User:Kdorse29/Ida B. Wells

Willard controversy[ edit]
Wells' role in the U.S. suffrage movement was inextricably linked to her lifelong crusade against racism, violence and discrimination towards African Americans. Her view of women's enfranchisement was pragmatic and political. Like all suffragists she believed in women's right to vote, but she also saw enfranchisement as a way for black women to become politically involved in their communities and to use their votes to elect African Americans, regardless of gender, to influential political offices.

As a prominent black suffragist, Wells held strong positions against racism, violence and lynching that brought her into conflict with leaders of largely white suffrage organizations. Perhaps the most notable example of this conflict was her very public disagreement with Frances Willard, the first President of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

The WCTU was a predominantly white women's organization, with branches in every state and a growing membership. With roots in the call for temperance and sobriety, the organization later became a powerful advocate of suffrage in the U.S.

In 1893 Wells and Willard traveled separately to Britain on lecture tours. Willard was promoting temperance as well as suffrage for women, and Wells was calling attention to lynching in the U.S. The basis of their dispute was Wells' public statements that Willard was silent on the issue of lynching. She referred to an interview Willard had conducted during her tour of the American South, in which she had blamed African Americans' behavior for the defeat of temperance legislation. "The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt," she had said, and "the grog shop is its center of power. ... The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities."[63]

Although Willard and her prominent supporter Lady Somerset attempted to limit press coverage of Wells' comments, newspapers in Britain in fact provided details of the dispute.

Wells also dedicated a chapter of her 1895 pamphlet A Red Record to juxtapose the different positions that she and Willard held. The chapter titled "Miss Willard's Attitude" condemned Willard for using rhetoric that she thought promoted violence and other crimes against African Americans in America.

Alpha Suffrage Club[ edit]
In the years following her dispute with Willard, Wells continued her Anti- Lynching campaign and organizing in Chicago. She focused her work on black women's suffrage in the city following the enactment of a new state law enabling partial women's suffrage. The Illinois Presidential and Municipal Suffrage Bill of 1913 gave women in the state the right to vote for presidential electors, mayor, aldermen and most other local offices; but not for governor, state representatives or members of Congress. Illinois was the first state east of the Mississippi to give women these voting rights. During the membership of Ida B. Wells in the Negro Fellowship League, the organization advocated for women's suffrage alongside its support for the Republican Party in Illinois. The Negro Fellowship League aided alongside the Alpha Suffrage Club in the creation of the Federated Organizations.

This act was the impetus for Wells and her white colleague Belle Squire to organize the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago in 1913. One of the most important black suffrage organizations in Chicago, the Alpha Suffrage Club was founded as a way to further voting rights for all women, to teach black women how to engage in civic matters and to work to elect African Americans to city offices. Two years after its founding, the club played a significant role in electing Oscar DePriest as the first African-American Alderman in Chicago.

As Wells and Squire were organizing the Alpha Club, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was organizing a suffrage parade in Washington D.C. Marching the day before the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson in 1913, suffragists from across the country gathered to demand universal suffrage. Wells, together with a delegation of members from Chicago, attended. On the day of the march, the head of the Illinois delegation told the Wells delegates that the NAWSA wanted "to keep the delegation entirely white." and all African-American suffragists, including Wells were to walk at the end of the parade in a "colored delegation." Instead of going to the back with other African Americans, however, Wells waited with spectators as the parade was underway, and stepped into the white Chicago delegation as they passed by.

During World War I, the U.S. government placed Wells under surveillance, labeling her a dangerous "race agitator." She defied this threat by continuing civil rights work during this period with such figures as Marcus Garvey, Monroe Trotter, and Madam C.J. Walker. In 1917, she wrote a series of investigative reports for the Chicago Defender on the East St. Louis Race Riots.

After almost thirty years away, Wells made her first trip back to the South in 1921 to investigate and publish a report on the Elaine Race Riot in Arkansas (published 1922). In the 1920s, she participated in the struggle for African-American workers rights, urging black women's organizations to support the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, as it tried to gain legitimacy. However, she lost the presidency of the National Association of Colored Women in 1924 to the more diplomatic Mary Bethune. In the late 1920s, Wells remained active in the Republican Party. To challenge what she viewed as problems in Chicago for African Americans, Wells started a political organization named Third Ward Women's Political Club in 1927. In 1928, she tried to become a delegate to the Republican National Convention but loss to Oscar De Priest. Her feelings toward the Republican Party became more mixed due to the Hoover Administration's stance on civil rights and attempts to promote a "Lily-white" policy in Southern Republican organizations. In addition, she became impatient with local Republican politicians. In 1930, Wells unsuccessfully sought elective office, running as an independent for a seat in the Illinois Senate. In her race, she lacked the support of Regular Republicans and De Priest who supported Adelbert Roberts, who won the seat.