Passing the torch
The founding of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 gathered two generations of prominent African-American women in the nation's capital: Josephine Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, now in her 70s; and Harriet Tubman, living legend. <br /><br />Ida, now Wells-Barnett, was there with her 4 month old son Charles. Ida’s relentlessness didn’t always make her popular, but the prominent women admired her. They moved to introduce the baby to the whole convention. The motion passed. <br /><br />Then Harriet Tubman took Ida B. Wells’ firstborn and raised him over her head before hundreds of African-American women, organized for power. #BlackSuffragists #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
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28/02/2020
Ida vs. Frances Willard
The belief that “women†would vote as a block about alcohol animated support and opposition re: suffrage. (It wasn’t ever really true.) The liquor industry lobbied against women’s votes at many junctures, though historians debate how much influence they had. 🧵 <br /><br />The Women’s Christian Temperance Union had massive influence among women, especially very conservative women who were skeptical about suffrage. Frances Willard, leader of WCTU, was one of the most powerful women in the country.<br /><br />She persuaded her 200,000 members (equiv. to 1.2 million today) that they needed the vote to influence domestic issues. She called it a “Home Protection†ballot. WCTU was a very white, very Christian organization. They did organize Black women, often in segregated chapters.<br /><br />Leading activists like Frances Watkins Harper & Sarah Woodson Early played national roles, and urged WCTU’s white women to recognize their privilege. Ida B Wells wasn’t a change-from-the-inside kind of activist. She was frustrated at WCTU’s silence about lynching. <br /><br />WCTU had huge clout among white Southern women, and had they spoken out, it would have been powerful. But they didn’t. <br /><br />Ida, never hesitating to criticize the powerful when they were being cowardly, publicized racist statements by Frances Willard. Willard responded by patronizing Ida [“If Miss Wells is not careful she will kill her cause…â€], and insisting on her own abolitionist bona fides. As you can imagine, the feud went on a long time. <br /><br />The @<a href="https://twitter.com/FrancesWillard" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">FrancesWillard</a> House Museum in Evanston, Ill. & the WCTU Archives @<a href="https://twitter.com/ArchivesWillard" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ArchivesWillard</a> collaborated on a really spectacular exhibit & website on the conflict, <a href="https://scalar.usc.edu/works/willard-and-wells/index" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Truth-Telling: Frances Willard & Ida B. Wells.</a><br />It’s got a detailed timeline, short pieces on the era and context, thoughtful personal essays inc. by @MLDWrites, and it’s handsome and easy to navigate. Most importantly, it delivers on its promise. <br /><br />It’s a model of how to tell the truth about racism and conflict in movements. In refusing to lie for their namesake, @FrancesWillard & @ArchivesWillard make her story more relevant. #Suffrage100 <br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">were there any brazen female wine-drinkers who thought respectable women should be able to drink in public (and vote)?</p>
— Dr. Mary Dockray-Miller (@MDockrayMiller) <a href="https://twitter.com/MDockrayMiller/status/1242423075783802881?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 24, 2020</a></blockquote>
<br /><br />@MDockrayMiller Ooh, good question! Apparently one of the reasons Ida B didn't embrace temperance as a cause is that she enjoyed a social drink - and Ida wd never do anything hypocritical. But I bet @<a href="https://twitter.com/LOsborne615" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">LOsborne615</a> would know more.
