"ALWAYS IDA B. WELLS"

 “ALWAYS IDA B. WELLS”

To close out Black History Month, I want to revisit one of my favorite people in American history – the fantastic Ida B. Wells.  I first met her in a book “Black Foremothers” by Dorothy Sterling, when I read it in 1985 to get ready to preach on Black History Month at Oakhurst.  I was stunned to read about her – several things struck me.  First, I thought that I knew a fair amount about Black History, but I had never heard of her, despite all her witnessing and accomplishments for justice and equity.  But, she was little known in American history. Thanks to her daughter, Alfreda Duster, and to the rest of her family, especially her great-granddaughter Michelle Duster, Ida B. is much better known now.  Her daughter Alfreda Duster collected Ida B.’s journals and writings and molded them into a manuscript called “Crusade for Justice,” and began to seek a publisher.  It would be 1970 before she convinced John Hope Franklin to include “Crusade for Justice” in a series published by the University of Chicago.

Second, I was also stunned to learn that Ida B. Wells was born in the same county in Mississippi as all my mother’s forebears – Marshall County in northwest Mississippi.  Mother was born in Byhalia in 1919, and Ida B. was born into slavery in 1862 in Holly Springs.  Wells and my mother were the same type of women – short, fierce, and strong.  Whereas my mother never became an official social activist like Ida B. did, she made her statements on the issues of the day.  (For more on that journey, see my book “She Made a Way: Mother and Me in a Deep South World,” published in 2024).  These geographical and spiritual connections to Ida B. Wells motivated me to research Wells and dedicate myself to helping to make her more widely known.  Indeed, Dr. Catherine Meeks and I wrote a book on Wells and her influence in today’s world called “Passionate For Justice: Ida B. Wells as Prophet For Our Time,” published in 2019.  

In studying Wells and her life and witness, I discovered one more strong connection between her and my geography.  In 2016, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) published a study of lynchings in America, especially in the South.  Right after the study came out, I got an e-mail from my long-time Helena friend David Billings (whose own memoir “Deep Denial” is powerful on these issues also).  In the e-mail, David indicated that Helena and Phillips County topped the list for localities that had killed the most Black people in lynchings.  The EJI study indicated that at least 230 Black people had been killed in a rampage of white violence in a three day massacre in early fall, 1919 in Elaine and Helena.  I had heard about the “Elaine Race Riot” as I grew up in Philips County, but I had accepted the narrative that Black folk had started it, and that the white violence in response had killed only a few Black men.  It was done to keep Black people in their place.

The reality is much different, as several studies have shown.  The “Elaine Massacre,” - as it came to be known - began when white sheriff’s deputies tried to stop a meeting of Black tenant farmers, who were seeking to organize to protect their cotton prices.  Everyone was armed, and though historians dispute over who fired first, my own sense is that the deputies fired first.  The wounding and killing of people on both sides ignited a white firestorm of violence.  For three days, armed white mobs roamed throughout Phillips County, killing whatever Black people they could find.  The US Army was called in to quell the massacre, but they ended up killing more Black people.  

    When the racist bloodlust calmed down, at least 237 Black people had been murdered, one of the worst mass killings in American history – in my home county. Investigations began, and to no one’s surprise, the Black people were blamed for the white violence.  Over 120 Black people were charged and convicted in the investigation, and twelve of them were sentenced to death.  Two modern books stand out as sources on this – “Blood in Their Eyes” by Grif Stockley and “On the Laps of Gods” by Robert Whitaker.”  I also discovered an article in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly "The Underlying Causes of the Elaine Riot of 1919," by Dr. J. W. Butts and Dorothy James, published in the Spring issue, 1961.  It was written by the parent of a high school classmate of mine.  It was an effort to “whitewash” the violence of the Elaine Massacre, and it also sought to discredit a study done by Ida B. Wells on the Massacre.

