Crusader for Justice: Ida B. Wells

     Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s name came up over and over as I researched the history of the women’s suffrage movement and the history of late 19^th and early 20^th century America. Although I haven’t included her as an actual character in a novel, I have referred to her in many of my writings. In these waning days of 2021’s Black History Month, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to one of the African American women I most admire.

     Ida Bell Wells was born into slavery on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, as the Civil War was raging. She was one of eight children. After the war, her parents became active in Reconstruction Era politics. They recognized the importance of education and enrolled young Ida in Shaw College (later Rust College) in Holly Springs, but she was expelled after starting a dispute with the college president.

     When Ida was sixteen, both of her parents and her infant brother died in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. She convinced a nearby school administrator that she was 18 in order to win a job as a teacher in a Black elementary school. With the help of friends and other family members, she and her paternal grandmother were able to keep the rest of her siblings together.

     In 1882, after her grandmother had a stroke and one of her sisters died, Ida’s brothers found work as carpentry apprentices. She and her remaining sisters moved to Memphis, Tennessee to live with their aunt. There, Ida worked as a teacher and attended Fisk University, Lemoyne-Owen College and graduated from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1884

     After college, she continued to teach school in Memphis and began writing articles attacking Jim Crow policies under the pen name, “Iola.” A local newspaper, the Free Speech and Headlight, invited her to write articles for them in 1889. She refused unless she was made an equal partner with the two male owners. They agreed and she bought a one-third interest in the enterprise. There she wrote about racial and political issues while continuing to teach at the elementary school. She was fired from her teaching job in1891 for being an outspoken critic of the conditions in the segregated schools.

     The 1892 lynching of a friend and his two business associates prompted Ida to investigate and collect information on similar cases. She traveled around the United States and in Britain, giving lectures on the horrific practice, especially in the South, of lynching Black men.  During this time, she also published articles and pamphlets condemning lynchings.  One of her editorials about the circumstances of her friend’s case enraged local whites, who mobbed her office and burned down her press. Luckily, she was in New York at the time or she might not have survived. Subsequently, she stayed in the north due to unrelenting death threats, and a few months later she moved to Chicago.

     There she met Ferdinand Barnett, an attorney and journalist who had founded Chicago’s first Black newspaper, The Conservator. He was also an established activist in their shared passion for civil rights. They married in 1895. Ida was one of the first American women to keep her maiden name. 

     In addition to Ferdinand’s two children from a previous marriage, the couple had four together. Throughout her life, Ida balanced her career in social activism with her family. She established the first kindergarten in Chicago in her local church, prioritizing Black children for admission.

     In addition to her crusade for racial equality, she worked tirelessly for the women’s rights movement. She organized the first civic club for African American women in Chicago and participated in the meeting that founded the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.

                                                                

      Ida was strongly committed to the campaign for women’s suffrage. She believed that women should be enfranchised, but she also saw the vote as a way for Black women to elect African Americans, regardless of gender, to influential political offices. A long-time member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Ida attended the 1913 woman’s suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. Fearing that many white Southern women would refuse to march with Black women, the organizers decided that the African American women should march in the back.

      Refusing to follow this directive, Ida stood on the sidelines of the parade route. When the unit from Illinois approached, she stepped into the street and marched with the women of her state’s suffrage delegation.

     The U.S. government labeled her a dangerous “race agitator” and placed her under surveillance during World War I. Despite the risk, she continued traveling the country and writing articles in pursuit of civil rights. Throughout the 1920s, she pursued Urban reform in Chicago and participated in Republican party politics. However, she was disappointed by the Hoover administration’s support of segregation. In 1930, she ran as an independent for the Illinois Senate but was defeated.

     Ida began writing her autobiography in 1928 but was unable to finish it before she passed away on March 25, 1931. Her autobiography was edited by her daughter and published posthumously in 1970 as Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.

 Ann Markim

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The Tide Turns

 

     Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and members of the National Woman’s Party (NWP) continued to pursue suffrage, despite U.S. entry into World War I. They maintained their peaceful picketing of the White House and the U.S. Capitol, but the rhetoric denouncing Wilson’s behavior grew harsher. At the same time, the public sentiment was less tolerant of government criticism during wartime.

     On June 20, 1917, NWP members met Russian envoys with a banner proclaiming the United States was a democracy in name only. An angry mob tore the banner to pieces. The women continued to stand in silent protest. Two days later Lucy Burns and Katherine Morey were arrested for picketing, but were never brought to trial.

