Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race by James W. Davidson Essay

Ida B. rise up, an Afro-American woman, and feminist, shaped the forecast of empowerwork forcet and citizenship during post-reconstruction times. The essays, books, and theme articles she wrote, instigated the dialogue of race struggles in the midst of snow-whites and blacks, while her ain narratives, including two diaries, a travel journal, and an autobiography, recorded the personal struggle of a woman to define womanhood during post-emancipation America. The novel, _THEY SAY IDA B. WELLS AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF RACE_ , provides an acumen into how Ida B. surfaces life paralleled that of African-Americans trying to gain citizenship and dominance in post-slavery America.From the beginning, Ida B. s hearty was shaped by firm moral convictions and religious beliefs taught to her by her m opposite and father. Ida B. well was born to Jim and Elizabeth come up in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. Ida B. come up attended Shaw University until the deaths of her pa rents and youngest brother during the yellow fever epidemic that claimed her parents lives in slight than a week. She menti angiotensin converting enzymed in her diary that her parents would turn in their graves if her rest family were to be separated, so at sixteen, she became a schoolteacher, in order to oblige her brothers and sisters so they would not be given to different parents and separated. Later, she began commandment in Woodstock, Tennessee, a rural community in Shelby County, but moved to Memphis when she obtained a position in the public schools in 1884.During this year in Memphis, Ida B. well sued the Chesapeake, Ohio and S pop outhwestern Railroads after she was lifted and carried out and removed from the first-class ladies direct by the train conductor. In December 1884 the circuit court control in her favor, but three years later the Tennessee Supreme woo reversed the decision. That experience prompted Ida B. surface to write letters to Memphis weeklies and, later, to African American newspapers like the _New York Freeman_ and _Gate City Press_.During her tenure as a generator for these papers, Ida B. come up wrote several articles, such as Our Women and Race Pride. These articles showed that Ida B. Wells was becoming more(prenominal)(prenominal) and more focused with African-American equality and issues with prejudice, and also with gender issues as a woman living in this time, especially an African-American woman. During this time, Ida B. Wells was becoming more and more noticed for her militant attitude in her writings. She became ostracized for her heart-to-heart nature and blunt writings. Although criticized by the white community, she began to influence other black writers to realize their need for empowerment, and they began to speak out against their losss.Between 1885 and 1887 Ida B. Wells kept a diary describing her struggle as a iodin professional woman. Ida B. Wells wrote about her life as an independent woman, comm itted to working, self-improvement, and uplifting the black race. She recorded figures of mob hysteria, such as the act of mob-lynching black men by white men, for committing lewd acts against white women. Oftentimes, there was not any sufficient evidence to prove these men guilty, and Ida B. Wells wrote about the prejudice they faced by not going through due process of law before convicted and lynched. Ida B. Wells wrote the loss of her font against the railroad companies as well. In addition, she wrote about conferences in Kansas and Kentucky, where she was elected depository of the Negro Press Association.Two years later, she bought an interest in the Memphis _Free diction andHeadlight_ and became a full-time journalist in 1891. During this time, Ida B. Wells lost her teaching position in the Tennessee County School Systems because of editorials attacking inferior segregated schools. later three African-American grocers were brutally murdered by a white Memphis mob in Mar ch 1892, Ida B. Wells wrote fiery editorials urging citizens to flee the city. She talked about how the act of lynching was a racist strategy to spend black men by means of racism.Ida B. Wells was also outspoken about the charges of rape against African-American men. Ida B. Wells believed that these charges were trying to hide the consensual relations between white women and African-American men. Whites were so shocked and ferocious by these allegations that they destroyed her newspaper office while Wells was remote and dared her to return to Memphis. Not intimidated by any of the white mens threats, Wells kept a gun in her signaling and advised that guns should be kept in the homes of all African-Americans during that time, as a means for protection.Ida B. Wells also bought an interest in the _New York Age_ and wrote two periodical columns entitled Iolas Southern Field, and kept increasing her oral and written campaign against lynching mainly through lectures and editorials. Some of these works by Ida B. Wells include _Southern Horrors Lynch Law in All Its Phases_ _A trigger-happy Record Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States_ and _Mob Rule in New Orleans_ (1900). In all of these works, Wells argues and contemplates the economic and political causes of racial oppression and injustices. In her writing she analyzes racist sexual tensions, and explains the relationship between terrorists and community leaders, and urges African-Americans to resist oppression through boycotts and emigration. Her manifestation of black empowerment can bee easily seen in these writings.Soon after, Ida B. Wells was dealing with more issues of gender roles in society. After her June 27, 1895 marriage to Ferdinand L. Barnett, a lettuce lawyer, newspaper writer, and widower with two sons, Ida B. Wells was questioned for her marriage by the famous suffragist, Susan B. Anthony. Ida B. Wells had joined the suffragist movement with Susan B. Anthon y, and they together preached the important of equal womens rights. Ida B. Wells wastraditionally feminist, and now had to deal with the dilemma of being married, as well as having children. Professionally, Ida B. Wells also ended up buying the _Chicago Conservator_ from her maintain and continued to write following the births of her children.One of the roughly important accomplishments during Ida B. Wells lifetime was her being elected secretary of the National Afro-American Council. This equivalent council called for a conference that led to the formation of the National Association for the onward motion of Colored People. This group openly displayed its prominence in the black community during post-emancipation times. All the members of the organization were outspoken colored individuals who wanted to speak out against the prejudice of the time. They came together to discuss strategies, as well as solutions. The inception of this organization was one of the most important ad vancements showing black bulks wishes to be more prominent in the community. Their main discussions rotate around the concern of disenfranchisement of blacks during this time period.Ida B. Wells continued her crusade against violence into her fifties. In 1918 she covered the race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, and wrote a series of articles on the riot for the _Chicago Defender_. Four years later she returned southeastern to investigate the indictment for murder of twelve innocent Arkansas farmers. She thence wrote _The Arkansas Race Riot_ and raised money to publish and distribute one thousand copies of her report. Throughout her final years, she continued to write for the newspaper, thus keep her belief in African-Americans should seek their own justice.In 1928 Wells-Barnett began an autobiography, which was edited and published posthumously by her daughter, Alfreda Duster, and she kept a diary in 1930 that depicts her candidature for election to the Illinois State Senate . After a sudden illness, she died in Chicago on March 25, 1931 at 68 years old.Ida B. Wells-Barnett was one of the most outstanding women of the late nineteenth century. She was a militant thinker and writer whose essays,pamphlets, and books provide a well-respected analysis of lynching. She was a reformer whose insistence on resistance to oppression laid the foundation for the modern civil rights movement. In addition, her diary and autobiography offer a look into the formation of African-American female identity in the late nineteenth century. Ida B. Wells pave the way for new strategies and empowerment for colored people after the abolition of slavery. She remains an influence and an inspiration for those who seek to overcome struggle and injustice today.