    Because of the horrific nature of the massacre, Wells decided to come back South from her exile (returning after almost 30 years of exile after her newspaper offices had been burned in Memphis in 1893).  She interviewed victims of the Massacre and published a foundational study entitled “The Arkansas Race Riot.”  Yet, she also did much more, and next week we’ll look at her study and her witness.  Her courage and her investigative powers provide us with a commodity that seems to be in such short supply these days:  hope.  As the Reverend Jesse Jackson put it so well: “Keep Hope Alive!”

"THE MAN WHO STOPPED NEO-SLAVERY"

 “THE MAN WHO STOPPED NEO-SLAVERY”

There were so many people involved in the fight to end Jim Crow, or neo-slavery, as I prefer to call it.  The phase of neo-slavery that built up and menaced us all from 1866 finally ended 100 years later in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Act.  We are now in a time when we are wrestling with the “new Jim Crow,” and as we seek to find our way in this Black History Month, I want to lift up one giant who has largely been forgotten, but whose life and witness shows us a path for our time.   Those who knew him and who remember him often call him “the man who killed Jim Crow.”

His name was Charles Hamilton Houston, and he was born in Washington, DC, in September, 1895, seven months after the death of Frederick Douglass, in the same year that Ida Wells got married, in the same month that Booker T. Washington gave his “surrender” speech in Atlanta, and eight months before the heinous SCOTUS decision “Plessy v. Ferguson” which gave legal status to neo-slavery.  Quite a run of time!  His father was a lawyer in DC, and his grandfather had escaped from slavery in Kentucky and had become a conductor on the Underground Railroad.  He was an outstanding student and went to Amherst and graduated summa cum laude in 1915.

He joined his father’s law firm, but when World War I came along, Houston joined the army to fight for democracy, or so he thought.  His experience of racism and segregation in the US army deepened his commitment to ending neo-slavery.  This is what he wrote about it: “The hate and scorn showered on us Negro officers by our fellow Americans convinced me that there was no sense in me dying for a world controlled by white people.  I made up my mind that if I got through this war, I would study law and use my life fighting for people who could not strike back.”  

He did make it through the war and kept his vow.  He entered Harvard Law School in 1920 and became the first Black student elected to the Harvard Law Review.  After graduation, he joined his father’s law firm in DC and taught part-time at Howard University Law School.  In 1929, the new president of Howard, Mordecai Johnson, recruited him to become dean of the Law School, with the intent of changing life in America.  Hamilton transformed the Law School from a part-time, non-accredited institution to a powerful, accredited law school which became the centerpiece of civil rights litigation, annually producing a strong group of lawyers rigorously trained to fight for equal justice under the law.  He had three main steps to end neo-slavery:  to develop that cadre of well-trained and dedicated Black lawyers, to build a broad base of support in Black communities for this work, and to litigate against neo-slavery and segregation in courts.  

He had many powerful students, but his most famous was Thurgood Marshall.  He trained Marshall to become the giant that he became.  Marshall had this to say about Hamilton: “He was hard crust…He used to tell us that doctors could bury their mistakes, but lawyers couldn’t.  And he’d drive home that we would be competing not only with white lawyers but really well-trained white lawyers, so there just wasn’t any point in crying in our beers about being Negroes.”  Hamilton didn’t just teach it – he lived it.  He later joined the NAACP as special counsel and recruited Marshall to be his top assistant.  They traveled the South together to get a first-hand look at the conditions that they would be litigating, with their lives in danger in every town. 

He had heart disease, and all the stress and work began to weaken his heart. His doctors told him to cut back or just go back to teaching, but he was dedicated to the cause.  He and Marshall joined forces to win important federal cases in Maryland, Missouri, and Oklahoma.  His heart continued to fail, and he had to step down from the NAACP work, with Marshall taking his place.  He died in 1950, four years before one of the powerful fruits of his labor would be litigated before the Supreme Court:  Brown v. Board of Education.  Though he was not with them, it was Charles Houston’s lawyers and Charles Houston’s strategy that brought them to victory in the Brown case.  It was one of the towering labors that led to the end of neo-slavery in 1965.  