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23/03/2020
IdaB in Brooklyn
When Ida B Wells arrived in Brooklyn, it was still its own city. (The 5 boros consolidated in 1898.) How imposing the massive metropolis must have felt to Ida, forced to flee Memphis in 1892 after publishing “The Truth About Lynching.” <br /><br />Ida’s life-long crusade against lynching began to take shape while living on Gold Street. She eventually settled in Chicago, but Brooklyn was where she learned to be a public speaker - in part by asking Maritcha Remond Lyons, who had bested her in a debate, to coach her. <br /><br />Today Brooklyn thanked her for her service to the nation by naming Gold Street “Ida B Wells Place.” It was cold, but 100 people stayed to hear Ida’s biographer Paula Giddings, and her greatest contemporary inheritor, @<a href="https://twitter.com/nhannahjones" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">nhannahjones</a>. <br /><br />Ida’s great-grandson Benjamin Duster and 2 of her great-great-daughters were there too, plus @<a href="https://twitter.com/ljoywilliams" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ljoywilliams</a> and many more. Prof. Giddings was polite enough not to mention the rivalry between Brooklyn & Manhattan women that she describes in her book...but Manhattan should be feeling competitive! The (now demolished) hall where Ida gave her very 1st public speech was right by Bryant Park. Isn't it time for a plaque? #BlackSuffragists #Suffrage100
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07/03/2020
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, part II
I am particularly fond of Josephine St Pierre Ruffin because she was an avid defender of Ida B Wells. Josephine moved among society women both white and Black and wasn’t afraid to disagree with them, especially in defense of unpopular or uncomfortable ideas. Thread. <br /><br />Ida B. Wells was often the source of those unpopular ideas. Josephine was already a prominent publisher when she heard Ida speak in front of 400 New Yorkers. The 1892 speech launched Ida’s anti-lynching campaign and galvanized Af-Am women to become more explicitly political. A Memphis newspaper, furious that Ida was exposing lynchings, called her a “wench” and a “black harlot.” Nasty still, in 1892 those words were calculated to exploit stereotypes Black women faced constantly, and to undermine Ida’s credibility within the Black community. <br /><br />Josephine wasn’t having it. She defended Ida unconditionally, and made clear that the Woman’s Era Club of Boston believed in Ida Wells’ “purity of purpose and character.” She defended her again when Ida picked a fight with a very powerful woman. Ida pointed out that the Women’s Christian Temperance Union wasn’t doing much to fight lynching. (They weren’t - they believed the lie that lynchings punished Black men for raping white women.) In criticizing WCTU, she took on Frances Willard, its powerful leader. Wealthy British supporters of American reform were devoted to Willard, and insisted Ida was lying. Even Frederick Douglass defended the powerful Willard, but Josephine sided with Ida. <br /><br />“Doubtless Miss Willard is a good friend to colored people,” said Josephine’s paper, “...but we have failed to hear from her and the WCTU any flat-footed denunciation of lynching and lynchers.” <a href="http://womenwriters.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/advocacy/content.php?level=div&id=era2_04.15.02&document=era2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Read the whole editorial here:</a><br /><br />Josephine stood by Ida in internal battles among the clubwomen through the years, and against Booker T. Washington. I don’t think they were close friends. I like to imagine she was loyal because Ida stood for the brutal truth, and Josephine respected that. #BlackSuffragists
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27/02/2020
Founding of the NACW
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">In 1893, inspired by Ida B Wells' call to do something to fight lynching, Josephine St Pierre Ruffin founded the Woman's Era Club in Boston. </span></p>
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<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Two years later she invited dozens of other Black women's clubs that had sprung up around the country to gather for a 3-day meeting. </span></p>
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<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The result was a watershed: in July 1895, the National Conference of Colored Women united 36 clubs in 12 states. Mary Church Terrell simultaneously organized the National League of Colored Women in DC. By 1896 they had merged to create the National Association of Colored Women. </span></p>
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<p class="p1"><span class="s1">30+ years after emancipation, NACW was an idea whose time had come. It quickly grew to represent 50,000 women in more than 1,000 clubs. </span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1"></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">(For the record, IdaBWells thought it should have been "Afro-American" instead of "Colored.") </span></p>
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<p class="p1"><span class="s1">NACW was unique, Paula Giddings explains, for being independent: not a women's auxiliary of a Black men's group nor a minority chapter of a white women's group. </span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1"></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">@<a href="https://twitter.com/marthasjones_"><span class="s2">MarthaSJones_</span></a> describes the clubs as "spaces that encouraged black women's leadership, independent thought and activism." </span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1"></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">They were also crucibles for voter engagement. In Chicago, for example, women won the right to vote for school board in 1891. The Great Migration had begun & the Black population of Chicago was skyrocketing. "As black men in the South were being turned away from polling places, black women in the North were gearing up to vote." @marthasjones_ </span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1"></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">In women's clubs and church groups, black women were "rallying, marching, vetting candidates, electioneering, voting, and even running for local office."</span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1"></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Where Black women could vote in the 1890s, they voted Republican. (The slightly-less-racist party at the time.) </span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1"></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">As Prof. Jones said recently @<a href="https://twitter.com/bwln_nyu"><span class="s2">bwln_nyu</span></a>, "One group of women in America has voted as a block from the beginning - Black women." #BlackSuffragists #Suffrage100</span></p>
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26/2/2020
500 years of women's work
My first surprise of the exhibit #500yearsofwomenswork @<a href="https://twitter.com/GrolierClub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">grolierclub</a> today was that it was packed. About 100 people came to hear the #lisaungerbaskincollection described by Lisa herself. So many gems: - <br /><br />The pamphlet Ida B Wells wrote with Frederick Douglass & Ferdinand Barnett, sitting at a desk in the Haitian Pavilion at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1873. Ida wanted to explain what visitors to the fair were not seeing, so they wrote "The Reason Why The Colored American is not in the World's Columbian Exposition." It was thrilling to see an original. <br /><br />Wonderful suffrage items from the US and UK, including a gorgeous certificate of honor made by the Pankhursts for Rosa May Billinghurst, a radical disabled suffragette I can’t wait to learn more about. <br /><br />Emma Goldman is a particular interest of the collection, and some choice items are on display. Emma & Alex. Berkman wrote Deportation: Its Meaning and Menace while jailed at Ellis Island, awaiting deportation 100 years ago. <br /><br />If you’re in NYC before Feb 8, the exhibit is free and open most days. <a href="https://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/baskin/introduction" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The collection is gloriously presented online,</a> item by item:<br /><br />Enjoy! #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
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23/01/2020
Suffrage Book Club
If your New Year's resolution is to read more books, #CiteBlackWomen more, and/or meet new people... Join me in reading Paula Giddings' biography of Ida B. Wells and discussing it with companionable strangers. Details below. Time flexible. Happy 2020!
