Jim Crow and Lynching
Chapter 15 Clubs, Causes, and Reform 3s1
A White Womfrn's F alsehood Ida B. Wells,1"894
lda B. Wells-Barretf, A Red Record (1894) in August Meier, ed.,ldaWells-Barneft on Lynching (Neru York: Arno Press, 1-969), pp. 5841, 65.
]oumalist and publisher Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) shaped a unique re- form career. Bom a slave in Mississippi during the Civit Wariwells lost her parents to a yellow fever epidemic when she was L6, inl.g7g, and supportgd her siblings by teaching. Moving to Memphis, Tennessee, where she again taught school, Wells invested in a local black weekly newspaper, Free Speech, of which she was co-edito1, and also became part-owner of a black-owned newspaper in New york, the New York Age. Wells began her famous crusade against lynching in her articles and books of the 1890s. Later she moved to Chicago, where she continued her battle. Active in black women,s clubs, Wells also supported woman suffrage and helped to organize the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP) in 1909.
The investigator of more than 700 lynchings Wells announced her findings tn the Age and other publications. She revealed many purported motives for lyrching, among them the allegation of rape- in instances of liaisons between black men and white women-that were, she claimed, "voluntary, clandestine, and illicit.,, But those who perpetrated llmchings, said Wells, ignored evidence about the con- sensual nature of these black-white relationships.* White women, she contended, were often accusers of lovers and agents of murder: "White men lynch the offending Afro-American not because he is a despoiler of virtue, but because he succumbs to the smiles of a white woman." In an 1894 book, the Red Record, Wells revealed instances of alleged-rape that she had culled from the press, based on the reports of southern white men ("Out of their mouths shall the murderers be condemned"). In the fust of the following instances, a minister,s wife in Ohio offered false testimony and later recanted to her husband, who divorced her. In a second, a white teenager in Memphis refused to reveal the name of the father of her illegitimate mixed-race child, thus saving the man's lile. In a third instance, an Alabama mtu:r was lynched for a sexual relationship with a young white woman.
*For a study of such relationships, see Martha Elizabeth Hodes , White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (New Haven, Conn.: yale University press, 1997), ch. g.
352 Part 3 The Late Nineteenth Centuty, 1860-1900
History of Some Cases of Rape
It has been claimed that the Southern white women have been slandered because, in defending the Negro race from the charge that all colored men, who are lynched, only pay penalty for assaulting women. It is certain that lynching mobs have not only refused to give the Negro a chance to defend himself, but have killed their victim with a full knowledge that the relationship of the alleged as- sailant with the woman who accused him, was voluntary and clandestine. As a matter of fact, one of the prime causes of the Lynch Law agitation has been a ne- cessity for defending the Negro from this awful charge against him. This defense has been necessary because the apologists for outlawry insist that in no case has the accusing woman been a willing consort of her paramour, who is lynched be- cause overtaken in wrong. It is well known, however, that such is the case. . . .
These charges so often reiterated, have had the effect of fastening the odium upon the race of a peculiar propensity for this foul crime. The Negro is thus forced to a defense of his good name, and this chapter will be devoted to the history of some of the cases where assault upon white women by Negroes is charged. He is
not the aggressor in this flght, but the situation demands that the facts be given, and they will speak for themselves. Of the 1,115 Negro men, women and children hanged, shot and roasted alive from January 1st, 1882, to January 1st, 1894, inclusive, only 348 of that number were charged with rape. Nearly 700 of these persons were lynched for any other reason which could be manufactured by a mob
wishing to indulge in a lynching bee.
A White Woman's Falsehood
The Cleveland, Ohio, Gazelte, January 16, 1892, gives an account of one of these cases of "rape."
Mrs. J. C. Underwood, the wife of a minister of Elyria, Ohio, accused an Afro-American of rape. She told her husband that during his absence in 1888, stumping the state for the Prohibition Party, the man came to the kitchen door, forced his way in the house and insulted her. She tried to drive him out with a heavy poker, but he overpowered and chloroformed her, and when she revived her
clothing was torn and she was in a horrible condition. She did not know the man, but could identify him. She subsequently pointed out William Offett, a married man, who was arrested, and, being in Ohio, was granted a trial.
