Leigh Logan's Ida B. Wells and Her Fight for Positive Black Representation comprises part of The 1701 Project, a venture led by The Yale Historical Review.

1. FALL 2020
IDA B. WELLS AND HER FIGHT FOR
POSITIVE BLACK REPRESENTATION
by Leigh Logan '21
Edited by Serena Cho '21 and Yassi Xiong '22
1YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW

2. FTER EMANCIPATION IN 1863, white
supremacists sought to replicate oppression
during the period of chattel slavery. They
created the rape/lynch myth, which saw
black men as violent predators of white women and in-
sinuated lynching to be the only appropriate solution
for said crimes. While the roots of the lynching cri-
sis stemmed from the economic turmoil of the south
following the falling prices of cotton, the myth conti-
nued to engrain negative stereotypes and representa-
tions of blackness through the US — not just the south.
Through her work to expose the rape/lynch myth, Ida B.
Wells refuted the excuse of preventing sexual violence
to justify the lynchings of black men in her writings and
pamphlets. In her piece “Crusader for Justice,” she de-
bunked the myths of white southern mob violence and
exposed the baseless arguments for these acts of terror.
By focusing on statistical and empirical evidence and
distributing her findings throughout the US despite the
threat of violence, Wells broke down the constructed
image of the black race as violent and unruly and acted
as an example of black excellence.
In Ida B. Wells’ speech in 1909 at the National Negro
Conference, she chronicled all the justifications used to
rationalize the lynchings of 285 people after the riot in
Springfield, IL. In doing so, she exposed the inconsis-
tency in the rationalization of these murders because
92 of the cases cited occurred because of an “unknown
cause,” “no cause, 10; race prejudice, 49.”1
These statis-
tics demonstrated the baseless accusations that led to
the hanging of black people in the south and reinforced
Wells’ argument that “Lynching is color-line murder”
and that “Crimes against women is the excuse, not
the cause.”2
These two assertions exposed the injustice
behind the gratuitous murders of black people to pro-
tect white women and helped allocate space for black
women to situate themselves as proper citizens by no
longer forcing black women to choose between their
womanhood or their race. Wells published multiple ar-
ticles and pamphlets addressing these issues and helped
correct the negative representations of blackness and
1 Ida B. Wells “Crusader for Justice,” in 2nd Edition Marable, Manning, Leith Mullings, Let Nobody Turn
Us Around: an African American Anthology (Roman and Litfield Publishers, INC., Lanham), 193.
2 Ibid, 192.
3 Feimster, Crystal Nicole. Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2011, 91-92.
4 Ida B. Wells “Crusader for Justice,” 193.
opened the door for the creation of spaces centered
around the protection of black womanhood.
Ida B. Wells’ anti-lynching campaign resulted in
long-term effects that enforced positive representations
of blackness on a gendered spectrum. The evidence
she found refuting the rape/lynch ideology addressed
the stigmatized reputation of black men and opened
up channels through which black women could claim
citizenship and rights. In Crystal Feimster’s book Sou-
thern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and
Lynching, she writes about the effects of female-led an-
ti-lynching campaigns, with parts of the work focusing
on Ida B. Wells’ work. In the fourth chapter entitled
“Organizing in Defense of Black Womanhood,” Feims-
ter writes, “Wells challenged the idea that lynching re-
sulted from rape and presented statistics showing that
only one-third of the black victims of lynch mobs had
actually been accused of rape.” She argued that the
portrayal of African-Americans as rapists made them
“moral monsters” and placed them “beyond the pale of
human sympathy.” Wells suggested that the focus and
attention placed on the alleged black rapist masked the
rape of black women,” and that her articles allowed for
the claiming of black womanhood.3
Because lynchings
in the south focused solely on the rape of white women,
this led to the dismissal of the constant sexual violation
of black women. This challenged black women’s claim to
citizenship and rights, and by exposing the rape/lynch
myth through her anti-lynching campaigns, Wells wor-
ked to disprove this ideology. In a speech delivered at the
National Negro Conference in 1909, Ida B. Wells stated
that “The cowardly lyncher revels in murder, then seeks
to shield himself from public execration by claiming de-
votion to woman. But truth is mighty and the lynching
record discloses the hypocrisy of the lyncher as well as
his crime.”4
Her work in disseminating correct informa-
tion through her publications such as Free Speech and
Southern Horrors allowed her to uncover the two-fold
implications of the rape/lynch myth. White lynch mobs
only protected white womanhood and often partici-
pated in the rape of black women, so their call for safety
A
2 IDA B. WELLS AND HER FIGHT FOR POSITIVE BLACK REPRESENTATION

