Roman
79-469: The Colored Catholic Congress movement was a series of meetings organized by Daniel Rudd in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for African-American Catholics to discuss issues affecting their communities, churches, and other institutions. Part of the Colored Conventions Movement , the congresses ran from 1889 to 1894, before folding for unknown reasons. The movement was revived in
158-523: A historically Black college in Nashville , Tennessee. She also attended LeMoyne–Owen College , a historically Black college in Memphis. She held strong political opinions and provoked many people with her views on women's rights. At the age of 24, she wrote: "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify
237-483: A $ 500 (~$ 16,956 in 2023) award. The railroad company appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court , which reversed the lower court's ruling in 1887. It concluded: "We think it is evident that the purpose of the defendant in error was to harass with a view to this suit, and that her persistence was not in good faith to obtain a comfortable seat for the short ride." Wells was ordered to pay court costs. Her reaction to
316-478: A business manager, accountant, inventor, and teacher. After a while, Rudd started to notice that the movement toward equality for African Americans was moving at a very slow pace, prompting him to accept Booker T. Washington ’s self-help philosophy. That philosophy emphasized creating and building up businesses instead of the faith and churches, to achieve maximum economic advancement toward growth and change. That philosophy of self-help did not last very long after Rudd
395-683: A family while continuing her work writing, speaking, and organizing for civil rights and the women's movement for the rest of her life. Wells was outspoken regarding her beliefs as a Black female activist and faced regular public disapproval, sometimes including from other leaders within the civil rights movement and the women's suffrage movement . She was active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. A skilled and persuasive speaker, Wells traveled nationally and internationally on lecture tours. Wells died on March 25, 1931, in Chicago, and in 2020
474-580: A gathering in Chicago to address the group. Upon his return, he complained about the fact that the German and Irish were organized, but African Americans were not. He thought to gather Black Catholics to discuss various troubles in the Black community. He built the idea of an English-speaking Catholic congress in the hope that all races would attend. Before the call, Rudd explained that those looking for freedom must first be
553-496: A great businessman, and fluent in several languages, but one key thing that apparently stuck out about Rudd was his unbreakable faith in his Catholic upbringing and roots. Rudd remains a vaunted figure in the history of Black Catholicism, and is highly honored among its adherents as well as in the larger American Church. In Fall 2020, Rudd's childhood parish—in conjunction with the Archdiocese of Louisville —announced plans to unveil
632-657: A job with The New York Age and continued her anti-lynching campaign from New York. For the next three years, she resided in Harlem , initially as a guest at the home of Timothy Thomas Fortune (1856–1928) and wife, Carrie Fortune (née Caroline Charlotte Smiley; 1860–1940). According to Kenneth W. Goings, no copy of the Memphis Free Speech survives. The only knowledge of the newspaper ever existing comes from reprinted articles in other archived newspapers. On October 26, 1892, Wells began to publish her research on lynching in
711-471: A limited scope—did not do well. After only a year, Daniel moved the company to Cincinnati, where he started featuring articles that spoke out on Black issues such as segregation and discrimination. This new iteration, the American Catholic Tribune; this was the first Black-owned and operated national Catholic newspaper. Rudd believed that the newspaper was important in promoting the church as
790-522: A lynching in Tunica, Mississippi , in 1892 where she concluded that the father of a young white woman had implored a lynch mob to kill a Black man with whom his daughter was having a sexual relationship, under a pretense "to save the reputation of his daughter". In a 1909 speech at the National Negro Conference, Wells said: During the last ten years from 1899 to 1908 inclusive the number lynched
869-490: A memorial historical marker at his gravesite on All Saints' Day of that same year, commemorating his impact on American Catholicism and the larger United States. Ida B. Wells Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist , sociologist , educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement . She was one of the founders of the National Association for
