Alfreda H. Duster lecture, "Ida B. Wells: Her Crusade for Justice," at the University of Iowa, June 1975
Speaker 1: The following is a presentation from the Seventh Annual Institute of Afro American culture held at the university of Iowa, June 15th to the 27th, 1975. Ida B. Wells, her Crusade For Justice is the subject of this lecture by Alfreda H. Duster. Making the introduction is Dr. Darwin Turner, chairman of the department of Afro-American studies at the university of Iowa.
Dr Darwin Turne...: I don't know whether it is considered appropriate to introduce a young woman in this manner in the 1970s, by saying, this is a picture of Mrs. Alfreda Duster and her family. As that picture appeared in a Chicago newspaper when Mrs. Duster was recently honored as a pioneer member of the black community of Chicago. It would be possible to talk at great length about Mrs. Duster's family, that is her parents. About her present family and about the generations that are following. Since she's asked me to make this as brief as possible, that we simply emphasize that she received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from the university of Chicago in 1924, in 1973, she was honored by the university of Chicago alumni association for her public service.
Dr Darwin Turne...: She worked for a year in her father's law firm after graduation. After marriage, she continued while rearing a family, she continued to work with local educational groups, assisting in the tutoring and preparation of youngsters in the community, as well as, well preparing her own. I understand that all the five children of Mrs Duster graduated either as valedictorians or salutatorians. Now at a time when many of us are beginning to think of moving more slowly up and down steps. Mrs. Duster is a board member of the Catalyst for Youth, the Chicago [inaudible] program. She's an associate of Rust college, a member of the Association for the study of Afro American life and history. A treasurer of the Civic Club, which is named for her and her mother. A member of the Woodlawn United Methodist Church and federated clubs. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Mrs. Alfreda Duster.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Turner and co-workers, because I've been here now two days and I believe I'm a part of this summer session. I have learned much in these two days and I hope to stay off and on for the rest of the weekend and attend some of the sessions. I won't be on campus but I will be in the city and hope to be able to come back to some of the sessions. It's a real pleasure for me to be here and to associate with brilliant people that I have met. The professors and the doctors, and those who are on the process of becoming doctors. And to bring to you the story of Ida B. Wells and her activity and what it meant for a lone young black woman to decide to change the face of the world while she was living in Memphis, Tennessee. I've been asked since I've been here, what I thought motivated her to think that she could change the world.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: And I can only say that her a step by step activities which are recorded in her own hand can explain it better than I except to say that each step brought her a little closer to her emergence as a champion of her race. And I want you to go back with me to 1891, two, three. She was born just before the close of the civil war, July 16, 1862. So the first chapter of her book says born in slavery, for she was typically a slave for the first six months of her life, which was about six months before the signing of the emancipation and certainly before the amendments that made it legal.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: She grew up in a little town of Holly Springs, Mississippi, and her parents epitomize the two extremes of slavery. Her mother was sold into slavery, snatched from her mother's arms and sold into slavery when she was only seven years old. And although she made many attempts to trace her own family history, she was not able to do so. She bore the scars of the overseers and the cruel master's stripes on her back. She was the one who was mistreated and booted around from one owner to another.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: But her father was the son of his master and one of the slave women, but was acknowledged as the master son, but never whipped, never sold. Stayed on the plantation and was given a rudimentary education because he was supposed to return to the plantation and do the carpentry work. For as you all know who our students did, the basic work was done by slaves. And so he was able to amass a certain amount of education and skill while he was still on the plantation. So that when freedom came, he was in a position then to become one of the first trustees of the first school that was established by the Freedman's Bureau in Holly Springs. First known as Shaw university, and then changed to the name of Rust college.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: She learned, my mother that is, had a formal education, because both her parents were very much determined that she should have an education. So she attended Rust college when she was very little. Her earliest recollection, we're sitting on a cracker barrel in the local store, reading newspapers to the adults of that period. When she was only 16, before she had formally finished all her education. Both her parents died in that terrific epidemic of yellow fever that you would read about that occurred in 1878. In her autobiography she refers to this period as having been when she was 14 years of age, but in 1931, she was writing from memory and Dr. Franklin, who was a general editor insisted I do the research on it. The United States Census Bureau in her own biography, her own diary of 1887, places her birth at 1862, which would make her 16 years of age when this tragedy occurred.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: She was the oldest of eight children. And at that time of no ADC, no relief, no anything else, children were parceled out, or they grew up the best way they could. And so her sisters and brothers were supposed to have been, the girls placed one place, and the boys another. She decided to keep her family together. Her father was a skilled carpenter, he owned their home and she said that they would all stay there and she would take care of them. In order to do this she took the teacher's examination and she passed it. So as at those days, the signs of young womanhood, where to put her hair up and let her skirt down and signify that she was then a young woman and they were to go into the field as a teacher.