The WCTU and the Lynching Controversy
Group 1 Homework Packet
by Jennifer Erbach

Introduction | Reading #1 | Reading #2 | Guided Reading Questions Introduction

Ida B. Wells was an African American journalist and part-owner of the newspaper Free Speech. In 1892, after writing editorials condemning lynching, she was forced to flee the South by a mob who threatened her life. Wells traveled around Great Britain and the northern U.S. lecturing on the horrors of lynching and trying to rouse public sympathy against it. She published A Red Record in 1895, a compilation of lynching statistics.

Frances Willard was a northern school teacher who became actively involved with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, an organization which worked to promote temperance, purity, moral reform, and encouraged education and women's suffrage. In 1879, she was elected president of the National WCTU and in 1891 became the president of the World WCTU. Willard traveled extensively, delivered lectures, and published pamphlets pertaining to issues of social and moral reform.

In the early 1890s conflict arose between Ida B. Wells and the WCTU, particularly with Frances Willard. Wells accused the WCTU of ignoring the atrocities being committed against blacks by lynch mobs. Wells was also outraged by some of the statements made by Willard concerning racial tensions in the south, statements which appeared to excuse, if not condone, lynching. Willard in turn, accused Wells of being "overzealous" in her attacks, and of painting a distorted picture of U.S. racial tensions during her lectures in Great Britain. The conflict between the two women would last until Willard's death in 1898.

Directions:

Read through the documents and answer the guided reading questions included in this packet. Write down any questions that you have, and come to class prepared to discuss the readings.

Reading #1: The Race Problem: Miss Willard on the Political Puzzle of the South

The following is an excerpt from an interview with Frances Willard that was published in the New York paper The Voice on October 28, 1890.

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"Now as to the 'race problem' in its minified, current meaning. I am a true lover of the Southern people. Have spoken and worked in perhaps 200 of their towns and cities, have been taken into their love and confidence at scores of hospitable firesides. Have heard them pour out their hearts in the splendid frankness of their impetuous natures; and I have said to them at such times, 'When I go North there will be no word wafted to you from pen or voice that is not loyal to what we are saying here and now.' Going South, a woman, a temperance woman, and a Northern temperance woman — three great barriers to their good-will yonder — I was received by them with a confidence that was one of the most delightful surprises of my life. I think we have wronged the South, though we did not mean to do so. The reason was, in part, that we had irreparably wronged ourselves by putting no safeguard on the ballet-box at the North that would sift out alien illiterates. They rule our cities to-day, the saloon is their palace, and the toddy stick their sceptre. It is not fair that they should vote, nor is it fair that a plantation Negro, who can neither read nor write, whose ideas are bounded by the fence of his own field and the price of his own mule, should be entrusted with the ballet. We ought to have put an educational test upon that ballot from the first. The Anglo-Saxon race will never submit to be dominated by the Negro so long as his altitude reaches no higher than the personal liberty of the saloon and the power of appreciating the amount of liquor that a dollar will buy. New England would no more submit to this than South Carolina. 'Better whiskey and more of it' has been the rallying cry of great dark-faced mobs in the Southern localities where Local Option was snowed under by the colored vote. Temperance has no enemy like that, for it is unreasoning and unreachable. To-night it promises in a great congregation, a vote for temperance at the polls to-morrow; but to-morrow twenty-five cents changes that vote in favor of the liquor seller.

"I pity the Southerners; and I believe the great mass of them are as conscientious, and kindly-intentioned toward the colored man, as an equal number of white church members at the North. Would-be demagogues lead the colored people to destruction. Half-drunken white roughs murder them at the polls, or intimidate them so that they do not vote. But the better class of people must not be blamed for this, and a more thoroughly American population than the Christian people of the South does not exist. They have the traditions, the kindliness, the probity, the courage of our forefathers. The problem on their hands is immeasurable. The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt. The grog shop is its centre of power. The safety of women, of childhood, of the home, is menaced in a thousand localities at this moment, so that men dare not go beyond the sight of their own roof-tree. How little we know of all this, seated in comfort and affluence here at the North descanting upon the right of every man 'to cast one ballot and have it fairly counted,' that well-worn shibboleth invoked once more to dodge a living issue.