3. and security turned out to be inconsistent. Her work
to unmask the statistics regarding lynchings revealed a
divergence from the everyday prevailing discourse and
justification of the acts of violence.
Throughout the United States, the universal rhetoric
on the crisis of lynching in the south focused on the per-
ceived criminality of black people. Ida B. Wells strove
to repudiate this sentiment by creating publications
and denouncing sources, within these newly establi-
shed journals, whose pieces added to the pervasive
ideology of black violence against white women. In
her speech to the attendees of the National Negro
Conference, she addressed this issue and delivered
a call to action to news publications, stating “If the
newspaper which suggests lynching in its accounts
of an alleged crime, could be held legally as well as
morally responsible for reporting that “threats of
lynching were heard”; or “it is feared that if the guilty
one is caught, he will be lynched”; or, “there were
cries of ‘lynch him,’ and the only reason the threat
was not carried out was because no leader appeared,”
a long step toward a remedy will have been taken.”5
In
this statement, Wells denounced choices newspapers
made in reporting cases of mob violence in the south
that attributed to the rhetoric of violent black crimi-
nals. Associating lynchings with the perceived cri-
minality of an individual perpetuated the rape/lynch
myth in that it did not lead with the assumption of
innocence and relied on the mob to determine the
correct punishment. By writing pieces and condem-
ning the most circulated publications for bolstering
the rape/lynch myth in the south, Wells broke down
the nuanced implications of the problem at the out-
set. It is not just that white men continually murde-
red black men for their assumed guilt, but the root of
the issue is that the country had created a system that
perpetuated and protected the rhetoric of the black
criminal. While typical associations with lynchings
relate to black masculinity, Ida B. Wells uncovered
the myth that showed how murders of black men re-
lated to black woman’s citizenship.
Wells’ achievements through her anti-lynching cam-
paigns opened a channel that, through the protection of
black womanhood, instilled in the women at the time
the desire to create spaces of their own dedicated to the
5 Ibid, 194.
6 Feimster. Southern Horrors, 87-88.
uplift of the race focusing on politics of respectability.
White women helped construct the stereotype of the
black rapist, and their fear of it compelled and cataly-
zed the formation of the white mob. Because of this,
conversations about sexual violence neglected the rapes
of black people, and the nostalgia of the “old south” per-
petuatedtheracismunderlyingtherape/lynchdynamic.
In Feimster’s novel Southern Horrors, she writes that be-
cause “lynching had much more to do with preventing
black political and economic mobility than protecting
white women from rape,” the dual effects of Ida B. Wells’
anti-lynching campaign created a “platform that called
for the end of lynching and the protection of black wo-
men against white rape. In doing so, she inspired the
emergence of the black women’s club movement.”6
Tar-
geting black men as rapists absolved white men of this
crime and helped situate this group as the protector and
owner of sexuality for both black and white women.
Through the use of the rape/lynch myth, white mobs
established themselves as owners of women’s sexuality
and disregarded the possibility of sexual violence done
unto black women because doing so would have im-
plicated themselves. Wells’ platform served both black
men and women because dispelling the myth of the
rape/lynch dynamic displayed the self-serving, duplici-
tous motives behind white lynch mobs. Her methods
re-centered conversations about sexual violence around
womanhood — not just along racial lines — and allowed
for opportunities to expose white male rapists because
the definition of the act no longer solely targeted black
men. As a black female scholar writing articles about
this issue, Wells asserted herself as an academic and a
role model for black female leaders fighting to preserve
their collective citizenship. These organizations birthed
from the momentum Wells created, worked for politics
of respectability that displayed a polished and palatable
side of African Americans and worked to uplift the race
by starting with mundane changes.
Ida B. Wells championed the struggle against nega-
tive perceptions of blackness during the Reconstruc-
tion Era. Her dedication to disseminating anti-lynching
pamphlets and journals deconstructed narratives used
to justify the lynching crisis in the south. At the time,
dismantling the rape/lynch myth allowed for black
women’s accounts of sexual abuse to begin to heard
3YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW

4. which then opened doors for black women to insert
themselves in political discourse. Wells challenged dis-
cussions of white southern manhood and exposed the
hypocrisies of the rhetoric of protecting womanhood
as justifications for the murder of black people. Fueled
by her work, many other black women created spaces
to brainstorm ways to uplift the black race, which later
would lead to the foundations of the politics of respec-
tability. By deconstructing the rape/lynch myth, Wells
emancipated black people of the south from another
iteration of the plantation ideology. Positive represen-
tations of blackness are a direct effect of the work pro-
duced by Ida B. Wells’ anti-lynching campaign which,
she never stopped fighting for, even after white mobs
tried to silence her pen.
4 IDA B. WELLS AND HER FIGHT FOR POSITIVE BLACK REPRESENTATION

5. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Feimster, Crystal Nicole. Southern Horrors: Women and the
Politics of Rape and Lynching (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2011).
Wells, Ida B. “Crusader for Justice,” in 2nd Edition Marable,
Manning, Leith Mullings, Let Nobody Turn Us Around:
an African American Anthology (Roman and Litfield
Publishers, INC., Lanham).
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