     Over the following days and weeks, more protesters were arrested. Because peaceful picketing was not against the law, they were charged with “obstructing traffic” even though they stood quietly near the White House fence and it was the crowd of onlookers who were actually obstructing sidewalk traffic. On June 27, six women were sentenced to three days in District jail after refusing to pay $25 fines for obstructing traffic. They were the first of 168 suffragists to serve prison time for picketing.

      The demonstrators carried a new banner on August 14, referring to the President as “Kaiser Wilson,” comparing him to German emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II and accusing Wilson of being a despot over women who lacked a voice in government. An outraged crowd destroyed the banners, attacked the protesters and fired a gunshot at NWP headquarters. The police did little to intervene.

     After three days of brutal attacks by mobs and the police, six women were arrested and sentenced to 60 days in the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. Other NWP members continued their demonstrations and more were arrested.

     In mid-September, Senator Andrieus Aristieus Jones, chair of the Senate Woman Suffrage Committee, visited the Occoquan Workhouse and verified reports of improper treatment of the suffrage prisoners. The next day, his committee reported out the suffrage bill that had been languishing for six months. On September 24, the House of Representatives created a separate Woman Suffrage Committee

     Imprisoned picketer Lucy Burns, led an effort demanding suffragists be treated as political prisoners rather than criminals. She threatened a hunger strike if this demand was not met. A petition was secretly circulated among inmates. They smuggled it out and the demand presented to commissioners of District of Columbia. Every woman who signed the petition was put in solitary confinement.

     On October 20, Alice Paul was arrested. Two days later she was sentenced to seven months in Occoquan Workhouse. This was the longest sentence handed down.

     Paul and Rose Winslow began a hunger strike on November 5, after demands for political prisoner status were rejected. A week later, they were subjected to force-feeding three times a day for next three weeks. Paul was separated from other suffrage prisoners and transferred to psychiatric ward at District jail for “evaluation” in an effort to intimidate and discredit her. William Alanson White, the superintendent of St. Elizabeths (psychiatric) Hospital, interviewed her in a vain attempt to have her committed. White found Paul to be sane and “perfectly calm, yet determined.”

     New York women won the right to vote on November 6, 1917. The state was the first in the East to grant women’s suffrage.

     A large demonstration was held on November 10 to protest the treatment of Paul and the other suffrage prisoners. Thirty-one pickets were arrested, including Burns, who had just been released from prison. The women were sentenced to varying terms in the District Jail. Five days later they were transferred to Occoquan where the superintendent had just returned from a White House meeting of district commissioners.

     He summarily dismissed the suffragists’ demands for political prisoner status. Moments later, guards burst into the holding area. They carried, pushed, threw and beat the women into their cells and told them to remain silent. Lucy Burns started to call role in order to assure that all of the women were alive and conscious. Guards demanded she stop. When she continued, they handcuffed her to the bars of her cell all night with her arms above her head. This became known as the “Night of Terror.” The next day, 16 women went on a hunger strike. Nearly a week later, Occoquan officials begin force-feeding Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis followed later by Elizabeth McShane, as they were considered leaders in the women’s resistance.   

Lucy Burns

     On November 23, Burns and her fellow prisoners were taken to a small Alexandria, Virginia courtroom. The press and public were shocked by the bruised and sickly appearance of the women. Attorneys for the suffragists successfully argued for returning the women to the District Jail. A few days after their return to Washington, D.C., government authorities unconditionally released Paul, Burns, and the rest of the suffragists in response to increasing public pressure and the likelihood that their convictions would be overturned on appeal. In March, 2018, the U.S. federal appeals court declared the arrests and detainment of all White House suffrage pickets was unconstitutional.

     A vote on the suffrage amendment was scheduled in the House of Representatives for January 10, 1918. Under tremendous political pressure, Wilson publicly declared his support for the amendment the night before the vote.  The House passed the measure with 274 ‘yeas’ to 136 “nays.”                               

     Over the next six months, the NWP embarked on a number of efforts to win the vote.  Many former prisoners participated in a speaking tour called the ‘Prison Special,’ while others intensely lobbied the Senate for passage of the amendment. The national committees of both the Democratic and Republican parties endorsed the amendment.

     The Senate scheduled a vote on the suffrage bill for May 10, but opponents forced a postponement to June 27. The opposition threatened a filibuster, again delaying the vote.      

     On August 6, the NWP held a meeting in Lafayette Park, Washington, D.C. Approximately 100 suffragists demonstrated in protest to the Senate’s inaction on suffrage amendment. Forty-eight women were arrested and released on bail, including Paul and Burns. Subsequent demonstrations led to more arrests. The women were tried, convicted and sentenced to the old District workhouse. Again denied political prisoner status, the women began hunger strikes. After a few days, the women were released before completing their sentences.