"The fact is that illiterate colored men will not vote at the South until the white population chooses to have them do so, and under similar conditions they would not at the North. But every evil tends to its own cure in a Republic. See what this one of the Force bill is leading the Southerners to do. Look at Mississippi with its Constitutional Convention. The wise measures there proposed may not carry, but they have at least, been recommended by the Suffrage Committee to the convention, and they provide that women in Mississippi who meet certain educational tests, shall have the ballot, and shall vote at polling places separate from those of men. If the convention has the wit and wisdom to adopt this measure, Mississippi will be controlled by white people and delivered from the shot-gun policy of its political adventurers and whiskey-logged roughs. I hold that this measure simply sets a key for the colored people of Mississippi, which will bring them on into civilization faster than those of any other State, unless the other State shall get their eyes open wide enough to see that their safety lies in thus arming the home guards.

"What an incentive to the young colored women of that commonwealth to store their brains with ideas, for when they reach the standard set, (which is not an especially difficult one, and the colored youth have just as bright brains as the white,) they will come into the ranks of voters, the only condition being one of merit, not complexion. Man's extremity is God's opportunity, and it now looks as if the South would solve its own terrific color question by a method the most fortunate for the development of the colored race that could possibly be devised. For whatever sets a high standard for the mothers, the whole race will shortly reach.

From "The Race Problem: Miss Willard on the Political Puzzle of the South," The Voice, 28 October 1890, p. 8.

Reading #2: The Bitter Cry of Black America

The following excerpts are from an interview with Ida B. Wells that was printed in the Westminster Gazette, a British newspaper, on May 10, 1894.

"Taint, indeed: I tell you, if I have any taint to be ashamed of in myself, it is the taint of white blood!"

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Miss Ida Wells — Ida B. Wells, as the American style runs — journalist and M.A. of a "colour" university, is in England on a mission on behalf of her black and mulatto kinsmen in the Southern States of the Union. She has come to voice the bitter cry of black America. She admits that there is nothing English people can do for her clients beyond sympathising with them; but she thinks that sympathy is worth much. If a tithe of the ghastly tales she tells are true, it is well-nigh incredible that this sympathy should be denied by any civilized human soul upon God's earth, in America, or out of it. But that race-hatred, backed by power and utter licence, does carry men to incredible lengths is an integral part of Miss Wells' case. The middle ages are outdone. The Inquisition fades into a merely medium horror.

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Most of what has just been said is familiar to everybody who knows America — familiar and undeniable. But the last sentences bring us to the controversy in which Miss Wells is engaged. that we have read of them and yet sat silent, continuing to regard our American cousins as a civilized nation. Well, as I explained to Miss Wells, we are under certain impressions which account for this indifference. Lynching, we agree, is a barbarous and deplorable thing. But we did not know it was a thing specially practiced by whites on blacks. We thought it was the weapon of the community against crimes of special horror, by whomsoever committed, with which the ordinary machinery of the law had proved itself unable to cope. But what is Miss Wells' answer? —

(1) Four-fifths of the lynching is done on blacks. Last year, out of 200 victims, 158 were Negroes, the balance being made up of half-breeds and whites.

(2) Out of these 158, only 30 were even CHARGED with any crime against women or children.

(3) In the case of the rest, any sort of offence against white property or white prejudice was good enough.

For instance: A negro step-son was hanged by a lynching party because when they were after his step father he was very "officious" in declaring that he knew where the poor wretch was, but that he would not tell.

A negro lad was hanged for being "drunk and saucy to whites."

Three brothers of a negro who shot a judge (a white, of course) were hanged by a lynching party because they could not find the criminal, and they thought they as might as well hang someone.

(4) In bad cases, TORTURES ARE USED so revolting as to degrade the executioners to the level even of the horrible crime of which their victim may be accused.

For instance: In Texas 15,000 stood by and watched a Negro being branded for fifty minutes with hot irons all over his body, ending with his eyes and the tongue, and then burnt alive. Officials assisted, school children got a holiday, special trains were run. The show was conducted on a platform elevated so that all the crowd could see; in the middle of the burning the victim writhed off the platform down to the crowd, and had to be held back in the flames till he was "finished."