At Houston’s funeral in 1950, William Hastie, the first Black man ever appointed as a federal appellate judge, had these words to say about Houston: “He guided us through the legal wilderness of second-class citizenship.  He was truly the Moses of that journey.  He lived to see us close to the promised land of full equality under the law, closer that even he had dared hope when he set out on that journey, and so much closer than would have been possible without his genius and his leadership.”

In this Black History Month, remember this pioneer – if you’ve never heard of him, look up more about him.  If you know about him, celebrate his work.  And, in a time of the new neo-slavery, the new Jim Crow, let us find our place in that great cloud of witnesses, working with inspiration from people like Charles Hamilton Houston and Ida B. Wells, working towards a time when the idea that all people are created equal will bear fruit for all of us.  Unfortunately, as we are now seeing in the Trumpster, Hamilton did not kill neo-slavery, but he put a mighty stop to it for 70 years.  Now, it’s our turn to pick up that mantle, as Elisha picked it up from the great prophet Elijah.

"HOW DO WE KNOW WHERE WE ARE GOING?"

 “HOW DO WE KNOW WHERE WE ARE GOING?”

In the despicable post where the Trumpster emphasized the “apeness” of Black people, he likely had no idea that it was a Black person who gave all of us our sense of direction.  As he jet-sets between Mar-a-Lago and DC, he did not know that a Black woman made it possible.  Dr. Gladys West died on January 17 in Fredericksburg, VA, at the age of 95.  She was one of the central persons who made the current GPS system possible.  Every time one of us goes on our cellphones or car phones to get directions, we use a system that Dr. West developed.  Because I am classified as “white,” and because we who are so classified do not give credit or acknowledge the work of those classified as “Black,” I had never heard of Dr. West until her death last month.  The New York Times had a ¾ page spread on her for her obituary, and her accomplishments are stunning.

Gladys Mae Brown was born in Sutherland, Virginia in 1930 on a farm owned by her parents – the fact of Black ownership of land was unusual enough.  She walked three miles a day to and from a segregated school, and in the evenings and weekends, she helped to grow and harvest tobacco on her parents’ farm.  In school, she excelled in mathematics, especially in geometry.  In her autobiography “It Began with a Dream,” Dr. West wrote about those days: “I was starting to realize early that this newly found love for geometry was something that could help me find that road that I had dreamed about, the road that would take me far away from that farm.”

She was valedictorian of her high school class, meaning that she automatically got a full scholarship to Virginia State College (now University), and she attended there and received a bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mathematics.  She was teaching high school in Martinsville, VA, when she applied for a job at the Navy’s weapons facility in Dahlgren, VA.  After reviewing her record and her references, they asked her to come for an interview, but she declined because she thought that they would reject her when they saw that she was Black.  A few weeks later, however, she received a letter saying that she had been hired anyway – her record was too stunning to overlook.

She was one of four Black employees at the site, and because of her mathematical abilities, she advanced quickly.  Her first job was to verify the accuracy of bombing coordinates, using a hand calculator (if you’re thinking “Hidden Figures,” yes, she was in that kind of category).  In the early 1960’s, she was part of a team that programmed a computer to track the movement of Pluto in relation to Neptune.  She then made her big step, using a new, powerful IBM computer to calculate the precise shape of Earth, accounting for many variables like gravity, tidal forces, and the curvature of the oceans.  This work led directly to the development of the current GPS system.  