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#1732854855203948-659: A moral crusade among the British. She relied heavily on her pamphlet Southern Horrors in her first tour, and showed shocking photographs of lynchings in America. On May 17, 1894, she spoke in Birmingham , West Midlands , at the Young Men's Christian Assembly and at Central Hall , staying in Edgbaston at 66 Gough Road. On June 25, 1894, at Bradford she gave a "sensational address, though in
1027-464: A pamphlet titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases . Having examined many accounts of lynchings due to the alleged "rape of white women", she concluded that Southerners accused Black men of rape to hide their real reasons for lynchings: Black economic progress, which white Southerners saw as a threat to their own economic progress, and white ideas of enforcing Black second-class status in
1106-589: A postman in addition to being the owner of the People's Grocery, was named as a conspirator along with McDowell and Stewart. The three men were arrested and jailed pending trial. Around 2:30 a.m. on the morning of March 9, 1892, 75 men wearing black masks took Moss, McDowell, and Stewart from their jail cells at the Shelby County Jail to a Chesapeake and Ohio rail yard one mile north of the city and shot them dead. The Memphis Appeal-Avalanche reports: Just before he
1185-594: A quiet and restrained manner". On the last night of her second tour, the London Anti-Lynching Committee was established – reportedly the first anti-lynching organization in the world. Its founding members included many notable figure including the Duke of Argyll , Sir John Gorst , the Archbishop of Canterbury , Lady Henry Somerset and some twenty Members of Parliament , with activist Florence Balgarnie as
1264-520: A revenge." . . . It is with no pleasure that I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed ... Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. – Ida B. Wells (1892) On September 15, 1883, and again on May 4, 1884, a train conductor with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway ordered Wells to give up her seat in
1343-461: A sheriff's deputy took electric streetcars to the People's Grocery. The group of white men were met by a barrage of bullets from the People's Grocery, and Shelby County Sheriff Deputy Charley Cole was wounded, as well as civilian Bob Harold. Hundreds of Whites were deputized almost immediately to put down what was perceived by the local Memphis newspapers Commercial and Appeal-Avalanche as an armed rebellion by Black men in Memphis. Thomas Moss,
1422-541: A small Memphis journal, the Evening Star, and she began writing weekly articles for The Living Way newspaper under the pen name "Iola". Articles she wrote under her pen name attacked racist Jim Crow policies. In 1889, she became editor and co-owner with J. L. Fleming of The Free Speech and Headlight , a Black-owned newspaper established by the Reverend Taylor Nightingale (1844–1922) and based at
1501-480: A transformational institution that was capable of bringing equality and social justice for African Americans. “The Catholic Church alone can break the color line. Our people should help her to do it.” (American Catholic Tribune) Cardinal Gibbons , archbishop of Baltimore (the preeminent episcopal see in the nation at the time), the archbishops of Cincinnati and Philadelphia, and the bishops of Covington, Columbus, Richmond, Vincennes, and Wilmington, were all listed on
1580-407: A widower with two sons, Ferdinand Barnett and Albert Graham Barnett (1886–1962). Ferdinand Lee Barnett, who lived in Chicago, was a prominent attorney, civil rights activist, and journalist. Like Wells, he spoke widely against lynchings and in support of the civil rights of African Americans. Wells and Barnett had met in 1893, working together on a pamphlet protesting the lack of Black representation at
1659-564: A young adult, sometime before 1876. At the time, anti-Catholicism and political nativism were rampant, causing American Catholics to be physically threatened by Protestants with acts such as the burning of churches and convents. This led Rudd to decide to speak out on public schools in Springfield, as his fellow Catholics did not agree with the Protestant methods that were being used in them—which Catholics believed were insufficient to deal with
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#17328548552031738-455: Is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites. But we've had enough of it." The Evening Scimitar ( Memphis ) copied the story that same day, and added: "Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the Negroes themselves do not apply the remedy without delay it will be the duty of those whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies to a stake at
1817-597: Is known for starting in 1885 what has been called "the first newspaper printed by and for Black Americans ", the Ohio Tribune —which he later expanded into the American Catholic Tribune , purported to be the first Black-owned national newspaper. The paper folded in 1897. He also founded the Colored Catholic Congress in 1889, which held five meetings total and lasted until 1894. Daniel Rudd
