The other day, I read about Ida B Wells.
"For speaking plainly about rape, sex and murder, Wells lost her home and her livelihood. For the rest of her life, she had to defend her reputation against both white and black people who called her a "negro adventuress" and "Notorious Courtesan." A black newspaper editor suggested that the public should "muzzle" that "animal from Memphis," and the New York Times dubbed her "a slanderous and dirty-minded mulatress." " [1]
(For those you who are wondering, a mulatress is the daughter of one white parent and one black parent.)
"Ida B Wells was a fearless anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, women's rights advocate, journalist, and speaker. She stands as one of our nation's most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy. She was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862 and died in Chicago, Illinois 1931 at the age of sixty-nine," says Lee D. Baker. [2]
Like Gandhi, one of the incidents in her life which propelled her towards activism involvoed discrimination while travelling. She "became a public figure in Memphis when, in 1884, she led a campaign against racial segregation on the local railway. A conductor of the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company told her to give up her seat on the train to a white man and ordered her into the smoking or "Jim Crow" car, which was already crowded with other passengers. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1875—which banned discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color in theaters, hotels, transport, and other public accommodations—had just been declared unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), and several railroad companies were able to continue racial segregation of their passengers." [3] When Wells refused to comply, the conductor dragged her out of the car with the assistance of two other men. She sued the railroad but although won in the local circuit court, the Supreme Court of Tennessee reversed the lower court's ruling in 1887.
She criticised lynching and exposed the myth that black people were lynched only when they ravished white women or did something else along those lines for what it was: a lie.
She also travelled throughout America and went to Britain twice to speak against lynching. In addition to this, she worked was a suffragette and, along with Jane Addams, stopped the establishment of segregated schools in Chicago.
Today, she is remembered as a crusader for civil rights and democracy.
Links:
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/10/AR2008041003101.html
[2] http://www.duke.edu/~ldbaker/classes/AAIH/caaih/ibwells/ibwbkgrd.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells
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