court decided that the parts of the Act prohibiting discrimination in
public places was unconstitutional. This meant that the idea of separate but equal accommodations was effectively legal pre Plussy versus Ferguson. Still, Ida refused to move, digging her feet into the seat in front of her, and scratching and biting the conductor, but she ended up leaving the train early. When she got back to Memphis, she hired black attorney Thomas Castle's then white attorney James Greer to sue the Chesapeake and
Ohio Railroad Company. I'DA went to trial in circuit court, where Greer argued that the railroad company violated Tennessee statutes that said railroad companies could not charge black people first class fairs and put them in second class cars, and that required separate but equal accommodations. The judge ordered the railway company to pay her five hundred dollars in damages, saying the company had violated the separate but equal clause by requiring black people to ride in a smoking car
that was not first class. The Tennessee Supreme Court later overturned the decision, saying that she had been provided like accommodations and that her intent was harassment rather than obtaining a more comfortable seat on the trip. Wells had to pay court costs. She wrote the following days later. I felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things
from my suit for my p people. Generally, I firmly believed all along that the law was on our side and would, when we appealed to it, give us justice. I feel shorn of that belief and utterly discouraged. And just now, if it were possible, I would gather my race in my arms and fly away with them. Oh God, is there no redress, no peace, no justice in this land for us? But it didn't take long for that lamentation to turn into more advocacy for the rights of
black people in the Gym Crow era. She began writing essays on black folks social conditions and reading them in public, and she wrote about her activism. She became the secretary of the Colored Press Association. She purchased ownership in the radical weekly Free Speech and Headlight, and became its editor in eighteen eighty nine. Under the pen name Iola, Ida wrote about the injustices black people faced in the South, and her articles were featured in black press around the country.
In eee, after Ida wrote an editorial that was critical of the Memphis Board of Education and the lack of resources in black schools, the board dismissed her from the teaching post. Ida's controversial writings were making waves, and she was not afraid of the blowbacks she might get for her journalism. In that fearlessness, pursuit of truth, and dedication to improving the lives of black people would start Ida on a lifelong anti lynching crusade that earned her many enemies.
When we get back from the break, we'll look at how well crafted words can expose truths and buried thoughts and practices that are built on outdated and false foundations. What is hashtag activism worth? Is it empty? Performance is valuable solely for the awareness it spreads? Hashtag? What is the hashtag? Hashtag? Or maybe I should ask what is a hashtag worth on its own? And what is it worth?
When real world activism follows the hashtag, it's telling that supporting a cause via hashtag alone can be a controversial act. It only takes one hashtag me too, hashtag fake news, or hashtag times up to draw out the animosity of people who never reach out to you on social media
until it's time for an argument. A few letters typed after the symbol formerly known as the pound sign, accompanied by a short statement of advocacy for an issue has enough impact to invoke an emotional response, and people around the world have been arrested for their so called online activism, detained for being critical of established institutions and people in power.
I'm using the term online activism loose, as all forms of activism that begin online aren't the same, and the internet is just another medium of communication that happens to not have been around for hundreds or thousands of years. It's tempting to consider the term in a dismissive way, but here it's just a way of distinguishing a new and developing platform and starting point for social change that
operates in ways only possible in contemporary times. It's clear that online activism is a powerful tool and component of social activism when it amplifies marginalized voices, allows for effective organization and quick mobilizing, inspires collective action, and focuses on educating people on the problem and the path toward progress.
Being able to use mediums as readily accessible as the Internet and social media to enact justice can be empowering to people who feel small and quiet when interacting with established orders that have proven to be in effect to
been harmful. But there's also research that shows people who participate in online activism may not actually engage in social change beyond the Internet and only use hashtags to create an illusion of concern, and that online activism can cause people who are set in their ways to double down on their stereotypes about activists and opinions on social issues.
