Truth-Telling: Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells

"The Problem on Their Hands"

These are perhaps the most inflammatory statements in the interview. As she says, Willard is repeating what her white, middle-class Southern friends have told her about "race politics." The image of a threatening, non-white, drunken mob fits in well with her own stereotypes about poor and working-class immigrants in the North, and she links this "problem" to voting rights.

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