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| A 1894 showdown between anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and
temperance leader Frances E. Willard revealed the grip that racial
resentment had over the American suffrage movement.
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"I am in Great Britain today because I believe that the silent
indifference with which she has received the charge that human beings
are burned alive in Christian Anglo-Saxon communities is born of
ignorance of the true situation. America cannot and will not ignore the
voice of a nation that is her superior in civilization."
In
1893, journalist and early civil rights pioneer Ida B. Wells crossed the
Atlantic for the first time to deliver that sobering message to Great
Britain. She had hoped to sway public opinion about the racial violence
that plagued the U.S. The lynching of black men and women seemed to have
become a sport among Southern white mobs — reaching a peak of 161
deaths in 1892.
That included the hanging of three black
businessmen, one a close friend of Wells, during that year in her former
home of Memphis, Tenn. She called for blacks to leave the city "which
will neither protect our lives and property." More than 6,000 black
residents left, and many others boycotted white businesses; Wells was
exiled.
Full article here.
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Ida B Wells here.