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: She taught first in the rural area of Mississippi, near Holly Springs. And she used to tell how she would get on a big old white mule and lumber out that six miles into the country and teach all week and come back loaded with supplies that the farmers would give her. Butter and eggs and other things for her little family, because her grandmother ... both her parents died in 1878. But her father's mother who married after slavery came in to look after the children during the week. And so she could go off and earn a living. After this period of teaching in the rural areas, an aunt told her in Memphis, Tennessee, that if she would come there with the two little girls that she would look after the girls. After two or three years, the boys were then old enough to be apprenticed. And both of them, both Jim and George were carpenters all their lives and worked at their trade in Chicago, Memphis.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: Both of them went to California, but they were skilled carpenters all their lives. The two girls were at that time, they were about five and two at the time her parents died. So after about two, three years of teaching, they were pretty good sized girls. And so she took her assistant with her and went to Memphis. And her first experience in teaching was in the County, in Shelby County. And I mention this because it was there that she encountered the discrimination, was almost thrown off the train in Chesapeake Ohio train. And sued the railroad back in 1884. Sued them because they put her off the train, even though she had a first class ticket and she insisted, and she get first class accommodation.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: Now this was before ... the law had been passed of equal, separate but equal, but it hadn't been rigidly enforced. And so she sued the railroad because the conductor wanted to put her off the train when she didn't go into the separate but equal smoking car. She was awarded damages. The local court found in her favor and she was awarded damages that were $500. And the railroad appealed the case. In her writing, she did not specify the date, but in her writing, she said that the white newspaper of Memphis had the headline called Darky Damsel gets Damages. Dr. Franklin under his direction, he told me to go to Memphis and find that headline, but I didn't have anything to go on except by deduction I thought it was 1884.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: So I started with a Memphis commercial January 1st, 1884, and read that newspaper on microfilm. And I finally found it December 25th, 1884. So I had a whole year of the retailing of the activities in Memphis during that year. While the headline was a little bit different. It was basically as she described it, the subtitle was what it cost to put a colored teacher in a smoking car. The newspaper appealed the decision. And in spite of all the evidence to the contrary found that the smoking car was equal, separate but equal. And the railroad had a right to put passengers where they felt they were best suited. And so they reversed the decision and she lost all her damages and all the court costs and a few other things.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: I think that I would like to compare then, since you're studying this period in black history, I would like to suggest that you read a little known book of the same time called A colored woman in a white world by Mary Church Terrell. Mary Church Terrell was a daughter of Bob Church. And in mother-daughter biography if you find her, she went to California because her aunt wanted to come there and live in a little town called Visalia. And she was so disenchanted, after she'd been there a while she wanted to return to Memphis, which were by that time she considered her home. So she wrote to Bob Church, although she didn't know him personally and told him her situation, wanting to know if he would advance her the money to come back to Memphis and he can investigate her record as a teacher. And he did send her the money.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: She was able to go back to Memphis and Mary Church Terrell was his daughter. And she was again, an illustration of the complex and the various extremes of the living even in the 1800s. Because Mary Church Terrell was the daughter of a man who was wealthy, and he sent her to Oberlin college. She went to private school earlier and then was able to travel throughout Europe for quite a time. Became quite proficient in the languages of German, French, as well as English. And later on, when she was selected to go to the world conference that was held in Munich, Germany, she was able to deliver her paper in German.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: Her story is very significant and it's very interesting and is not as well known. I don't know when you'd be able to find it in the bookstores, but the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, which has headquarters in Washington, DC has copies. And you can purchase them from that organization. I believe I don't take this for gospel but I believe it's 1601 R Street in Washington, DC. I mentioned this because in Memphis at this time, the conditions of the races had been favorable. They had a man in the legislature. They had been on the school board and generally people were supposed to be very, very well off. And then there was a terrible lynching in the city of Memphis. And three of her friends were lynched.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: Now this was a very shocking thing to Ida B. Wells. And she was awakened to the fact that the lynching of these three men present a completely different picture than one which was presented to the world. In the lynching era, the story had been broadcast that the South had to lynch black men because they were wild after white women. And no white women were safe from the bestial men who roamed the streets and were liable to ravage them at any time. And so this is when Ida B. Wells decided that someone needs to speak out.