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">1st Meeting of the <a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DailySuffragist</a> Book Club!<br /><br />**Monday, January 20 - MLK Day - at Noon EST**<br /><br />Meet by Zoom to discuss Paula Giddings' biography of Ida B. Wells, "Ida: A Sword Among Lions."<br /><br />DM me if you're in.</p>
— Daily Suffragist (@DailySuffragist) <a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1206656351373541376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 16, 2019</a></blockquote>
Daily Suffragist
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31/12/2020
#CiteBlackWomen
A generation before the great #IdaBWells, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper spoke for Black women in a fierce debate that included Frederick Douglass, ElizCadyStanton & Susan B Anthony. #CiteBlackWomen #Kwanzaa
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">It’s the 2nd Day of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Kwanzaa?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Kwanzaa</a>! Today we honor Black women who represent <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Kujichagulia?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Kujichagulia</a>—Self Determination—like Ida B. Wells. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Wells’s anti-lynching campaign fiercely defended Black people and rights. Who do you honor? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CiteBlackWomen?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#CiteBlackWomen</a> <a href="https://t.co/5r8heM8AT9">pic.twitter.com/5r8heM8AT9</a></p>
— Cite Black Women. (@citeblackwomen) <a href="https://twitter.com/citeblackwomen/status/1210572953630466049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 27, 2019</a></blockquote>
@citeblackwomen 1866: “While there exists this brutal element in society which tramples upon the feeble and treads down the weak, I tell you that if there is any class of people who need to be lifted out of their airy nothings and selfishness, it is the white women of America.†ðŸ™@marthasjones_Â
Daily Suffragist
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27/12/2019
Ida's crusade begins
Thomas Moss’s murder changed #IdaBWells’ life. Moss was a close friend & fellow business leader, and his death demonstrated that Black self-defense in Memphis was futile. Ida👇with Betty Moss and her children Maurine & Thomas Moss, Jr., who was born after his father’s death. 🧵 <br /><br />Everything that happened next is so massive, so awe-inspiring that squeezing it into tweets is too paltry to do Ida B Wells justice. Who would join me to read and discuss Mia Bay’s "To Tell the Truth Freely" and/or Paula Giddings’ "Ida: A Sword Among Lions"? <br /><br />To whet your appetite, listen to Paula Giddings interviewed by @<a href="https://twitter.com/NPRMichel" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NPRMichel</a> Martin on the late great NPR show Tell Me More. DMs are open - ping me if you’re interested in getting together for a video book club the week between Xmas & New Years. <br /><br /><iframe width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>
Daily Suffragist
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27/11/2019
Memphis Streetcar boycott
<span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Within weeks of the murders, so much of Black Memphis had left town that the streetcar ridership collapsed. Men from the City Railway Co came to Ida B Wells' office, seeking to understand why Black riders had disappeared. Quotes from IBW's book Crusade for Justice, via Mia Bay.</span>
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Wells asked them “what they thought was the cause.” <br /><br />“They had heard that Negroes were afraid of electricity,” she recalled them saying. She pointed out that it had been 6 months since the switch to electric streetcars. “How long since you have observed the change [in ridership]?” <br /><br />“About six weeks,” they admitted. “Why, it was just six weeks ago that the lynching took place.” “The streetcar company had nothing to do with the lynchings,” replied the City Railway men. “It is owned by Northern capitalists.” <br /><br />As soon as they left Ida B Wells wrote a piece for the next edition of the Free Press with the news that the economic pressure was being felt. Through the paper and local churches, she encouraged Black Memphis to keep boycotting the streetcars - while folks prepared to leave town for good.
Daily Suffragist
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25/11/2020