Being emotionally affected alone just isn't enough. Social media activism and internet virality are indispensable parts of the way knowledge is spread and the way people form opinions on issues they find compelling and important. I often think about how long it took back in the day for news of disasters, of war, of major events to spread, and I regret that, despite how much access I have to world news, discoveries, and changing science and theory, I'll still never be up
to day on everything. For artless, the words that are being so widely and so quickly spread through hashtags and articles have shown promise in their ability to uncover truths that might otherwise be left untold to a worldwide audience. Online activism can fill in major gaps left by traditional international outlets, mainstream media, and dominant cultural conversations. It would be misleading to imply that all activism that begins online
is positive, meaningful, smart, or worthwhile. But it would also be unwise to understate the internet's capacity to shed light on pervasive but unsolved problems and to challenge entrenched norms through research and information sharing. The very frequent inquiry made after my lectures by interested friends is what can I do to help the cause. The answer always is tell
the world the facts. This is what Ida b Well said in the pamphlet The Red Record, her eight texts that detailed the escalating rates of racist violence in the United States and the destruction of lynching. After reconstruction, many white folks desired a return to the old order and worked hard to stifle Black progress. That was often done through law, but a return to that old order was also pursued through the murder of black people who threatened
white social status and cultural and economic dominance. In eight two, Ida was in Natchez, Mississippi, when she found out that Tom Moss, her goddaughter's father, was lynched. A white mob shot and discarded Moss in two of his colleagues, will Stewart and Calvin McDowell. And Memphis, Tennessee. Moss owned People's Grocery, a successful store in a mixed race neighborhood called the Curve. In the week leading up to the lynching, a fight out side of People's Grocery among black and white people.
Rumors around black people in the Curve planning a conspiracy against the white people, and a shootout at People's Grocery that injured several white men escalated racial tensions in the city. A white grocery owner named William Barrett was threatened by the success of the store. This outlook was not uncommon among white people who faced economic competition from black folks and had no problem was turning to violence to turn
the tides in their favor. While Moss, McDowell, and Stewart were being held at the Shelby County Jail, a mob dragged the three of them out of their cells, took them to a railroad yard, and shot them to death. The harrowing incident left a mark on Ida. She began to investigate lunchings, determined to debunk the myth that the extra legal killing of people was justified because they had raped white women or committed some other brutal act of
violence against white people. In free speech, Ida urged black people to leave Memphis and move west. Some who stayed in Memphis boycotted white businesses, as well as traveled throughout the South on a crusade to document the true events that led to lynchings. She collected accounts that were not retaliation for crimes, but were vicious instances of white people meeting out death to preserve perceived white supremacy and save
themselves from social embarrassment. Black people were being lynched for so much as existing lynchings were part of the long game built on false accusations that served to reinforce the stereotype of black people as uncontrollable monsters. They were a grand lie. Nobody in this section of the country believed the old, thread bare lie that negro men rape white women.
