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Celebrating Black History Month
Essays by Professor J.S. Harrison
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Prospects looked bleak for the Union forces in the middle of 1862, after a year and a half of trying to end the southern rebellion, they had yet to win a major battle. The short war hoped for in the halcyon spring of 1861 was now but a distant memory and both sides realized that they were in for a long and tortuous conflict. Despite the urging of Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists, President Lincoln continued to publicly state that his sole aim was to preserve the Union and the idea of a democratic nation.
A baby girl opened her eyes and opened her lungs with a tremendous scream in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her slave parents must have smiled tenderly but sadly as they welcomed her into a turbulent world; but the times they were a-changin’ for in September of that year the Union forces claimed a victory at Antietam and President Lincoln seized upon this fragile and dubious triumph to issue an ultimatum to the southern states, end the rebellion or lose your slaves. The South chose to fight on and as a direct consequence that little girl and four million others were free in 1865. It was not the first and would not be the last time that circumstances would have an affect on Ida Bell Wells’ life.
At age 16 both of her parents, as well as a brother, died in a yellow fever epidemic that swept through the Mississippi Valley. Friends suggested that the children be parceled out but Ida Bell objected. Pulling her hair up into a bun in order to look older, she straightened up her five foot frame and applied for a teaching job so that she could support the family and most of all keep it together. It was fortuitous that her parents had supported and encouraged her education and that the Freedmen’s Bureau had helped the local people establish a school and teacher training college. Miss Ida B. Wells kept the family together and once her bothers and sisters had matured she moved to the large city of Memphis, Tennessee.
Memphis was a large and bustling city on the rise and it had a vibrant Black community into which she eased and was readily accepted. She had a passion for teaching and carried within her a parental borne zeal for social justice.
In May of 1884 while traveling to school on a local commuter line she was asked to leave her seat in the non-smoking “ladies” car simply because of her color. She refused to go to the Jim Crow car, resisted, including wrapping her arms around the chair and biting the first conductor who tried to evict her. A second conductor was called and together they literally threw her off the train, to the humiliating laughter and applause of the White customers. Of undaunted courage, she hired a lawyer and brought a lawsuit against the company for discrimination! Such audacity for a 25-year old ex-slave. She was rewarded with a victory and the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern was ordered to pay her the majestic sum of $500. The railroad company appealed to the state supreme court and sadly the verdict was reversed three years later. She did not receive money but she earned her stripes as a crusader.
The notoriety of this incident brought requests from local and church newspapers for the young woman to tell her story and this provided for her entr