1896-558: The Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, where her reporting covered incidents of racial segregation and inequality. Eventually, her investigative journalism was carried nationally in Black-owned newspapers . Subjected to continued threats and criminal violence, including when a white mob destroyed her newspaper office and presses, Wells left Memphis for Chicago , Illinois . She married Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1895 and had
1975-656: The Beale Street Baptist Church in Memphis. In 1891, Wells was dismissed from her teaching post by the Memphis Board of Education due to her articles criticizing conditions in the Black schools of the region. She was devastated but undaunted, and concentrated her energy on writing articles for The Living Way and the Free Speech and Headlight . In 1889, Thomas Henry Moss, Sr. (1853–1892), an African American, opened People's Grocery , which he co-owned. The store
2054-761: The Civil War . Lizzie was owned by Boling for domestic labor in his home, now the Bolling–Gatewood House . Before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, both of Wells's parents were enslaved to Boling, and thus Ida was also born enslaved. James Wells built much of the Bolling–Gatewood house, in which Boling lived, and which in March 2002 became the Ida B. Wells–Barnett Museum. The Wells family lived elsewhere on
2133-530: The Detroit Plaindealer , in hiring a correspondent to investigate the conditions of African Americans in the former Confederacy . Rudd was successful for quite some time in his printing business, and by 1892, Rudd's newspaper was printing 10,000 copies. His successes led the Afro-American Press League (a consortium of the roughly two hundred Black newspapers being published in the country at
2212-472: The Free Speech had been building, particularly with respect to lynchings and imprisonment of Black men suspected of raping white women. A story was published on January 16, 1892, in the Cleveland Gazette , describing a wrongful conviction for a sexual affair between a married white woman, Julia Underwood (née Julie Caroline Wells), and a single Black man, William Offet (1854–1914) of Elyria, Ohio . Offet
2291-411: The Free Speech refuting what she called "that old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern men are not careful, a conclusion might be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women." Four days later, on May 25, The Daily Commercial wrote: "The fact that a Black scoundrel [Ida B. Wells] is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies
2370-494: The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Barnett founded The Chicago Conservator , the first Black newspaper in Chicago, in 1878. Wells began writing for the paper in 1893, later acquired a partial ownership interest, and after marrying Barnett, assumed the role of editor. Wells's marriage to Barnett was a legal union as well as a partnership of ideas and actions. Both were journalists, as well as established activists with
2449-511: The Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women. Throughout the 1890s, Wells documented lynching of African-Americans in the United States in articles and through pamphlets such as Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases and The Red Record , which debunked
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2528-654: The American press, Wells had nevertheless gained extensive recognition and credibility, and an international audience of supporters for her cause. Wells's tours in Britain even influenced public opinion to the extent that British textile manufacturers fought back with economic strategies, imposing a temporary boycott on Southern cotton that pressured southern businessmen to condemn the practice of lynching publicly. On June 27, 1895, in Chicago at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church , Wells married attorney Ferdinand Lee Barnett ,
2607-527: The Ohio Governor. Dear Miss Wells: Thank you for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison ... Brave woman! ... – Frederick Douglass (October 25, 1892) On May 21, 1892, Wells published an editorial in
2686-452: The South since the Civil War. The Red Record explored the alarmingly high rates of lynching in the United States (which was at a peak from 1880 to 1930). Wells said that during Reconstruction, most Americans outside the South did not realize the growing rate of violence against Black people in the South. She believed that during slavery, white people had not committed as many attacks because of
2765-620: The attention of Northerners who knew little about these mob murders or accepted the common explanation that Black men deserved this fate. According to the Equal Justice Initiative , 4,084 African Americans were murdered in the South , alone, between 1877 and 1950, of which, 25 percent were accused of sexual assault and nearly 30 percent, murder. Generally southern states and white juries refused to indict any perpetrators for lynching, although they were frequently known and sometimes shown in
