Ida B. Wells and Systemic Racism

Learning Objectives

  • Analyze primary sources in order to connect historical conflicts to our understanding of systemic racism in the present

Second Example: Ida B. Wells

Our second example comes from Ida B. Wells, one of the most prominent Black journalists of her era. Her work in documenting and raising public awareness of lynching makes her a valuable source for understanding systemic racism.

Lynch Law In America

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, born into slavery in Mississippi, was a pioneering activist and journalist. She did much to expose the epidemic of lynching in the United States and her writing and research exploded many of the justifications—particularly the rape of White women by Black men—commonly offered to justify the practice.

Ida B. Wells Document Explanation Explanation
Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an “unwritten law” that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal. …

… During the last ten years a new statute has been added to the “unwritten law.” This statute proclaims that for certain crimes or alleged crimes no negro shall be allowed a trial; that no white woman shall be compelled to charge an assault under oath or to submit any such charge to the investigation of a court of law. The result is that many men have been put to death whose innocence was afterward established; and to-day, under this reign of the “unwritten law,” no colored man, no matter what his reputation, is safe from lynching if a white woman, no matter what her standing or motive, cares to charge him with insult or assault.

It is considered a sufficient excuse and reasonable justification to put a prisoner to death under this “unwritten law” for the frequently repeated charge that these lynching horrors are necessary to prevent crimes against women. The sentiment of the country has been appealed to, in describing the isolated condition of white families in thickly populated negro districts; and the charge is made that these homes are in as great danger as if they were surrounded by wild beasts. And the world has accepted this theory without let or hindrance. … No matter that our laws presume every man innocent until he is proved guilty; no matter that it leaves a certain class of individuals completely at the mercy of another class; … no matter that mobs make a farce of the law and a mockery of justice; no matter that hundreds of boys are being hardened in crime and schooled in vice by the repetition of such scenes before their eyes–if a white woman declares herself insulted or assaulted, some life must pay the penalty, with all the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and all the barbarism of the Middle Ages. The world looks on and says it is well.

 

 When Ida B. Wells writes about an “unwritten law” that exists across the Jim Crow-era South, to what does she refer?
Not only are two hundred men and women put to death annually, on the average, in this country by mobs, but these lives are taken with the greatest publicity. In many instances the leading citizens aid and abet by their presence when they do not participate, and the leading journals inflame the public mind to the lynching point with scare-head articles and offers of rewards. Whenever a burning is advertised to take place, the railroads run excursions, photographs are taken, and the same jubilee is indulged in that characterized the public hangings of one hundred years ago.

There is, however, this difference: in those old days the multitude that stood by was permitted only to guy or jeer. The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd. If the leaders of the mob are so minded, coal-oil is poured over the body and the victim is then roasted to death. This has been done in Texarkana and Paris, Tex., in Bardswell, Ky., and in Newman, Ga. In Parispk,n the officers of the law delivered the prisoner to the mob. The mayor gave the school children a holiday and the railroads ran excursion trains so that the people might see a human being burned to death. In Texarkana, the year before, men and boys amused themselves by cutting off strips of flesh and thrusting knives into their helpless victim. At Newman, Ga., of the present year, the mob tried every conceivable torture to compel the victim to cry out and confess, before they set fire to the faggots that burned him. But their trouble was all in vain–he never uttered a cry, and they could not make him confess.

 

 What aspect of nineteenth century lynching does Wells decry in this passage?
This condition of affairs were brutal enough and horrible enough if it were true that lynchings occurred only because of the commission of crimes against women–as is constantly declared by ministers, editors, lawyers, teachers, statesmen, and even by women themselves. … [T]hey publish at every possible opportunity this excuse for lynching, hoping thereby not only to palliate their own crime but at the same time to prove the negro a moral monster and unworthy of the respect and sympathy of the civilized world. But this alleged reason adds to the deliberate injustice of the mob’s work.

Instead of lynchings being caused by assaults upon women, the statistics show that not one-third of the victims of lynchings are even charged with such crimes. … Quite a number of the one-third alleged cases of assault that have been personally investigated by the writer have shown that there was no foundation in fact for the charges; yet the claim is not made that there were no real culprits among them.

The negro has been too long associated with the white man not to have copied his vices as well as his virtues. But the negro resents and utterly repudiates the effort to blacken his good name by asserting that assaults upon women are peculiar to his race. The negro has suffered far more from the commission of this crime against the women of his race by white men than the white race has ever suffered through his crimes. Very scant notice is taken of the matter when this is the condition of affairs. What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing party. …

 

 Wells’ research revealed that fewer than one-third of lynching victims are accused of what types of crimes?

 

 

Source: Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “Lynch Law in America,” The Arena 23 (January 1900), 15-24. Google Books.

Try It

Try It

Using what we learned on the previous page, let us consider: how might the atrocities that Ida B. Wells describes be considered an example of racism?

1. Are the four different kinds of racism discussed in the video from the Portland Center for Equity and Inclusion relevant here?

 

2. Wells notes how lynching is an “unwritten law.” Do you think that actual written laws play a role in supporting or buttressing the practice of lynching?

Activity #2

1. In both “Lynch Law in America” and Hays’ scientific racism, we see how racism exists with the law’s protection, but is spread through society through unwritten laws, customs, assumptions, and expectations. Today, most aspects of Jim Crow segregation are no longer legal, but take a moment to thoughtfully consider: are there “unwritten” elements—perhaps not as extreme as lynching—that continue in society as we see it?

2. Go back to Lewis Waller’s list of “justifications, rationalizations, and causes” of Jim Crow on the previous page. Are any of these still relevant today? In 5-6 sentences, discuss this possibility.

Conclusion

Talking about race and racism is always difficult. As you may have observed, it isn’t always easier when we talk about it happening in the past. Just as we are cognizant of our own feelings, it is important to use the historical record to ascertain the feelings, attitudes, and assumptions of those in the past. The Jim Crow era of the South gives us a great many examples of how discussions of race are often couched in terms of science, custom or honor, and one’s understanding of history. We can see in these primary sources how law and customs interact with one another to form the skeleton of systemic racism. By recognizing patterns of how discrimination comes to the surface– a sense of victimhood or falling behind, economic competition, nostalgia, and other factors– we can better identify and address these problems here in the 21st century.