Who Was Jim Crow - Warrior Woman - Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Good morning. Yesterday, I learned all about Who Was Jim Crow - Warrior Woman - Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Which could be very helpful in my experience so you. Warrior Woman - Ida B. Wells-BarnettIn the latter part of nineteenth century, communal theories from Ida B. Wells-Barnett were forceful blows against the mainstream White male ideologies of her time. Ida Wells was born on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. It was the second year of the Civil War and she was born into a slave family. Her mother, Lizzie Warrenton, was a cook; and her father, James, was a carpenter. Ida's parents believed that instruction was very leading and after the War, they enrolled their children in Rust College, the local school set up by the Freedmen's Aid community (Hine 1993). Founded in 1866, the community established schools and colleges for recently freed slaves in the South, and it was at Rust College that Ida learned to read and write.
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Everything changed for Ida the summer she turned sixteen. Both of her parents and her infant brother died during a yellow fever epidemic, and Ida was left to care for her remaining five siblings. She began teaching at a rural school for a month and, a year later, took a position in Memphis, Tennessee, in the city's segregated black schools. Upon arriving in Memphis were teaching salaries were higher than Mississippi, Wells-Barnett found out that even though there was a stronger ask for literate individuals to teach, there was a stronger need for fine ones. Agreeing to Salley (1993), because she needed qualifications in order to teach, she enrolled into Fisk University and gained her qualification in under a year. While returning to Memphis from a teaching practice in New York, she was met with racial provocation for the first time while traveling by railway. Ida was asked by the conductor to move to the segregated car, even though she had paid for a mark in the ladies coach car.
She refused to leave, and bit the conductor's hand as he forcibly pushed her from the railway car. She sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and was awarded 0 by a local court. Even though she won the case, the headlines read, "Darky Damsel Gets Damages," and the decision was appealed to the Tennessee supreme Court and was reversed (Bolden, 1996). She was ordered to pay court frees in the number of 0. This incident infuriated Ida and spurred her to investigate and article other incidents of racism. Outraged by the inequality of Black and White schools in Memphis and the unfairness of Jim Crow segregation, Ida became a community activist and began writing articles calling attention to the plight of African Americans. She wrote for a weekly Black newspaper called The Living Way. Wells-Barnett's teaching vocation ended upon her "dismissal in 1891 for protesting about the conditions in Black schools" (Salley, 1993, p.115). during her time as a school teacher, Wells-Barnett along with other Black teachers was said to have gathered and "shared writing and seminar on Friday evening, and produced a newspaper face the week's events and gossip." (Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998, p.151). The newspaper was officially established and published and distributed under the name Memphis Free Speech and Headlights throughout the Back community a year after she was dismissed. It has been said that her motivation to become a communal examiner was the results of her involvement with the Memphis Free Speech and Headlights both as editor and columnist under the pen name Lola and as part owner. Unfortunately, her printing press was destroyed and she was run out of town by a White mob (Sally, 1993). After getting dismissed from her teaching position, her attention then shifted from schools to the issue that would dominate her work for most of her life; lynching. Lynching was the brutal and lawless killing of Black men and women, often falsely accused of crimes, and usually perpetrated by gigantic violent mobs of Whites.
It was during this Reconstruction Era, after the Civil War, that Black men made immediate civil gains such as voting, retention communal office, and owning land. Yet, groups like the Ku Klux Klan (Kkk) industrialized at the turn of the century as a response. They made it difficult for Southern Blacks to vote or live in peace, attempting to vocalize White supremacy through coercion and violence, including lynching (Salzman, 2004) . Infuriated by the Memphis lynching in 1892, which complicated a close friend, Ida expressed her grief in an editorial: "The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the White man or become his rival. There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are outnumbered and without arms. There is therefore only one thing left we can do; save our money and leave town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, when accused by White persons" (Hine, 1993).
At the same time Wells saw what lynching really was; an excuse to "keep the nigger down" and execute Blacks "who acquired wealth and property." (Duster, 1971) This sparked her investigation into the causes of lynchings. Since Whites could no longer hold Blacks as slaves they found in mob violence a distinct means of maintaining a system of "economic, psychological, and sexual exploitation" (Duster, 1971).
In addition, the result of her investigation and editorial sparked the Black community to retaliate and encourage all who could to leave, and those who stayed to boycott the city hasten Company. Ida saw the success of the boycott, and asserted, "the petition to the White man's pocket has ever been more effectual than all appeals ever made to his conscience." (Duster, 1971.)