(5) In four cases the victims were negresses — women or girls, including one horrible torture case.

A negro girl suspected of poisoning a white (not convicted) was put into a barrel with nails driven in and rolled down a hill. The body was dragged out in "rags."

(6) It is certain that black victims are often innocent of the crimes for which they are lynched.

This is obvious in some of the few cases already quoted. Sometimes it is clearly proved afterwards, but nobody is ever punished for the murder. The invariable inquest verdict talks of "some person or persons unknown," though the whole town — men, and often women and children — has been present, grouping itself round the body in eagerness to be "taken" (as shown in the illustration given herewith from photograph). Photos, and scraps of the remains, sell merrily as souvenirs.

But there is one class of cases in which the truth is never admitted, not even afterwards, and it is for hinting at the facts in a paper which she then ran at Memphis that Miss Wells herself narrowly escaped lynching.

Dead men tell no tales. But according to Miss Wells — and nobody who knows human nature, and has studied race hatreds, will pronounce it incredible — many of the alleged rapes for which negroes are hurried out of existence are only so called to save, not so much the white woman's reputation, as the white man's ferocious pride of race.

"You see," Miss Wells explained, "the white man has never allowed his women to hold the sentiment 'black but comely,' on which he has always so freely acted himself. Libertinism apart, white men constantly express an open preference for the society of black women. But it is a sacred convention that white women can never feel passion of any sort, high or low, for a black man. Unfortunately, facts don't always square with the convention; and then, if the guilty pair are found out, the thing is christened an outrage at once, and the woman is practically forced to join in hounding down the partner of her shame. Sometimes she rebels, but oftener the overwhelming force of white prejudice is too much for her, and she must go through with the ghastly mockery. 'What!' cried out one poor negro at the stake, as the woman applied the torch, egged on by a furious mob, headed by her relatives, 'have you the heart to do that, when we have been sweethearting so long?'"

It was for breaking the conspiracy of silence on this point that Miss Wells was threatened with lynching, and found the South too hot to hold her ever since.

* * *

One last point about the "confessions" of the lynched. According to Miss Wells these are often worth as much as those which there were wrung out by the "question" in an earlier age. Once more her newspaper cuttings supplied an illustration. On July 7 last a negro was hanged for a murderous outrage on two white girls, with which there was so little to connect him that the dead children's father himself prevailed on the lynchers to put off their job from ten in the morning till the evening. They consented, but told their suspect that, if he did not confess, they would burn him. If he did, he would only be hanged. He continued, however, to declare his innocence; and at last, as no proof was forthcoming, they hanged him "as a compromise"!

"But, Miss Wells, is there never found a preacher or an editor in the South strong enough to protest?"

"The few who ever dared have had to leave the South. For instance —"

"Well, then, in the North?"

"They have fought a war once; they are sick and hopeless, and shut their eyes."

"What, then, can we do?"

"Give us a hearing, and your sympathy, and say so. It will help, for the facts cannot be denied, and such facts cannot stand the light of day. Or am I to go back and tell my poor people that the only way to get the ear of a civilized world is to learn chemistry enough to make bombs?"

And at that Parthian shot we shook hands and parted. The handshake was possible — in England.

G.

From "The Bitter Cry of Black America," Westminster Gazette, 10 May 1894, pp. 1-2. An interview with Ida B. Wells.

Guided Reading Questions

Answer the following in 1-3 complete sentences.

1. Why is Ida B. Wells taking her case to the British people? (What does she want?)






2. As you read the descriptions of lynching provided by Wells, think about the Bill of Rights. What are some of the constitutional rights that lynching violates?






3. What does Wells argue about romantic/sexual relationships between whites and blacks? How does this relate to lynching?






4. Why does Wells think no one in the south speaks out against lynching? In the north?






5. How does Frances Willard view the white populations of the South? In her opinion, are they villains or victims? What reasons does she give to support her opinions?






6. How does Willard view the black populations of the South? Villains or victims? What reasons does she give to support her opinions?






7. Why does Willard think that the North and South have been "wronged" by not limiting the right to vote to people who are literate (can read and write)?






8. What advantages does Willard see in requiring would-be voters to pass required "educational tests" before they are granted suffrage? For blacks? For women?