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2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

The Many Lives of Ida B. Wells: Autobiography, Historical Biography, and Documentary

Author : Delphine Letort

Published in: Women Activists and Civil Rights Leaders in Auto/Biographical Literature and Films

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Wells related her lifelong commitment to anti-lynching campaigns in an autobiography that historians and biographers have thoroughly exploited to reconstruct her persona. The woman’s life story has allowed them to point out the interweaving of personal and political motives behind her consistent engagement with racial issues. This article calls attention to biographical details that shed light on the woman’s character in a context of coercion. The posthumous publication of primary sources, including The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells (1995), and of a list of secondary sources allows for a comparative approach that spotlights different personality traits depending on the authors’ perception of Wells’ role in history as influenced by contemporary scholarship trends. The memory of Wells seems to arouse conflicting interpretations, which she was also victim of during her lifetime.

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Footnotes
1
Among them: Linda O. McMurry, To Keep the Waters Troubled (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Wanda A. Hendricks, Gender, Race, and Politics in the Midwest (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998); Paula J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (New York: Amistad/HarperCollins, 2008); James W. Davidson, ‘They Say’: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Patricia A. Schechter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform 1880–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).
 
2
Paula Giddings, “Missing in Action: Ida B. Wells, the NAACP, and the Historical Record,” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, vol. 1, no. 2 (2001): 1–17. The article by Tommy J. Curry illustrates this controversy: “Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) has earned the coveted status of a canonical figure in the American Academy. The recent texts dedicated to her life by Paula Giddings and Mia Bay not only establish Wells-Barnett’s significance as a black historical figure, but argue that our current study of black intellectual history is in fact incomplete without her presence. […] However, the trajectory of the scholarship which serves as the foundation of Wells-Barnett’s canonization has also had a narrowing effect on particular aspects of her thought” (Curry 2012: 457).
 
3
She mentions “the gallant fight and marvellous bravery of the black men of the South fighting and dying to exercise and maintain their newborn rights as free men and citizens, with little protection from the government which gave them these rights and with no previous training in citizenship or politics” (Wells 1970: 24).
 
4
“Of the various genres that comprise the African-American literary tradition, none has played a role as central as has black autobiography. […] Through autobiography, these writers could, at once, shape a public ‘self’ in language, and protest the degradation of their ethnic group by the multiple forms of American racism. The ultimate form of protest, certainly, was to register the existence of a ‘black self’ that had transcended the limitations and restrictions that racism had placed on the personal development of the black individual” (Gates 1991: 3).
 
5
Her autobiography refers to several cases of insult, including a menacing editorial published in the Commercial Appeal that targeted her (although her pen name preserved her anonymity): “The black wretch who had written that foul lie should be tied to a stake at the corner of Main and Madison Streets, a pair of tailor’s shears used on him and he should be burned at a stake” (Wells 1970: 86).
 
6
“Why is it that white women attract negro men now more than in the former days? There was a time when such a thing was unheard of. There is secret to this thing and we greatly suspect it is the growing appreciation of white Juliets for colored Romeos.” See her article in the Indianapolis News, Tuesday, August 16, 1887. http://​www.​newspapers.​com/​clip/​1221668/​the_​indianapolis_​news/​, accessed on November 30, 2017.
 
7
Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases (1892). http://​www.​digitalhistory.​uh.​edu/​disp_​textbook.​cfm?​smtid=​3&​psid=​3614, accessed on November 22, 2017.
 
8
Booker T. Washington: The Life and the Legacy (1986) and Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey (William Greaves, 2001).
 
9
Melba Joyce Boyd wrote: “If there is one incongruity in the film, it is the narration. Since the man behind the voice, Al Freeman, Jr., is never shown in the film, the narration hovers over the film like an omniscient eye. Consequently, even though this is a film about a black woman from the past, the subliminal effect of the male voice, which gives the first and the last words on the subject, suggests that the larger intelligence and the broader view of history is male” (Boyd 1994: 134).
 
