"IDA WELLS IS IN THE HOUSE!!!"

 “IDA WELLS IS IN THE HOUSE!”

This has been quite a time for Ida B. Wells.  Catherine Meeks and I wrote a book on her in 2019 “Passionate for Justice,” which the Georgia Center for the Book named as one of ten books that all Georgians should read.  Last year Ida Wells was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for her pioneering work in investigative journalism.  Michelle Duster, her great-granddaughter, published a fine book on her entitled “Ida B: The Queen.”  On June 30, a monument, sculpted by Richard Hunt, was dedicated to her in her adopted hometown of Chicago.  The powerful Nikole-Hannah Jones spoke at that occasion, along with the mayor of Chicago and Michelle and her brother Donald, who were the driving forces in getting the funds for the monument.

Wells’ 159th birthday is this Thursday, July 16, and on that occasion, a park and monument will be dedicated in her honor in Memphis, Tennessee, the town which ran her out in the early 1890's.  Wells had just completed and published a long and definitive study of the avalanche of lynchings that were happening all over USA, but mainly in the South.  In her study she noted that the cause of this racial terror was not the sexual predation of Black men on white women, as was usually stated by the White people who were doing the killings.  The real reason, Wells concluded, was the White desire to control Black people and to return them to slavery as much as possible.  The white response was to firebomb her newspaper offices in Memphis and to threaten to lynch her if she returned to Memphis.  She was an exile first in New York and then in Chicago.  She would not return South until 31 years later in 1921 to investigate the massacre of more than 230 Black people in my home county, Phillips County, Arkansas.

She came down to Arkansas in disguise in order to investigate the Phillips County killings that had occurred in 1919.  Black men had defended themselves and their families and their neighbors, killing some white marauders in their efforts.  Twelve Black men had been convicted of these killings and were given the death penalty.  Wells helped the NAACP pick up the case, and a superhero African-American lawyer named Scipio Jones took their case.  The twelve men were waiting on death row to be executed when Wells came to see them, posing as an aunt of one of the men.  She found them dispirited and forlorn, and she decided to speak prophetic words to them in her approach to comforting them in the midst of this huge injustice that had been visited upon them.

Here’s what she said to them:  “I have been listening to you for nearly two hours.  You have talked and sung and prayed about dying, forgiving your enemies, and of feeling sure that you are going to be received in the New Jerusalem because your God knows that you are innocent of the offense for which you expect to be electrocuted.  But why don’t you pray to live and ask to be freed?  The God you serve is the God of Paul and Silas who opened their prison gates, and if you have all the faith you say you have, you ought to believe that he {sic} will open your prison doors too.  If you do believe that, let all of your songs and prayers hereafter be songs of faith and hope that God will set you free; that the judges who have to pass on your cases will be given the wisdom and courage to decide in your behalf.  That’s all I’ve got to say.”

As usual, Wells did more than talk about such freedom.  She worked with Attorney Jones and the NAACP to publicize the cases and to make sure that their case was heard on the Supreme Court level.  Those efforts paid off in 1923 when SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in Moore v. Dempsey that the twelve Black men had not been given a fair trial.  Their convictions were overturned, and eventually all twelve were freed from prison.  Wells had been a lever for another mighty work, using her courage and skill and tenacity to help pull these men out of the jaws of the racist death penalty.

Wells did her work during horrible years in American history, when white Southerners were using all their powers of legislation and violence to move Black people back into neo-slavery.  She fought a powerful battle against the tidal wave of racism that swept across the country.  Her life is an example to all of us of how to do this and of the focus that is needed for such a battle.  Though we are not in the 1890’s when neo-slavery was established, we are in a time when the forces of white supremacy are re-gathering their strength.  It is up to us to respond to this rising force with a sense of equality and strength and vision, as Ida Wells did.

Few of us are Ida B. Wells, but as my colleague and friend Catherine Meeks always says about Wells:  “She was a human being just like the rest of us.  She was an ordinary person who accomplished extraordinary things.  She was able to do this because she  decided to try to be brave, and through that bravery and her tenacity, she was a powerful witness.”  As we think about her birthday this week, let us give thanks for her ordinariness.  Let us give thanks that she decided to be just a little braver one day, and in so doing, she became a light for the rest of us who were coming and who are coming.  As she noted so well, we are the ones we have been waiting for.