Truth-Telling: Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells, Temperance, and "Race Progress"

In 1892, the AME Church Review published a roundtable discussion on temperance by four black women, including Ida B. Wells. Wells argued that, while black people were probably not any more likely to drink than others, the consequences of drunkenness for people who were already poor and oppressed were even more dangerous. She called on black educators, journalists, and ministers to draw attention to the dangers of drink for black Americans and thus foster “race progress.”

Though it was two years before the Willard/Wells conflict would begin in earnest, Wells referred to Willard’s comments in the Voice interview of two years prior. “Miss Frances E. Willard,” she wrote, “president of the National Women’s Christian Temperance Union, lately told the world that the center of power of the race is the saloon; that white men for this reason are afraid to leave their homes; that the Negro, in the late Prohibition campaign, sold his vote for twenty-five cents, etc. Miss Willard’s statements possess the small pro rata of truth of all sweeping statements. It is well known that the Negro’s greatest injury is done to himself.”

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