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: She said not only was it a terrible thing for a black man sometimes to willingly consort with white women. But that they should be branded as a race, a rapist and a beast because of this, because that was a thing that she thought was terrible. Because in many instances, during the time she decided to investigate lynching, she came across the fact that many of these unions were very voluntary until they were discovered. And so as the editor of the free speech, she began to write articles about this lynching business. And she made her own investigations. Whenever she would hear there was a lynching, she could go because at that time, newspaper editors could ride free. They had a pass and she could ride free. And she wrote, made her own investigation and came back and reported the results.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: And finally, she wrote in her newspaper that if the white people were not careful, they would overreach themselves and a conclusion would be drawn that was very damaging to their women. Now the white men of Memphis didn't like that at all. So they formed a committee to go after this terrible rich, bring him to the public square, have him branded. They were talking about him because they didn't think it was a woman. Have him branded and castrated and hung up in the public square. But it just happened that this was a weekly newspaper. And as she put the paper, she sat to bed Saturday, then she took off for a convention in Philadelphia. So she wasn't present when the mob went after her because you see if they had found her, then I wouldn't be here today. They didn't find her. She was gone to Philadelphia.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: So from Philadelphia, she went on to New York to confer with T. Thomas Fortune, the editor of the New York Age. Let me give you just a tiny bit of journalism before I get to New York Age. And that is when she was teaching school, she became very much enthralled and enthused about the condition she found in Memphis. She'd come from Holly Springs, which is a tiny little town. She hadn't seen any great churches, the bishops, and the hierarchy of the church. She was very much impressed and she joined immediately with one of the churches and they had a little Lyceum or Sunday evening club where different members could participate and either have programs and display their own literary ability. And while she was there, the man was the editor of a little paper called ... I forget the name.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: Whatever this little paper was called, the gentleman left and she then became the editor. And she found that she liked to write. And she wrote then, not with any formal degree from a journalist university, but she wrote. She grew, as she wrote, because she wrote for this old paper. And then one of the bishops who came there, heard her and saw some of the things she wrote in this little, local paper, asked her to contribute to the American Baptist. And then she began to write for papers all over the country. By the time 1895 got along and there was a book published. The list of her contributions was very long from Kansas city to California, to Indianapolis, to St. Louis, to practically all of the black papers that were in existence at that time. And since she liked to write so much, she had an opportunity to buy a one-third interest in the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: And there were two men involved, Mr. Fleming and Reverend Nightingale. Reverend Nightingale was a pastor in one of the largest churches. They usually brought all the papers there and were distributed from his church. But it seems that after he got the organ to disseminate news, he began to use that as an organ to punish his enemies and to get his side of the story across. And so they finally withdrew, bought out Reverend Nightingale's interest and continued on as a civic newspaper. And it's listed in a public library in Memphis, the dates and the times when it was alive. So mother started to write, while she was teaching at a public school, she started to write and she saw many things in the public school that she didn't appreciate. And so she began to write about the conditions in the colored schools. Well then is now, you don't work for the board of education and criticize the board of education.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: So at the end of the term, they didn't have tenure. Every year they got a separate contract. At the end of that year, when she went back to get her contract again, they simply pulled out a section of the newspaper and showed her why she was not going to be elected for another term. Then she decided she'd better go into journalism full time, which she did. And those days you can see that in 1889, 1890, 91, there were very few women editors, very few women who traveled for the newspaper. And so she was a novelty and her father had been a Mason. And she was very close to Isaiah Montgomery, and he took her, set her down the Mississippi Delta. And with that kind of backing, she soon established newspaper that had a real reputation. She wrote as under an assumed ... not an assumed, a pen name. Pen name of Iola.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: And her writings were concerned with all facets of life, with men and in politics. And she was very early and advocate of the ballot. Long for women are supposed to be talking about voting. She was there talking about the ballot and one of her articles, and one of the newspapers is called How enfranchisement stops lynching. So then when she began to make this investigation of lynching and came back and wrote these articles I'm talking about, she encountered the antagonism of the people of Memphis, and this committee that was formed the Saturday after this infamous editorial appeared, started down on Beale street. Office on Beale street. And only a friend of me, who, call to here to send for him because he didn't have any telephones. Went ahead and warned Mr. Fleming and he was able to gather up some of the papers and leave before the committee arrived to tear up the place, set fire to the building, destroy the type and post a warning that anyone who tried to publish that paper again, would be put to death.