"ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF LIBERTY"

“ETERNAL VIGILANCE IS THE PRICE OF LIBERTY”

            In her autobiography “Crusade for Justice,” so lovingly put together by her daughter Alfreda Duster, Ida Wells entitles her last chapter “The Price of Liberty.”  She begins that last chapter with the sentence “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” a quote later picked up by President Ronald Reagan, as he sought to expand the US military budget.  When she wrote it in 1928, Wells meant it as a warning to all about the continuing power of racism in the fabric of the American character. 

She had lived through a tumultuous time in American history – born a slave in 1862 and raised in the relative freedom of Reconstruction,  she became head of her household at age 16 when her parents both died of yellow fever in 1878. This was one year after federal troops were pulled out of the South in order for Rutherford B. Hayes to be elected President.

            She spent all of her adult life fighting against the powerful forces of racism and sexism in American life.  She saw human rights stripped and beaten and lynched away, and she saw slavery reinstated as neo-slavery and “Jim Crow.”  These rights had been purchased at the deaths of over 700,000 people in the Civil War, but they were allowed to be torn away, because the overt racism seen in slavery in the South was shared by many people classified as “white” in the North.  Slowly, slowly, slowly, a few gains had been made by 1928, thanks to the dedicated work of Wells and WEB Dubois and Mary Church Terrell and Mary Ovington and William Monroe Trotter and many others.  Yet, Wells knew that white supremacy was at the heart of American life, and she felt that we must always be diligent and watchful and active in regard to resisting white supremacy.

            Ida Wells’ birthday is July 16, and this weekend the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum in Holly Springs, Mississippi, will sponsor their annual celebration of the life and work of Wells, as well as exhorting us all to continue to be vigilant in seeking to preserve and to expand the idea that all people are created equal.  It is no small irony that the Museum is in the house where Wells was born a slave, in the house named after her master’s family, the Spires Boling House.  The Museum started in

 1996, and I went there as part of my sabbatical work on Ida Wells.  I won’t be able to attend this year’s celebration, but I do plan to go there at the end of September, after Caroline and I attend the dedication of a memorial to the Elaine Massacre of 1919, in which at least 237 African-Americans were killed in a slaughter to prevent black tenant farmers from forming a union to seek higher prices for their cotton.  The dedication will be held in my hometown of Helena, Arkansas, where 12 black men were sentenced to death after they fired back when whites attacked them in the massacre.  Wells and the NAACP and attorney Scipio Jones worked hard to overturn their sentences, which the Supreme Court finally did in 1923 (Moore v. Dempsey).   I hope to give the Museum a copy of the book that Catherine Meeks and I are doing on Ida Wells (“Passionate for Justice,” to be published September 17!)

            In these days of Trump, I don’t believe that any of us need to be reminded of the truth of Ida Wells’ words:  “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” both in regard to race and gender.  These 16 months until the presidential and Congressional elections will be crucial in determining the future of our country.  Because of the depth of these repressive forces, we can never feel that we have crossed the line and left behind the oppression that is in our heart of hearts as America, despite the civil rights movement and despite the election of Barack Obama as President.  In my original research on Wells 25 years ago, I remember discovering how deeply entrenched is white supremacy in our collective hearts.  As I worked with the publisher of my first book (“While We Run This Race”), I emphasized the parallels between the 1990’s and the 1890’s in terms of the resurgence of white supremacy.  They were skeptical, and my editor told me that they thought that the power of race was just about over – it was now all about class. To my dismay, they made me excise those comparisons, and I wish that they had been correct!   Events have proven otherwise.

            So, yes, we are in a difficult time, but in regard to white supremacy and patriarchy, that is always the case.  In this week to come, let us raise a glass to the work and witness of Ida Wells, but more importantly, let us raise our voices and our bodies to be witnesses like she was.  Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.