As mentioned earlier, because of Well-Barnett's racial identity, her communal system was well shaped by the events unfolding within her community as experienced by the first generation of African-Americans after Emancipation (Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998). Agreeing to Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley (1998): "This community took as one assumption that White dominance and its along religious doctrine of White supremacy had to be confronted. American communal Darwinists were giving religious doctrine of White intellectual legitimacy to Whites, which at this time meant Anglo-Saxon, imperialism abroad and supremacy at home, providing dogma such as that in James K. Hosmer's"Short History of Anglo-Saxon Freedom"(p. 159). Wells-Barnett's communal system is determined to be a radical non-Marxian disagreement system with a focus on a "pathological interaction between differences and power in U.S. Society. A health they variously label as repression, domination, suppression, despotism, subordination, subjugation, tyranny, and our American conflict." (Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998, p.161).
Her communal system was also determined "Black Feminism Sociology," and Agreeing to Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley (1998), there was four presented themes within the theory: one, her object of communal analysis and of a method proper to the project; two, her model of the communal world; three, her system of domination and four, her alternative to domination. Although those four themes were gift in her theory, one could assume that the major theme above the four was the implication of a moral form of resistance against oppression, which is not farfetched seeing that oppression was the major theme in her life.
She used an amazingly straight-forward writing style to prove a very bold seminar against lynching, discrediting the excuse of rape and other excuses. Wells used definite examples and sociological theories to disprove the justifications of lynching made by Southerners. Within her pamphlets, Wells portrays the views of African-Americans in the 1890s. Southerners allowed ample lynchings while hiding behind the excuse of "defending the honor of its women."(Jones-Royster, 1997).
The payment of rape was used in many cases to lynch innocent African-American men. The victim's innocence was often proved after his death. Wells states that the raping of White women by Negro men is an outright lie. Wells supports her statements with any stories about mutual relationships between White women and Black men. White men are free to have relationships with colored women, but colored men will receive death for relationships with white women (Duster, 1971). As shown by Wells, the excuses used by Whites to torture and murder African-Americans were false. In no way can these kinds of crimes ever be truly justified because of the victim's crimes. Maybe the most distinct reasons these crimes happened are hate and fear. Differences between groups of citizen have always caused fear of the unknown, which translates into hate. Whites no longer depended on African-American slave labor for their livelihood. When African Americans were slaves they were determined "property" and "obviously, it was more profitable to sell slaves than to kill them"(Jones-Royster, 1997). With all restraint of "property" and "profit" lifted, Whites during and after Reconstruction were able to freely give into their fear and hate by torturing and killing African-Americans.
Wells' investigations revealed that regardless of whether one was poor and jobless or middle-class, educated, and successful, all Blacks were vulnerable to lynching. Black women, too, were victimized by mob violence and terror. Occasionally they were lynched for alleged crimes and insults, but more often these women were left behind as survivors of those lynched. Up to this time, African-Americans had almost never been free from some form of persecution; the period of Reconstruction was particularly difficult. With the occurrences of lynching steadily increasing with no hope of relenting, their new found freedom ensured minuscule safety. Eventually, Wells was drawn to Chicago in 1893 to protest the racism of the exclusion of African Americans from the World's Fair. With the help of Frederick Douglass, she distributed 20,000 pamphlets entitled "The conjecture Why the Colored American is Not in the Columbian Exposition." On June 27, 1895, she married Ferdinand Lee Barnett, lawyer and editor of the Chicago Conservator, and prolonged to write while raising four children with him (Duster, 1971).
Ida believed firmly in the power of the vote to result change for African-American men and women. She saw enfranchisement as the key to reform and equality, and she integrated the Women's Suffrage movement by marching in the 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., with the all White Illinois delegation (Sterling, 1979). She prolonged to write in her later years, and remained one of the most widely syndicated Black columnists in America. She published articles on race issues and injustices that were printed in African-American newspapers nationwide. Toward the end of her life, Ida worked to address the communal and political concerns of African-Americans in Chicago. She made an unsuccessful run as an independent candidate for the Illinois State Senate in 1930, and died the next year of the kidney disease uremia (Duster, 1971). Wells-Barnett's influence was profound. When the federal government built the first low-income housing task in Chicago's "Black belt" in 1940, it was named in her honor (Sterling, 1979). Her autobiography was published posthumously by her daughter, Alfreda Duster in 1971. In Chicago, she helped to found a number of Black female and reform organizations, such as the Ida B. Wells Club, the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, and the Chicago Negro Fellowship League. She also served as director of Chicago's Cook County League of Women's Clubs. These clubs were a means for Blacks to join together for preserve and to create to result change (Duster, 1971). At the national level, Wells-Barnett was a central outline in the founding of the National association of Colored Women, a graphic club that worked for sufficient child care, job training, and wage equity, as well as against lynching and communication segregation.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett's passion for justice made her a tireless crusader for the ownership of African Americans and women. She was a communal reformer, a suffragist, a civil ownership activist, and a philanthropist. Her writings, regardless of the risk to her safety and life, raised communal awareness and involvement to address a number of communal ills resulting in the oppression or murder of African Americans. Her assistance of time through the creation of myriad clubs and organizations improved the lives of her people. Her work in Chicago, in her final years, focused on providing for the needs of the city's African American population. Modeled after Jane Addams' community House efforts, Wells created urban houses for Black men, where they could live safely and have passage to recreational amusements while they searched for employment (Hines, 1993). Ida B. Wells-Barnett is sometimes referred to as the "Mother of the Civil ownership movement." She refused to be moved from the Whites only railway car eighty years before the famed Rosa Parks held her seat on an Alabama bus. She encouraged the Black community to take steps to gain political rights, using the same means that would successfully be used much later during the Civil ownership movement such as economic and communication boycotts (Hines, 1993).