She retired in 1998 but went back to college at Virginia Tech to get her doctorate degree in public administration.  She did not promote herself – indeed, few people knew her story, and it surfaced almost by accident.  In 2018 she attended an event for her college sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha and put on her bio form that she had helped to develop the GPS system.  Her friend from college, Gwen James, was astonished and offered to help her get her story told.  When Ms. James called Dr. West’s daughter to get more details on the story, the daughter replied: “What story?” But, now the story came out – she was inducted into the Air Force Hall of Fame, and one of her presenters put it this way:   "She rose through the ranks, worked on the satellite geodesy, and contributed to the accuracy of GPS and the measurement of satellite data. As Gladys West started her career in 1956, she likely had no idea that her work would impact the world for decades to come."

So, here she is – a powerful Hidden Figure, obscured by white male pride and her own humility.  Dr. Gladys West has shown us where to go and how to get there.  And, oh yes, to the Trumpster, put that in your own simian pipe and smoke it.

"IS THIS OUR KRISTALLNACHT MOMENT?"

 “IS THIS OUR KRISTALLNACHT MOMENT?

I hate to intrude on Black History Month with stuff about the Trumpster moves, but the events of the past week make me wonder if this is our Kristallnacht moment.  I do not want to minimize the deep suffering of Jewish people in Germany during the Kristallnacht by comparing it to our time, but it seems to me that we may have crossed a line this past week with Trump’s seeking to move into the kind of intimidation and fear that Hitler and his goons promoted with the thuggery of Kristallnacht.

    First, a short synopsis of Kristallnacht – if you are unfamiliar with it, please look it up on your own.  On the night of November 9–10, 1938, Nazi German leaders unleashed a nationwide anti-Jewish riot. The violence was supposed to look like an unplanned outburst of popular anger against Jews. In reality, this was state sponsored vandalism, arson, and terror. This event came to be called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass).  Part of the terror of those days was the beginning of the deportation of Jewish men.  Sounding familiar yet?  Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the solidification of the Nazi’s persecution of its enemies and any who dissented.

        I don’t know if this is our American Kristallnacht or not, but it sure feels like it after the events of last week, from the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, to official lying about those killings, to the seizing of the voting records of the 2020 election from Fulton County here in Georgia, to the arrests of Black journalists, to the nomination of a Trumpster to chair the Federal Reserve, to the terror of the ICE thugs – Trump seems to be making his move to establish himself as the Supreme Leader who cannot and will not be denied.  Let me hasten to add here that Black and Brown and Native peoples in America have already experienced Kristallnacht many times over – the events of last week are designed to terrorize white people now.  

        It is as if Trump is trying to seize the moment for dictatorship and make it his.  Killing protestors, invalidating elections, arresting journalists, deporting “aliens”- all these point to what Trump hopes that we will take as truth:  he is in control and will not be denied.  Resisters are rising up in the streets, and even some Republican politicians are trying to draw a line.  We give thanks that the people of Minnesota are showing us the way in their resistance to the Trump regime.  Perhaps the Supreme Court will deny Trump’s attempt at this coup, but so far they have given no indication of such backbone.  It is a scary moment for us all, as Trump moves to deny or invalidate the storm that is coming in the 2026 elections.  

        Only time will tell if Trump’s Kristallnacht will prove to be a turning point which consolidates his power, or if this will be a Gettysburg moment, when Trump’s power begins to ebb.    I would love to hope that Trump’s Kristallnacht will instead prove to be a turning point when his power began to wane, but so far I don’t see many signs of that.  There are hopeful signs, sort of like eagle or crow calls in the distance – resisters everywhere, Democrats finding both vision and backbone, growing discontent with Trump and his thuggish methods across the land.  One thing that gives me pause is that no Republican state leader in Georgia has yet spoken up against Trump’s seizure of the Fulton County ballots.  Democrats are speaking out strongly, but the Republicans have been strangely quiet.  In 2020, they stood up to Trump, but now in 2026, they are acquiescing.  

    So, whatever you think about Trump, please recognize that these next few weeks and months will prove crucial to our democracy – Kristallnacht or Gettysburg?  Which way it goes will largely be up to us.  Trump is making a blatant attempt to steal democracy from us – what will be our response?