Ida Wells was a mighty voice for justice for African Americans, for women, and for those who were poor. Her life is a testimony and a witness for all of us as we consider our place in this current atmosphere of danger and fear. Her times, even more than our own, saw the forces of violence and oppression and white supremacy regather strength, just as they are doing in our day. The final chapter of her autobiography is entitled “The Price of Liberty.” She never finished the chapter because she was struck with a sudden illness and died in just a few days in March 1931. This is the paragraph that began that final chapter:
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and it does seem to me that notwithstanding all these social agencies and activities there is not that vigilance which should be exercised in the preservation of our rights. This leads me to wonder if we are not too well satisfied to be able to point to our wonderful institutions with complacence and draw the salaries connected therewith, instead of being alert as the watchman on the wall.15
Questions for Further Reflection
1. Which parts of this chapter make you want to learn more about Ida Wells?
2. What puzzles you about the narrative of the life of Ida Wells?
3. How have things changed in terms of racial justice since Ida Wells was alive? What has not changed?
1. To learn more about Wells, see Alfreda Duster, ed., Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), and Paula Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).
2. For more on this, see Goldstone, Dark Bargain, 104–8.
3. Dorothy Sterling, Black Foremothers (New York: Feminist Press, 1988), 73–75.
4. Ibid., 78–79.
5. Duster, Crusade, 61.
6. Ibid., 72.
7. Nikole Hannah-Jones, “When Ida B. Wells Married, It Was a Page One Story,” New York Times, January 23, 2017, p. 10.
8. Sterling, Black Foremothers, 99.
9. Duster, Crusade, 265.
10. Duster, Crusade, 325–26. “Ida did leave the meeting that founded the NAACP. Then she confronted DuBois about taking her name off the list. He eventually put it back on. Sixty people signed the call.”
11. Campbell Robertson, “History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names,” New York Times, February 10, 2015, https://nyti.ms/1z3dYQx.
12. For a full account of this case, see Richard Cortner, A Mob Intent on Death (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), and Grif Stockley, Blood in Their Eyes (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2004).
13. Duster, Crusade, 402–3.
14. Ibid., 403–4.
15. Ibid., 415.
Nearly twenty years ago, leading a class on Ida B. Wells at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, Catherine’s students surprised her by noting that Wells reminded them of her. This chapter is a comparative reflection from Catherine.
I begin by acknowledging that there was little in my early life designed to help me believe that I could tell the truth either freely or otherwise. My early life, as a little African American girl in rural Arkansas, taught me to be quiet. The primary lessons came from living with my illiterate sharecropping father, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and my mother, who graduated from college the year that I turned eighteen. My father’s condition was caused by the premature death of my twelve-yearold brother who died because he was black and poor and could not get medical care from the local hospital.
Though my brother had died before I was born, I heard my father talk about him almost every day. He told us many times how the local hospital had informed him that he should take my brother, Garland, to the charity hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, which was seventy-five miles from our home since my parents did not have money and the hospital did not treat African Americans anyway. By the time my father managed to obtain transportation for them, Garland was far too sick to be saved. He died in the hospital at age twelve.
There was more stress and distress in our household than was good for any of us. I did not understand what caused it until years later when I began to realize how my father’s experience as a disempowered illiterate black man in America framed his life. During my early years I thought that he was simply difficult to live with and I had to find a way to escape.
So at the early age of eight I began to practice ways to cope. One of the ways was to rise early before almost everyone in my family and go out to sit on the backdoor steps and watch the world wake up as the sun rose. There were times when I was puzzled about what motivated me to do this, but I am aware now that my effort to find ways to cope with a household that made me feel that escape was necessary helped me to form that habit. In addition to that, I believe that there was a deep inquiring mind and spirit in my eight-year-old body that was being nurtured onto a lifetime path of inquiring about the way to liberation. As an adult, I wonder what gave me this trait and my best analysis tells me that it was simply grace that prodded me and helped me to learn to cope in a world that would be difficult for many years to come.
Perhaps it is my inquiring mind and willingness to be different that put me on the path that would cross the one that Ida B. Wells was traveling. Though I did not meet her until I was in my early forties and she was born eighty-four years earlier than I was, there is so much that we share, and as I continue to live, the common threads become even more apparent to me. My soul resonates with her and the ways in which she chose to stand