In similar fashion to Margaret Sanger (of the Birth control movement) and Susan B. Anthony (of the Women's Suffrage movement), Wells-Barnett was a woman who dedicated her entire life to upholding her firm beliefs about communal reform. She began by writing about the disparity in instruction and school conditions for Black children and spent much of her life working to abolish lynching through communal awareness (Hines, 1993). Ida, through her example, writings, speaking, and assistance in various organizations, elevated the voice of women's equality and suffrage. She was a pioneering Black female journalist, and led a very communal life in a time when most women, Black or White, did not actively share in the male political realm. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was related to many leading leaders and reformers, male and female, during her lifetime. Among them: Jane Addams (1860-1935) was a communal reformer, communal laborer and the founder of Chicago's Hull House, the most famed of the community houses. Addams and Wells-Barnett successfully worked together to block the segregation of Chicago's communal schools (Sterling, 1979). She was also related to W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963) who was a famed Black scholar, sociologist, researcher, writer, and civil ownership activist who voiced opposition to the accomodationist views of his contemporary, Booker T. Washington (1856-1915). Washington urged African Americans to focus on self-improvement through instruction and economic opportunity instead of pressing Whites for political rights.
Ida B. Wells outwardly disagreed with Booker T. Washington's position on commercial instruction and was mortified with his implication that "Blacks were illiterate and immoral, until the arrival of Tuskegee." (Hine, 1993) Outraged by his remarks, she determined his rejection of a college instruction as a "bitter pill." (Hine, 1993). She wrote an article entitled "Booker T. Washington and His Critics" concerning commercial education. "This gospel of work is no new one for the Negro. It is the South's old slavery practice in a new dress." (Hine, 1993).
She felt that focusing only on commercial instruction would limit the opportunities of aspiring young Blacks and she saw Washington as no better than the Whites that justified their actions through lynching. Wells-Barnett joined DuBois in his confidence that African Americans should militantly ask civil rights, and the two worked together on any occasions, most substantially as co-founders of the Naacp. The National association for the Advancement of Colored citizen (Naacp), of which Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a founding member, is still a prosperous club with thousands of members nationwide (Hines, 1993). The association continues to advocate and litigate for civil ownership for African Americans.
Two of the customary issues on which Wells-Barnett worked on, anti-lynching and women's suffrage, are now defunct issues. Lynching is a federal crime and women received the vote in 1920 with the duct of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. For this reason, related groups that arose at the time, such as the Anti-lynching League, the Freedmen's Aid Society, and the National association of Colored Women are no longer in existence. Yet, the League of Women Voters was created as an outgrowth of the suffragist movement, and is an club that still educates men and women about their responsibilities as voters. Wells-Barnett's offering to the field of sociology is so primary that her work "predates or is contemporaneous with the now canonized contributions of White male thinkers like Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, George Simmel, and George Herbert Mead, as well as the contributions of White female sociologists like Adams, Gilman, Marianne Weber, Webb, and the Chicago Women" (Lengerman and Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998, p.171). Ms. Wells-Barnett is an spellbinding example of the power of the written word and the determination to result despite the odds. She was an African American woman, the daughter of slaves and determined the lowest of the low on the historical totem pole in American community and her tenacity, ambition, courage and desire for justice changed history. She was direct and possessed force during a time when this was unheard of by a woman, especially a Black woman. A reformer of her time, she believed African-Americans had to create themselves and fight for their independence against White oppression. She roused the White South to bitter defense and began the awakening of the conscience of a nation.
Through her campaign, writings, and agitation she raised crucial questions about the time to come of Back Americans. Today African-Americans do not rally against oppression like those that came before. Gone are the days when Blacks organized together; today Blacks live in a community that does not want to get complicated as a whole. What this generation fails to perceive is that although the days of Jim Crow have disappeared, it is leading to perceive that the fight for equality is never over. In the preface of On Lynching: Southern Horrors, A Red article and A Mob Rule in New Orleans (a compilation of her major works), she writes, "The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can lead in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American citizen to a ask 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" (Wells, 1969).
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