2844-459: The civil rights of African Americans. He believed that the press played a large role in Black advancement. Rudd also thought that editors and journalists had the ability to persuade and educate Catholic, business and civic leaders. In 1885 Rudd began his first Catholic newspaper called the Ohio Tribune , the first Black paper printed by and for the Black community. The fledgling, local weekly—with
2923-432: The conductor and two men dragged her out of the car. Wells gained publicity in Memphis when she wrote a newspaper article for The Living Way , a Black church weekly, about her treatment on the train. In Memphis, she hired an African-American attorney to sue the railroad. When her lawyer was paid off by the railroad, she hired a white attorney. Wells won her case on December 24, 1884, when the local circuit court granted her
3002-633: The country. By the end of his journalism career, Rudd had gone through many personal changes and found it best if he moved to the South and sought work in Mississippi and Arkansas. Rudd also may have been attracted to the South because of the economic opportunities that had opened up, allowing Black people to get cheap land. He worked in Bolivar County, Mississippi , as a lumber mill manager, and eventually he went to work for Scott Bond , Arkansas ' first Black millionaire. Rudd later found himself working as
3081-417: The dynamics of segregation. She found sympathetic audiences in Britain, already shocked by reports of lynching in America. Wells had been invited for her first British speaking tour by Catherine Impey and Isabella Fyvie Mayo . Impey, a Quaker abolitionist who published the journal Anti-Caste , had attended several of Wells's lectures while traveling in America. Mayo was a writer and poet who wrote under
3160-592: The economic labor value of slaves. Wells noted that, since slavery time, "ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, [through lynching] without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution". Frederick Douglass had written an article noting three eras of "Southern barbarism" and the excuses that whites claimed in each period. Wells explored these in her The Red Record: Wells collected 14 pages of statistics related to lynching cases committed from 1892 to 1895; she also included pages of graphic accounts detailing specific lynchings. She wrote that her data
3239-614: The editor of the Daily Inter Ocean , a Republican newspaper in Chicago. It was the only major white paper that persistently denounced lynching. After she told Nixon about her planned tour, he asked her to write for the newspaper while in England. She was the first African-American woman to be a paid correspondent for a mainstream white newspaper. Wells toured England , Scotland , with Eliza Wigham in attendance and Wales for two months, addressing audiences of thousands, and rallying
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3318-455: The extreme violence perpetrated upon Black Americans, Wells concluded that armed resistance was a reasonable and effective means to defend against lynching. She said, a " Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home." Wells travelled twice to Britain in her campaign against lynching, the first time in 1893 and the second in 1894 in effort to gain the support of a powerful white nation such as Britain to shame and sanction
3397-658: The eyes of God and in humanity. It was well known that Rudd's advocacy reached farther than simple equality and justice but went beyond to national issues and problems such as legal segregation, equality for women, lynching, discrimination, employment, labor strife, and public-school segregation. He wanted to include all the injustices facing people of color everywhere, but specifically Africa and Latin America. The Colored Catholic Congress held its first meeting in Washington, D.C. in January 1889, where Venerable Father Augustus Tolton ,
3476-465: The fallacy frequently voiced by whites at the time that all Black lynching victims were guilty of crimes. Wells exposed the brutality of lynching, and analyzed its sociology, arguing that whites used lynching to terrorize African Americans in the South because they represented economic and political competition—and thus a threat of loss of power—for whites. She aimed to demonstrate the truth about this violence and advocate for measures to stop it. Wells
3555-470: The fight and rushed outside to defend the young Harris from the adult Hurst as people in the neighborhood gathered into what quickly became a "racially charged mob". The white grocer Barrett returned the following day, March 3, 1892, to the People's Grocery with a Shelby County Sheriff's Deputy, looking for William Stewart. Calvin McDowell, who greeted Barrett, indicated that Stewart was not present, but Barrett
3634-490: The first-class ladies car and move to the smoking car, which was already crowded with other passengers. In 1883, the United States Supreme Court had ruled against the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 (which had banned racial discrimination in public accommodations). This verdict supported railroad companies that chose to racially segregate their passengers. When Wells refused to give up her seat on September 15,
