Saturday, March 5, 2016

"Ida B. Wells"

"As Wells described the horrors of American lynchings, British liberals were incredulous that American white women such as Willard, who had been heralded in the English press as the "Uncrowned Queen of American Democracy," would turn a blind eye to such violence. Wells accused Willard of being silent on the issue of lynchings, and of making racial comments which would add fuel to the fire of mob violence.[32] To support her public allegation, Wells referred to an interview Willard had conducted during a tour of the South in which Willard had cast aspersions, blaming blacks for the defeat of temperance legislation...

The dispute between Wells and Willard in England intensified the campaign against Wells in the American press. Though the New York Times had reported on Wells' visit to Britain without much commentary, the paper ran an opinion piece in August 1894 insinuating that black men were prone to rape and declaring that Wells was a "slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress" who was looking for more "income" than "outcome."[33]...
Wells' British tour ultimately led to the formation of the British Anti-Lynching Committee, which included the Duke of Argyll, the Archbishop of Canterbury, members of Parliament, and the editors of The Manchester Guardian.[34]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells

There's a lot of other stuff that she did, often great, but this particularly stuck out to me. The 3 excuses for lynching that she outlines are chilling because you see them reflected today

She was the Google doodle on 7/16/15 and before then I didn't know she was black. I think of her as a suffragette bug she was more an anti-racism advocate

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