     Fall brought campaigns for the mid-term elections. The NWP opposed election of all Democratic senators, especially those in New Hampshire and New Jersey, where anti-suffrage candidates were running.

     New Mexico’s Senator Jones again introduced federal woman suffrage amendment in the Senate on September 26. After several days of debate, President Wilson addressed Senate asking for passage of the federal woman suffrage amendment as a war measure.

     On October 1, the Senate defeated the amendment, failing to achieve the required two-thirds majority by two votes. Supporters quickly added it to the Senate calendar for reconsideration.                   

     The NWP began picketing with banners in front of the U.S. Capitol and Senate Office Building on October 7. Demonstrators were arrested daily and released without charges.  Although harassed by unruly crowds, as well as antagonistic police, the pickets continued throughout October and November.

     World War I ended on November 11, 1918. On December 2, President Wilson urged passage of the federal woman suffrage amendment in his annual address to Congress, while police arrested NWP protesters outside.

     On February 10, 1919, the Senate again defeated the federal suffrage amendment, this time by one vote. NWP members met President Wilson in Boston upon his return from Europe on February 24. They carried banners reminding him of his pledge to support the suffrage amendment and lobbied him to pressure the Senate to pass the amendment before the March recess. The Senate failed to do so.

     The House of Representatives again passed the federal woman suffrage amendment on May 21, this time by a vote of 304 yeas to 89 nays, 42 more than the required two-thirds majority.

     On June 4, the Senate finally passed the federal suffrage amendment (19th Amendment) by vote of 56 yeas to 25 nays.

     The NWP launched a campaign to obtain ratification by 36 state legislatures–the required three-fourths majority at that time. With the war now over, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) also worked for the ratification of the 19^th Amendment. Throughout the rest of 1919 and early 1920, 35 states ratified the amendment. But then months passed with no additional ratifications.                                 

     On August 9, 1920, Tennessee Governor William Roberts convened a special session of the state legislature to consider ratification. For the next 10 days, suffragists and antisuffragists waged intense lobbying efforts and public relations campaigns. On August 18 Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment. Antisuffragists tried to overturn the vote, but after six days of legal wrangling, the governor signed the certificate of ratification.

     On August 26, the 19^th Amendment was signed into law—in time for the 1920 election.

     Millions of women across many generations fought for suffrage. To honor their sacrifices, we must make our voices heard. One hundred years later, the battle for the right to vote continues. Please cast your ballot in the 2020 election.

Ann Markim

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Gathering Steam

     The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) continued its quiet state-by-state campaign for the right to vote. Meanwhile, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU), led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, was determined to keep the cause in front of the public.

     In March 1914, the Senate voted on a federal woman suffrage amendment for first time since 1887. The bill was defeated. It was reintroduced the next day.

Chicago's Parade

     That same year, Paul organized May Day parades in cities across the country, garnering local and national publicity for the movement. Additionally, the National Federation of Women’s Clubs, with more than two million members throughout the U.S., formally endorsed the suffrage campaign. In November, women won full suffrage in Montana and Nevada.

     The House of Representatives voted for first time on a federal woman suffrage amendment in January 1915.  The measure was defeated.

     That same month, the CU opened a "freedom booth" at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where they displayed exhibits in support of expanding full women’s suffrage beyond the eleven states that already had it. Helen Keller, a famous supporter of the cause, spoke at the booth. The CU representatives collected 500,000 signatures on their suffrage petition at the exposition. Suffrage envoys left California in September, carrying the petition by automobile across the country to Congress and President Wilson.

Suffrage Envoys

    Carrie Chapman Catt again assumed leadership of the NAWSA in 1915. She continued the state-by-state efforts to win suffrage. Attempts to reconcile with the CU failed. Despite NAWSA objections, the CU restructured as a national organization and sent organizers to all states to plan conventions and establish state branches. In September, the CU held the first Woman Voters Convention with delegates from states where women had full voting rights.

     In December 1915, the CU held its first national convention in Washington, D.C. The event coincided with the opening of the 64^th Congress and the arrival of the suffrage envoys carrying the petition. On December 7, a federal woman suffrage amendment was introduced in the Senate. On the 16th, CU members testified in favor of the amendment before the House Judiciary Committee. The next day, a final attempt at reconciliation with the NAWSA failed.

