'YOU CAN'T SPELL FORMIDABLE WITHOUT IDA B"

“YOU CAN’T SPELL FORMIDABLE WITHOUT “IDA B”

            The phrase in the title of this blog is a line from a banner in the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument in DC that Caroline and visited in December.  In this wonderful old house dedicated to the recognition of the equality of and equity for women, there was a banner about Ida B. Wells.  The short history of Ida B. Wells began with that line:  you can’t spell “formidable” without ida b.   And they are correct – Ida B. Wells was a powerful foremother in the struggles for equality for people of African descent and for women.  I always begin any thoughts about Black History Month with her.  She was formidable, but she did not begin that way.

            She was born into slavery in July, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi.  She grew up in the era of Reconstruction, when she began to hear that the idea of equality applied to her as an African-American and to her as a woman.  She grew up with the idea that she was somebody, and she learned it through her family and her church and African-American community.  The bold experiment of Reconstruction was always under attack, and it did not last long, but it took root in her heart, in her vision of herself, and in her idea of what American life should be.  She fought for this vision all of her life.

             She lost both her parents to the yellow fever epidemic in 1878.  She refused to allow her siblings to be farmed out to others, so she managed the raising of the family.   At age 16, she had to grow up and take on her family and the world.  She would be in this stance for the rest of her life, barely 5 feet tall, seen as inferior as a woman, and struggling to survive financially for the first 30 years of her life.  Yet she had this fierceness about her, a drive and an expectation of being treated as a real person and a citizen.  She would need it, because the rest of her life would be a “battle for her life,” as Sweet Honey in the Rock once put it in a song.  And, she would lose most of the battles.

            There are many examples of this fierce dedication to equity and justice.  Here’s the story of one of them.  In 1875 in its last significant law for civil rights until 1957, the U. S. Congress passed an act that forbade segregation on public accommodations.  It came two years before the Tilden-Hayes compromise which gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency in exchange for all federal troops being pulled out of the South to officially end Reconstruction.  In 1883, the US Supreme Court ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, and the floodgates of segregation and re-enslavement were open fully.  In the spring of 1884, Ida Wells followed her usual pattern of purchasing a seat in the ladies car on the train on a trip out of Memphis.  After the train had pulled out, the conductor came to collect the tickets and then informed her that she would have to move to the car reserved for black people.  71 years before Rosa Parks, she refused to give up her seat, and when he grabbed her and tried to pull her up from her seat, she bit his hand and braced herself not to move – no nonviolent resistance for her.  He went to get male reinforcements, and it took three men to throw her off the train.

            Undeterred, she took the railroad to court under Tennessee law, and the judge who heard the case was a former Union soldier.  He ruled in her favor and awarded her $500 in damages.  She was thrilled with the victory, but it was short-lived.  The railroad appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, and in 1887, they overturned the verdict.  Ida Wells was crestfallen and wrote in her diary on April 11:

“I had hoped for such great things from my suit for my people generally.  I have firmly believed all along that the law was on our side and would, when we appealed to it, give us justice.  I feel shorn of that belief and utterly discouraged, and just now if it were possible would gather my race in my arms and fly far away with them.”

            Fortunately for her and for us, she would re-gather her courage and her vision, and over the next 44 years would be a fierce and dedicated leader for justice and equity.  She brings many values to us in our time, especially in a discouraging time when the forces of white male domination have regained their strength.  2018 is obviously a huge year for all of us, and as we think about our future and our actions, let us remember Ida B. Wells and seek to live in her energy and vision.