10
“In contrast with the few privileges granted to white upper class women, African American and native people did not gain the right to represent themselves; African American women and men made vain attempts to have at least one black woman integrate the Board of Lady Managers. During the exhibition, African American activists Ida B. Wells, Irvine Garland Penn, Ferdinand L. Barnett, and Frederick Douglass handed out ten thousand copies of their pamphlet entitled The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition (Rydell, 1999). They denounced the inherent racism of the Dahomeys’ village exhibited in the Midway Plaisance, which used black Africans as the representatives of ‘race in the White city.’ The African American protestors were able to challenge their official exclusion thanks to regular demonstrations which pressured the committee into devoting one day to them on August 25.” See http://​www.​cccg.​umontreal.​ca/​pdf/​Annick%20​Druelle_​fr.​pdf, accessed on October 28, 2017, my translation.
 
11
Schechter pinpoints Wells’ biased confession in her autobiography: she explains that she had “no knowledge of stage business” when delivering her speech in New York whereas Schechter recalls that “living in Memphis, she had performed public readings, organized and acted in a dramatic club, and even been scouted by a New York talent agent” (Schechter 2001: 20).
 
12
Schechter argues that “there emerged at the elite level a gender division of labor, which assigned political and intellectual leadership to men while entrusting to women a parallel role of prayer, education, and fundraising in female networks” (Schechter 2001: 165).
 
Literature
Bay, Mia. To Tell the Truth Freely, the Life of Ida B. Wells. New York: Hill & Wang, 2009.
Boyd, Melba J. “Reviews.” NWSA Journal, vol. 6, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 134.
Braxton, Joanne. Black Women Writing Autobiography—A Tradition Within a Tradition. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
Brown, Tom and Belén Vidal (eds.). The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2014.
Curry, Tommy J. “The Fortune of Wells: Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s Use of T. Thomas Fortune’s Philosophy of Social Agitation as a Prolegomenon to Militant Civil Rights Activism.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, vol. 48, no. 4 (Fall 2012): 456–482.
Custen, Georges F. Bio/Pics, How Hollywood Constructed Public History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Davidson, James W. ‘They Say’: Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Gates, Henry Louis. Bearing Witness. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991.
Giddings, Paula. “Missing in Action: Ida B. Wells, the NAACP, and the Historical Record.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, vol. 1, no. 2 (2001): 1–17.
Giddings, P.J. Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. New York: Amistad/HarperCollins, 2008.
Hendricks, W.A. Gender, Race, and Politics in the Midwest. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
Klotman, Phyllis and Janet Cutler. “Interview with William Greaves.” September 12, 1991. Black Film Center/Archives Interview Collection.
———. Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
Lupo, Jonathan and Carolyn Anderson. “Introduction to the Special Issue.” Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 36, no. 2 (2008): 50–51.
McMurry, Linda O. “Movie Reviews.” The Journal of American History, vol. 79, no. 3, Discovering American: A Special Issue (December 1992): 1275.
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Schechter, Patricia A. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform 1880–1930. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
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Steedman, Carolyn. “La théorie qui n’en est pas une, or, Why Clio Doesn’t Care.” In Anne-Shapiro Louise (ed.), History and Feminist Theory. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University, 1992, 33–50.
Stokes, Melvyn. D.W. Griffith’s the Birth of a Nation. A History of the “Most Controversial Picture of All Time.” New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Taylor, Clyde. “Paths of Enlightenment: Heroes, Rebels, and Thinkers.” In Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler (eds.), Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999, 122–150.
———. Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, ed. Alfreda M. Duster. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970.
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Metadata
Title
The Many Lives of Ida B. Wells: Autobiography, Historical Biography, and Documentary
Author
Delphine Letort
Copyright Year
2018
Book
Women Activists and Civil Rights Leaders in Auto/Biographical Literature and Films

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77080-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-77081-9

Copyright Year: 2018

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77081-9_6