      To keep the cause before the public, 23 CU members left Washington, D.C. in April 1916 on "The Suffrage Special," a five-week train tour to garner support for the federal woman suffrage amendment among women voters in the West. Subsequently, Alice Paul organized the National Woman’s Party, which was made up of women who already had full suffrage. They supported the efforts of their disenfranchised sisters, who were still represented by the CU. The two complementary organizations coexisted until they merged into the National Woman’s Party (NWP) in 1917.

                                                    

NWP  Flag

      The NWP met in Colorado Springs in 1916 to discuss the upcoming election. They chose not to endorse either candidate during the presidential campaigns.  Instead, they decided to oppose all Democratic congressional candidates in order to hold the party in power responsible for failure to pass the suffrage amendment.

      On October 20, a mob attacked NWP members who were demonstrating against Woodrow Wilson outside a Chicago auditorium. Three days later, Inez Milholland Boissevain, leader of the 1913 parade in Washington, D.C. and an NWP organizer, collapsed from exhaustion on the stage while giving speech against President Wilson and the Democratic Party in Los Angeles. She died of pernicious anemia on November 25 at the age of 30, becoming widely regarded as the first martyr of the women’s suffrage movement.

     In the November election, Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. Woodrow Wilson was re-elected President.

     NWP members silently demonstrated at Wilson’s annual address to Congress on December 5. They held a banner that read: “Mr. President, What Will You Do For Woman Suffrage?” A memorial service for Boissevain was held on Christmas Day in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. Attendees drafted suffrage resolutions for presentation to the President.

     After two weeks of stonewalling, Wilson finally met with a delegation of 300 women on January 9, 1917. They presented him with the resolutions drafted during the memorial service and asked him to use his influence to promote a federal woman suffrage amendment. Wilson angrily refused and walked out on the women.

Silent Sentinels

     In response to Wilson’s rejection of their request for his support a federal amendment, NWP members began picketing the White House. These “Silent Sentinels” stood outside the fence day after day, despite rain, snow or whatever weather they encountered. They held banners with pro-suffrage messages and other banners of purple, white, and gold, the colors of the NWP.

 

Grand Picket

     On March 4, the eve of Wilson’s second inauguration, more than 1000 women staged a “Grand Picket.” They marched around the perimeter of the White House, where all gates to the grounds were locked, in driving icy rain, waiting to present him with resolutions from their national convention. After several hours, Wilson and his wife left the White House, driving past the picket line.

     In April, federal women’s suffrage amendments were introduced in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Additionally, the United States entered World War I. Carrie Chapman Catt promised President Wilson that the NAWSA would cease efforts on behalf of winning the vote in support of the war effort. Meanwhile, the “Silent Sentinels” continued their daily pickets.

      The battle had risen to a new level.

Ann Markim

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Into the Storm

     As the twentieth century dawned, women had full suffrage in only four states – Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho and Utah. Women failed to win full voting rights in any additional states until the dam broke in 1910,  when the state of Washington granted women’s suffrage.

Alice Paul

     That same year, Alice Paul returned to the United States from London, where she had been studying and working as a case worker in a settlement house. While in England, she became involved in the struggle for women’s rights. Through her experiences with arrests, imprisonments, hunger strikes, and forced feedings, she learned how to generate publicity for the cause and how to capitalize on that publicity from the British leaders of the movement. Paul returned to the University of Pennsylvania to continue her studies and began participating in National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) activities, including speaking at the national convention.

     Finally, in the culmination of a long struggle, California women won the right to vote in 1911.

     In 1912, the Progressive Party, led by Theodore Roosevelt, included voting rights for women in their platform. That same year, women won the right to vote in Oregon, Arizona, and Kansas. But eastern states continued to stand in staunch opposition to the cause.

     After earning her Ph.D. in sociology in 1912, Paul dedicated herself to American suffrage efforts. She strongly supported a federal suffrage, which ran contrary to the entrenched state-by-state plan of the NASWA. She and Lucy Burns, who had also been involved in England’s women’s rights movement, joined forces. Paul asked to be assigned to the association’s Congressional Committee.

     One of her first major efforts on the committee was to plan and execute a parade in Washington, D.C. to bring national attention to the suffrage movement and to put pressure on newly elected President Woodrow Wilson. The event was scheduled the day before his inauguration in in March 1913.

     She recruited approximately 8000 marchers from around the country and organized floats, bands and chariots to intersperse with the suffragists. A contingent of men who supported women’s suffrage made up one unit. To placate the southern marchers, the black women were asked to march at the end of the procession.