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: Not wishing to be put to death and because the men of the city said, if she returned, it would only mean bloodshed because they would try to protect her. So she was influenced not to try to go back to Memphis. So she went on to New York city and became an associated with T. Thomas Fortune and wrote for his New York Age for a while. Now he'd already carried many of her articles. And so she was known to the black reading public. And then she started to talk about lynching as it occurred in the South. What she found was not well known in the North, even among the black people or the North. And she states that Frederick Douglass, he even talked to her and told her that he was not aware of the economic basis that formed the real reason for lynching. The story that they told of course was one of morals and to arouse sympathy the poor benighted, innocent, helpless white women.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: Of course, my mother felt that she should tell the world, then all the history of the civil war from the time of its inception to the time it closed, there was not one instance where the slaves violated confidence. They stayed on the plantations and took care of the holding of the very men who were fighting to hold him in slavery. And there's not one instance recorded when there was a violation of that trust when any slave mistreated, maltreated or ravished the mistress on the plantation. If that is so she said, how can you account for the fact that overnight this condition exists? In fact, it doesn't exist. And she began to show, this was an economic situation that the three men who were lynched in Memphis were storekeepers. They were in competition with a white grocer. And out of that condition grew the final disposition of their grocery. They were lynched, killed and so the opposition was removed. And that the basic thing was economic and not a moral issue.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: She wasn't able to get through in the North. Public opinion, the wall of silence was all there. That many of you have encountered in your research of various activities. But in Paris, Tennessee, there was a particularly vicious and terrible lynching. A man was accused and local newspapers ran stories. The news, the railroads ran expeditions. There was a holiday declared. All of them went out to the scene of the lynching. They built a big bonfire. They tortured this man for hours with hot iron, seared his flesh, and finally threw him on the pile and he was burned alive. So that the story did carry on not only through this country, but in England. And there were two women in England, Catherine Impey and Margaret Mayo, who had a Society for the Brotherhood of Man. And they were concerned.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: And Catherine Impey had been in this country, she was a quaker and they had talked, her mother was in the North. And so they wrote to her and asked her to come over and tell the people in England, why in the land of the free and the home of the brave, it was necessary to burn people alive. So this was her opening, for night and went to England, the story of her English travels is reflected in the reproduction of her writings because she went in 1893 first and stayed over there for about six months and returned home. The society carried on for a while, but they found that they weren't as successful with her successes. So they asked her to return and she went back in 1894. But before she went back, she contacted the editors of the Chicago Inter-Ocean and became their calmness. And for a space of the six months, she was gone, they carried a column called Ida B. Wells Abroad.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: And in that column, they carried all of the things that she wrote about the things she found in England, Manchester, Liverpool, and the various other parts of England. There was also an anti-lynching society formed over there with her nephew, the Queen Victoria headed, and that group got together every morning, went over all the papers, cut off the clippings, sent them back to the United States of America. They mailed it to every governor of every Southern state and to the heads of the religious organizations. And the questions began to come from the Baptist of England, to the Baptist of America. What are you doing about lynching, from the Methodist of England, to the Methodist of America. From the Presbyterians of England to the Presbyterians of this country. From the Lutherans of England to the Lutherans of this country, all asking the same question. And the reverberations of this country were very ... many of them were very detrimental.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: I might have mentioned the fact that they had one gentleman in Memphis who said that she was just an adventurous, no paying attention to her because we was all getting along fine down here. And if she doesn't like it, all she has to do is leave. That she was not telling the true picture, these and many other repercussions when they formed a society in England, they were to send people over here and really make their own investigation. And they were warned, if they ever came over to this country, they'd get the same fate as the other people that had been lynched.
Mrs Alfreda Dus...: I don't think they came, but that's another story. And I'm going to leave that to some of the researchers, because both Dr. Fred Crawford of Virginia, Virginia State, and now she will be soon Dr. Mary Tim Hutton of Indiana university, and many others have done a lot of research on this, and it will be available too very shortly. So that you will be able to see then the effects, not all of them pleasant, many of then unpleasant, of the reverberations in this country to my mother's tour of England. One of them is that there was an editor in Missouri who wrote the most callous letter to the people in England. An open letter, which was so bad that the press of England would not touch it. But they did mention the fact that this letter had been received. And the things were as bad as they said it would. That if Ms. Wells was all that terrible, then it wasn't what they had found. All this of course is recorded. So that ...