3713-409: The higher court's decision revealed her strong convictions on civil rights and religious faith, as she responded: "I felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things from my suit for my people. ... O God, is there no ... justice in this land for us?" While continuing to teach elementary school, Wells became increasingly active as a journalist and writer. She accepted an editorial position for
3792-456: The honorary secretary. As a result of her two lecture tours in Britain, Wells received significant coverage in the British and American press. Many of the articles published by the latter at the time of her return to the United States were hostile personal critiques, rather than reports of her anti-lynching positions and beliefs. The New York Times , for example, called her "a slanderous and nasty-minded Mulatress ". Despite these attacks from
3871-437: The intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation with a pair of tailor's shears." A white mob ransacked the Free Speech office, destroying the building and its contents. James L. Fleming, co-owner with Wells and business manager, was forced to flee Memphis; and, reportedly, the trains were being watched for Wells's return. Creditors took possession of
3950-473: The late 20th century as the National Black Catholic Congress , under the leadership of several national Black Catholic organizations and the first NBCC president, Bishop John Ricard , SSJ. Daniel Rudd Relations with: God Schools Relations with: Daniel Arthur Rudd (August 7, 1854—December 3, 1933) was a Black Catholic journalist and early Civil Rights leader. He
4029-636: The masthead of the Tribune as endorsers. Rudd was also a very good businessman who knew how to reach out and teach others who thought like him and wanted to push for the same rights and changes, such as Black Catholics and Protestants. In order for Rudd to make the changes he wanted, he needed income—which he gained by using the Tribune to promote his own printing school. This allowed him to expand his own business and dreams with printing, and start creating custom cards, letterheads, envelopes, invoices, pamphlets, books, legal documents, and advertisements. That wasn't
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#17328548552034108-571: The name of Edward Garrett. Both women had read of the particularly gruesome mob murder of Henry Smith in Texas and wanted to organize a speaking tour to call attention to American lynchings. Impey and Mayo asked Frederick Douglass to make the trip, but he declined, citing his age and health. He then suggested Wells, who enthusiastically accepted the invitation. In 1894, before leaving the US for her second visit to Great Britain, Wells called on William Penn Nixon ,
4187-546: The nation's first openly-Black priest, celebrated Mass , and the 200-strong group met with President Grover Cleveland . The Congress met for five more years before disbanding. ( An organization with a similar name and focus was founded in 1987.) In 1897, there was a collapse of the Tribune due to the economic recession and increased competition from other businesses in the newspaper industry in Cincinnati and Philadelphia , as well as new Black Catholic papers in other parts of
4266-587: The office and sold the assets of the Free Speech. Wells had been out of town, vacationing in Manhattan ; she never returned to Memphis. A "committee" of white businessmen, reportedly from the Cotton Exchange , located Rev. Nightingale and, although he had sold his interest to Wells and Fleming in 1891, assaulted him and forced him at gunpoint to sign a letter retracting the May 21 editorial. Wells subsequently accepted
4345-476: The ones to “strike a blow”. He believed that the way to win the Black population to the Catholic church was to “find out how many Catholics we would have to start with and then put that force to work”. In May 1888, Rudd called upon Black Catholics all over the country under the “Blessing of Holy Mother Church.” It was believed that this group could serve as a “leaven” of the race, lifting all African Americans both in
4424-490: The only source of his income though, he also had newspaper subscriptions from Catholic and Protestant readers in Northern and Midwestern states. African Americans saw his will to make a change and fight for something they've believed in for quite some time, so many bishops, monsignors, laypersons, and even more Protestants gave him financial aid. In 1891, he collaborated with Ida B. Wells and her Memphis Free Speech , alongside
4503-544: The photographs being made more frequently of such events. Despite Wells's attempt to gain support among white Americans against mob murders, she believed that her campaign could not overturn the economic interests whites had in using lynching as an instrument to maintain Southern order and discourage Black economic ventures. Ultimately, Wells concluded that appealing to reason and compassion would not succeed in gaining criminalization of lynching by Southern whites. In response to