     Many participants carried banners or wore sashes demanding votes for women. The parade was led by notable labor lawyer Inez Milholland, dressed in white and riding a white horse,  and by a huge banner proclaiming, "We Demand an Amendment to the United States Constitution Enfranchising the Women of the Country."

     The police force was insufficient to keep the peace. More than half-a-million people turned out to view the parade, including large numbers of men in town for the inauguration. When the crowd pushed into the streets, creating chaos and preventing the procession from passing, many of the policemen did nothing to protect the marchers. Approximately 100 women sustained injuries and were hospitalized. Ultimately, national guardsmen were called in to restore order. A Senate hearing was called later in the week to review the  performance of the police. Many women recounted the inaction of the police and one Senator testified to the badge numbers of police officers he had seen standing idly by rather than coming to the aid of the marchers.

     The parade succeeded in bringing national attention to the movement. That same year, the Alaska Territory granted full suffrage to women.

      Paul's methods and her emphasis on the goal of a federal amendment created tension with Anna Shaw, president of NAWSA, and other leaders of the organization. They thought Paul was moving too aggressively in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere and were unhappy that she didn’t support their state-by-state approach. Disagreements about strategy and methods led to a break with NAWSA.

      By the beginning of 1914, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns had formed the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage to campaign for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing suffrage for women throughout the United States of America.

     The fight was on.

Ann Markim

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A Lull Before the Storm

     By the end of the nineteenth century, women had won full suffrage in only four states — Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah. In 1900, Susan B. Anthony turned over the presidency of the now-united National American Woman Suffrage Association  (NAWSA) to Carrie Chapman Catt, signaling a new generation of leadership.

     During this period, little effort was devoted toward passage of a constitutional amendment. Instead, the association’s work centered around winning voting rights in the individual states. Catt gave speeches and organized women to help plan and execute suffrage campaigns. In many states, men feared that enfranchising women would interfere with political efforts to disenfranchise African-Americans and immigrants. Despite its Quaker roots, NAWSA was not immune to Jim Crow influences. While the national organization did not explicitly prohibit non-white members, it allowed state and local affiliates to set their own membership requirements. Many groups, especially in the South, admitted only white women.

     Catt devised the ‘society plan’ to recruit wealthy members of women's clubs into the NAWSA. These women had organizing experience, time to volunteer, and money to contribute to the cause. While there was a strong black woman’s club movement, Catt did not extend her recruiting efforts to them, even though those groups were often engaged in promoting women’s rights, including suffrage. Consequently, the NAWSA became predominantly white. 

     In 1902, Catt helped to found the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). The IWSA brought together groups pursuing votes for women around the world, eventually representing 32 nations. The organization is now known as the International Alliance of Women.

    When Catt’s husband fell ill in 1904, she resigned her NAWSA presidency to care for him. He died in October 1905. 

Anna Howard Shaw

     Anna Howard Shaw succeeded Catt to the NAWSA presidency. Although she was a talented speaker, she lacked the leadership skills of her predecessors. However, when southern NAWSA members formed the Southern Woman Suffrage Conference in 1906, Shaw refused to give the national association’s endorsement to the overtly racist organization.

     During Shaw’s term, members organized other new affiliates. In 1907, Harriet Stanton Blatch (Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s daughter) formed the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, with membership comprised of professional and industrial working women. This contrasted with Catt’s ‘society plan’ which appealed to upper-class women. The Equality League adopted tactics of English suffragists, including parades, street speakers, and pickets. The League became the Women's Political Union in 1910.  

  

    The National College Equal Suffrage League became an affiliate of the NAWSA in 1908. The organization had been founded in Boston at the beginning of the century as the College Equal Suffrage League.

     The death of Carrie Chapman Catt’s husband was followed by a rapid succession of more deaths among people important to her. Susan B. Anthony died in February 1906, and Catt's mother and younger brother both died in 1907. These sorrows plunged Catt into despair. Her doctor and friends convinced her that traveling abroad would help her recover from the devastating losses. She spent much of the following eight years promoting equal-suffrage rights worldwide as the IWSA president.

      In 1909, Catt and some of her friends founded the Woman Suffrage Party to fight for the vote in New York. Within a year, the Party had 20,000 members. The organization remained independent, but Catt and its other leaders remained loyal to the NAWSA.

      By the end of the decade, the public’s attitude toward the suffrage movement had improved dramatically. Working for the cause had come to be viewed by many as a respectable activity for middle-class women. Infrastructure in support of the suffrage movement had been built. However, from 1896 to 1910 there had been six state campaigns for suffrage. All six failed.

     But the tide was about to turn.

Ann Markim

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