The prisoner vehemently denied the charge of rape, but confessed he went to Mrs. Underwood's residence at her invitation and was criminally intimate with her at her request. This availed him nothing against the sworn testimony of a min- ister's wife, a lady of the highest respectability. He was found guilty, and entered the penitentiary, December 14, 1888, for fifteen years. Sometime afterwards the woman's remorse led her to confess to her husband that the man was innocent. These are her words: "I met Offett at the postoffice. It was raining. He was polite to me, and as I had several bundles in my arms he offered to carry them home for me, which he did. He had a strange fascination for me, and I invited him to call
Chapter 15 Clubs, Causes, and Reform 3s3
on me. He called, bringing chestnuts and candy for the children. By this means we got them to leave us alone in the room. Then I sat on his lap. He made a proposal to me and I readily consented. Why I did so I do not know, but that I did is true. He visited me several times after that and each time I was indiscreet. I did not care after the first time. In fact I could not have resisted, and had no desire to resist."
When asked by her husband why she told him she had been outraged, she said: "I had several reasons for telling you. One was the neighbors saw the fellow here, another was, I was afraid I had contracted a loathsome disease, and still an- other was that I feared I might give birth to a Negro baby. I hoped to save my rep- utation by telling you a deliberate lie." Her husband, horrified by the confession, had Offett, who had already served four years, released and secured a divorce.
There have been many such cases tlroughout the South, with the difference that the Southern white men in insensate fury wreak their vengeance without in- tervention of law upon the Negro who consorts with their women.
Tbied to Manufacture an Outrage
The Memphis (Tenn.) Ledger, of June 8,l8g2,has the following: "If Lillie Bailey, a rather pretty white girl, seventeen years of age, who is now at the city hospital, would be somewhat less reserved about her disgrace there would be some very nauseating details in the story of her life. She is the mother of a little coon. The truth might reveal fearful depravity or the evidence of a rank outrage. She will not divulge the name of the man who has left such black evidence of her disgrace, and in fact says it is a matter in which there can be no interest to the outside world. She came to Memphis nearly three months ago, and was taken in at the'Woman's Refuge in the southern part of the city. She remained there until a few weeks ago when the child was born. The ladies in charge of the Refuge were horrified. The girl was at once sent to the city hospital, where she has been since May 30th. She is a counffy girl. She came to Memphis from her father's farm, a short distance from Hernando, Miss. Just when she left there she would not say. In fact she says she came to Memphis from Arkansas, and says her home is in that state. She is rather good looking, has blue eyes, a low forehead and dark red hair. The ladies at the Woman's Refuge do not know anything about the girl further than what they learned when she was an inmate of the institution; and she would not tell much. When the child was born an attempt was made to get the girl to reveal the name of the Negro who had disgraced her, she obstinately refused and it was impossible to elicit any information from her on the subject."
Note the wording: "The truth might reveal fearful depravity or rank outrage." If it had been a white child or if Lillie Bailey had told a pitiful story of Negro out- rage, it would have been a case of woman's weakness or assault and she could have remained at the Woman's Refuge. But a Negro child and to withhold its father's name and thus prevent the killing of another Negro "rapist" was a case of "fearful depravity." Had she revealed the father's name, he would have been lynched and his taking off charged to an assault upon a white woman. . . .
354 Part 3 The Late Nineteenth Century, 1860-1900
Lynched as a Warning
Alabama furnishes a case in point. A colored man named Daniel Edwards, lived near Selma, Alabama, and worked for a family of a farmer near that place. This re-
sulted in an intimacy between the young man and a daughter of the householder, which finally developed in the disgrace of the girl. After the birth of the child, the mother disclosed the fact that Edwards was its father. The relationship had been
sustained for more than a year, and yet this colored man was apprehended, thrown into jail from whence he was taken by a mob of one hundred neighbors and hung to a tree and his body riddled with bullets. A dispatch which describes the lynch- ing, ends as follows. "IJpon his back was found pinned this morning the follow- ing: 'Warning to all Negroes that are too intimate with white gids. This the work
of one hundred best citizens of the South Side."' There can be no doubt from the announcement made by this "one hundred
best citizens" that they understood full well the character of the relationship which existed between Edwards and the girl, but when the dispatches were sent out, de-
scribing the affair, it was claimed that Edwards was lynched for rape.