4582-437: The phrase "poor, blind Afro-American Sampsons" to denote Black men as victims of "white Delilahs ". The Biblical " Samson ", in the vernacular of the day, came from Longfellow 's 1865 poem, " The Warning ", containing the line: "There is a poor, blind Samson in the land ... " To explain the metaphor "Sampson", John Elliott Cairnes , an Irish political economist , in his 1865 article about Black suffrage , wrote that Longfellow
4661-558: The property. Ground plans on display in the Ida B. Wells–Barnett Museum identify shacks behind the house as the residence of the Wells family. After emancipation , James became a trustee of the newly established Shaw University (now Rust College ) in Holly Springs. He refused to vote for Democratic candidates during the period of Reconstruction , became a member of the Loyal League , and
4740-487: The racist practices of the United States. She and her supporters in America saw these tours as an opportunity for her to reach larger, white audiences with her anti-lynching campaign, something she had been unable to accomplish in America. In these travels, Wells notes that her own transatlantic voyages in themselves held a powerful cultural context given the histories of the Middle Passage , and black female identity within
4819-494: The society. Black economic progress was a contemporary issue in the South, and in many states whites worked to suppress Black progress. In this period at the turn of the century, Southern states, starting with Mississippi in 1890, passed laws and/or new constitutions to disenfranchise most Black people and many poor white people through use of poll taxes , literacy tests and other devices. Wells, in Southern Horrors, adopted
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#17328548552034898-522: The time and was spared. Following the funerals of her parents and brother, friends and relatives decided that the five remaining Wells children should be separated and sent to foster homes. Wells resisted this proposition. To keep her younger siblings together as a family, she found work as a teacher in a rural Black elementary school outside Holly Springs. Her paternal grandmother, Peggy Wells (née Peggy Cheers; 1814–1887), along with other friends and relatives, stayed with her siblings and cared for them during
4977-528: The time) to ask Rudd to serve as its president. The enterprising Rudd served in this capacity even as he worked to keep his Queen City printing business and printing school afloat. Rudd was very observant activist, watching and interacting with various organizations, discussing matters unique to the respective organizations. In particular, Rudd watched the workings of the German Roman Catholic Central Verein . In September 1887, Rudd attended
5056-619: The week while Wells was teaching. About two years after Wells's grandmother Peggy had a stroke and her sister Eugenia died, Wells and her two youngest sisters moved to Memphis to live with an aunt, Fanny Butler ( née Fanny Wells; 1837–1908), in 1883. Memphis is about 56 miles (90 km) from Holly Springs. Soon after moving to Memphis , Tennessee , Wells was hired in Woodstock by the Shelby County school system. During her summer vacations, she attended summer sessions at Fisk University ,
5135-456: The “ materialism and formal unbelief” facing American youth. In addition, Rudd helped desegregate Springfield public schools, advocating alongside the city's Black community beginning in 1881. Rudd's journalism career started at the Sunday News. While there, he was a printer, reporter, and editor who was interested in following a Frederick Douglass -like advocacy that was aimed at protecting
5214-454: Was 959. Of this number 102 were white, while the colored victims numbered 857. No other nation, civilized or savage, burns its criminals; only under that Stars and Stripes is the human holocaust possible. Twenty-eight human beings burned at the stake, one of them a woman and two of them children, is the awful indictment against American civilization—the gruesome tribute which the nation pays to the color line. Wells's anti-lynching commentaries in
5293-529: Was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi . She was freed as an infant under the Emancipation Proclamation , when Union Army troops captured Holly Springs. At the age of 16, she lost both her parents and her infant brother in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic . She got a job teaching and kept the rest of the family together with the help of her grandmother. Later, moving with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee . Soon, Wells co-owned and wrote for
5372-531: Was born on August 7, 1854, on Anatok Plantation in Bardstown , Kentucky to enslaved parents Robert and Elizabeth Rudd. Daniel and all 11 of his siblings were baptized in the Catholic Church . Rudd was very religious, but it is unknown at what point in his life he decided to make the promotion of Catholicism his life's work. He was eventually emancipated from slavery and moved to Springfield, Ohio while still
5451-551: Was born to an enslaved woman named Peggy and Peggy's white enslaver, thus he was enslaved under the doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem . When James was 18, his father brought him to Holly Springs, hiring him out as a carpenter's apprentice to architect Spires Boling , with James's wages going to his enslaver. One of ten children born on a plantation in Virginia, Lizzie was abducted and trafficked away from her family and siblings and tried without success to locate her family following
5530-432: Was convicted of rape and served four years of a 15-year sentence, despite his sworn denial of rape. Underwood's husband, Rev. Isaac T. Underwood – after she confessed to him that she had lied two years later – diligently worked to get Offet out of the penitentiary. After hiring an influential Pittsburgh attorney, Thomas Harlan Baird Patterson (1844–1907), Rev. Underwood prevailed, Offet was released and subsequently pardoned by
5609-409: Was dissatisfied with the response and was frustrated that the People's Grocery was competing with his store. Angry about the previous day's mêlée , Barrett responded that "Blacks were thieves" and hit McDowell with a pistol. McDowell wrestled the gun away and fired at Barrett—missing narrowly. McDowell was later arrested but subsequently released. On March 5, 1892, a group of six white men including
5688-664: Was invited to and participated at the NAACP convention in Cleveland in 1919. In 1932 Rudd suffered a stroke, after which his family brought him back to his childhood home. He died there on December 3, 1933, at the age of 79. He is buried in St. Joseph's Cemetery, adjacent to Rudd's childhood parish of the same name (now the Basilica of Saint Joseph Proto-Cathedral ). Many Catholic clergy and Rudd's close friends always described him as highly intelligent,
5767-588: Was killed, Moss said to the mob: "Tell my people to go west, there is no justice here." After the lynching of her friends, Wells wrote in Free Speech and Headlight urging Blacks to leave Memphis altogether: There is, therefore, only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons. The event led Wells to begin investigating lynchings. She began to interview people associated with lynchings, including
5846-617: Was known as a "race man" for his involvement in politics and his commitment to the Republican Party . He founded a successful carpentry business in Holly Springs in 1867, and his wife Lizzie became known as a "famous cook". Ida B. Wells was one of their eight children, and she enrolled in Shaw University. In September 1878, both of Ida's parents died during a yellow fever epidemic that also claimed one of her brothers. Wells had been visiting her grandmother's farm near Holly Springs at
5925-401: Was located in a South Memphis neighborhood nicknamed "The Curve". Wells was close to Moss and his family, having stood as godmother to his first child, Maurine E. Moss (1891–1971). Moss's store did well and competed with a white-owned grocery store across the street, Barrett's Grocery, owned by William Russell Barrett (1854–1920). On March 2, 1892, a young Black male youth named Armour Harris
6004-411: Was playing a game of marbles with a young white male youth named Cornelius Hurst in front of the People's Grocery. The two male youths got into an argument during the game, then began to fight. As the Black youth, Harris, seemed to be winning the fight, the father of Cornelius Hurst intervened and began to "thrash" Harris. The People's Grocery employees William Stewart and Calvin R. McDowell (1870–1892) saw
6083-475: Was posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize special citation "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching." Ida Bell Wells was born on the Boling Farm near Holly Springs, Mississippi . Born on July 16, 1862, Ida Wells was the first child of James Madison Wells (1840–1878) and Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Warrenton). James Wells
6162-568: Was prophesizing; to wit: in "the long-impending struggle for Americans following the Civil War, [he, Longfellow] could see in the Negro only an instrument of vengeance, and a cause of ruin". After conducting further research, Wells published The Red Record, in 1895. This 100-page pamphlet was a sociological investigation of lynching in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. It also covered Black people's struggles in
6241-547: Was taken from articles by white correspondents, white press bureaus, and white newspapers. Her delivery of these statistics did not simply reduce the murders to numbers, Wells strategically paired the data with descriptive accounts in a way that helped her audience conceptualize the scale of the injustice. This powerful quantification captivated Black and White audiences about the horrors of lynching, through both her circulated works and public oration. Southern Horrors and The Red Record ' s documentation of lynchings captured
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