Wells wrote in an editorial in the Free Speech two months after the People's grocery lynchings, if Southern white men are not careful, there will overreach themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction, and a conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. The horror, Well, at least that's what southern white folks and white people who supported lynching thought about
the editorial. Not only did the editorial prompt many indignant and outraged responses from locals and other newspaper editorials, but it put Ida on many people's lists of ne'er do Wells. She was already a target of hate for her critical writings and did not hesitate to carry a pistol. But once she insulted the morality of white women and called attention to the injustice of lynching, an angry mob took it upon themselves to burn down the Free Speech Building
and destroy the printing press. Wells was in New York when she heard the news, and as her life was threatened, she knew that it was entirely too dangerous to go back to Tennessee. So she took a job with the New York Age and continued to expose the truth of lynching through her journalism, a cause she would take on for the rest of her life. Let's Take a Quick Break In Wells published a pamphlet called Southern Horrors Lynch
Law in All its Phases. Three years later, she published The Red Record, in which she meticulously covered the crime of lynching throughout the United States and how the reasons
for his proliferation were unfounded. Through the use of carefully gathered facts, information from white sources in the South, and statistics from the Chicago Tribune, Wells provide did undeniable evidence that the narrative of lynchings driven by insatiable black lust and in humanity was fiction, and as part of her anti lynching campaign, she urged her readers to educate others and revolutionized public sentiment to encourage religious leaders to condemn
lynchings and to show white Southerners how it was beneficial to refuse to invest capital and places where lawlessness and mob violence ruled. As she continued to compile data about lynching cases and break down the myth of black men as sexual predators, as she toured Britain and gained an
international audience that included white people. As she received endless props from Frederick Douglas for her work, Americans made clear their resentment of Ida and her dedication to a meticulously researched analysis of the lynching record that included white people who believe black folks deserved to be lynch in higher class black folks who were eager to maintain their social positions and not stir the pot. Wells was pegged by
many as irrational, emotional, too radical, and dangerous. The New York Times called her quote a slanderous and nasty minded mulattress who does not scruple to represent the victims of black fruits in the South as willing victims. But despite the attacks on her character and threats on her life, Wells put up other fights that got her labeled as an adversary. She turned to black civil rights, helping found the n Double a CP. She reported on race riots
and spoke out against school of segregation. She advocated for women's suffrage, particularly that of black women, and founded the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago. At the time, many white suffragists were still intent on upholding white power structures and maintained prevailing ideologies on the natural savagery and inferiority of
black people. The U. S Government even put her under valance for inciting quote a great deal of interracial antagonism with her writing on the East St. Louis massacres of nineteen seventeen, and a spy once called her a far more dangerous agitator than Marcus Garvey. Ida and her husband, Ferdinand Lee Barnett, once supported Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association. The government denied Wells a passport when she was nominated as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of nineteen nineteen.
To say that Ida's body of work was in opposition to contemporary norms is to say the least. She was well known, but she was subversive and widely denounced for it. Though the work she did to challenge conventions of the day was dangerous, Wells considered it necessary to share with the world the truth of the atrocity of lynchings and the perils of anti blackness and racism. Ida b Wells once wrote the following the Afro American, It's not a
b sal race. If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this and at the same time aroused the conscience of the American people to demand for justice to every citizen and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service. Other considerations are of minor importance. Before her research into the stories behind lynchings. Before her investigative journalism was published and defied intentionally distorted historical records, the prevailing notion in
Why America was that lynchings were warranted. I'da died in ninety one. Her legacy of civil rights activism is cemented in the impact her journalism and activism left on her contemporaries and future activists in academics and more literally, the reflection space that honors her at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery that said, the state sanctioned extra judicial killings of black people is an issue Americans
are still grappling with. Ida b. Wells is crusade to take on lynching and other race issues at a time when speaking up as a black woman was so risky. Can be viewed as a model for confronting questionable and harmful practices today. Through her words, calls to action, and personal activism, she was able to rock the foundation of a system of racial terrorism that seemed impossible to move.
Considering the effectiveness of Ida's work, there is no reason to dismiss the potential for online activism to inspire social change. Through her personal experience with slavery and lynching and her impassioned research into the reality of black persecution in the US, she opened eyes to the importance of pursuing truth rather than thoughtlessly trusting the falsified balance presented in lynching accounts.
It's not crazy to think that someone's words could help inspire such a drastic change and thought expose new truths and mobilized movements today, even when they seem outrageous and inconceivable. We'll see you again next week for another episode of Unpopular. Our producer is Andrew Howard, Holly Fry and Christopher Hasiotis are our executive producers, and if you want to reach out to us, if you have any suggestions for people to cover, or if you just generally want to vent.
You can reach us at Unpopular at i heart media dot com. You can also follow us on Instagram at Unpopular Show, on Twitter at Underscore Unpopular Show, and on Facebook at this is Unpopular. And you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, the I heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcast