Introduction
Truth-Telling: Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells
In 1894 and 1895, Frances Willard, the renowned president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and Ida B. Wells, the journalist and anti-lynching activist, fought a war of words in the international press. In 1890, Willard had made racist statements in a newspaper interview while in Atlanta, Georgia for a WCTU convention. Four years later, in 1894, Wells publicized the interview to pressure Willard to support her anti-lynching work. Wells demanded that Willard live up to her reputation as a moral leader.The resulting conflict attracted international attention and condemnation of the WCTU and Willard. While the WCTU eventually condemned lynching, Willard's comments and her actions during the conflict complicate her life and legacy.
Until today, this story has never been told at the Frances Willard House Museum and Archives, the institution dedicated to Willard's life and legacy. Now, is the subject of this digital exhibit, Truth-Telling: Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells. The exhibit explores the details of the conflict and examines Willard's failure of leadership on the question of lynching. Its purpose is to help us understand not only
Background
As President of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Frances Willard was known for her work to prevent the negative impact of alcohol on society, especially women and children, and her lifelong mission to advance women’s rights. By the mid-1880s, the WCTU was the largest organization of women in the United States, with a broad social reform agenda, and had grown into a worldwide and diverse organization.Ida B. Wells was an educator and journalist who began her civil rights activism in response to racist incidents she experienced in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1894 and 1895, Wells’ anti-lynching campaign was well under way, but she was frustrated by the reluctance of influential white reformers like Willard to support her work.
The Conflict
In the interview, Willard made statements such as “The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt,” and “The grog [liquor] shop is its centre of power.” Wells charged that Willard’s position as an internationally known Christian reformer, and the leader of an organization with many African-American women members, carried a special duty to speak out against the violence of lynching, rather than perpetuate the stereotype that drunken black men threatened “the safety of woman, of childhood, of the home.” Wells asserted that Willard invoked what Wells had earlier called “the old threadbare lie that negro men rape white women.”
While the WCTU had many African-American members at the time this all took place, it was also looking to grow in the South among white women - and this created a difficult situation to navigate, especially for Willard. Many black people strongly supported temperance and prohibition
thus leading to strong support of temperance and prohibition by black women, alcohol and drunkenness were also used by the white community to stereotype and discriminate (to the point of violence like lynching) against blacks. Wells argued that when Willard advanced negative stereotypes about blacks and did not disprove white Southern excuses for lynching, she effectively condoned it.
At the time, Wells was in the midst of her anti-lynching campaign and was frustrated by the reluctance of influential white reformers like Willard to support her work. While on a speaking tour of England, where Willard had gained international prominence as head of the World WCTU, Wells used the publication of Willard’s 1890 interview to apply pressure on Willard to live up to her reputation as a Christian reformer and powerful leader. In response, Willard insisted she had “not an atom of race prejudice” citing her family’s involvement with the abolition movement.
Wells confronted Willard directly with these compromises, calling on her and the WCTU to explicitly denounce lynching. At first, Willard tried to defend herself, insisting she had “not an atom of race prejudice,” citing her family’s involvement with the abolition movement and her work supporting African-American women in the WCTU. In the face of mounting pressure, Willard eventually took measures to address the issue, including speaking out publicly against lynching. The WCTU passed anti-lynching resolutions in 1894, 1895 and several years following. The resolutions did not directly address Wells’ main contention about how white Southerners justified lynching.
Willard died in 1898 with this conflict unresolved. Wells continued to work against racism until her death in 1931, not hesitating to criticize white women reformers when she believed they ignored or perpetuated racial discrimination.
It was not until 1930 that Jessie Daniel Ames founded the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, and the Southern white women in it challenged the claim that lynchings were “in defense of womanhood.”
In 1890, Wells had read an interview with Willard in a pro-prohibition newspaper, the New York Voice. In the interview, Willard suggested that black voters were responsible for the defeat of prohibition bills in the South, and she expressed support for educational restrictions on voting. Willard also referred to the common idea that black men often raped white women in the South, and that white mobs lynched them in retaliation.
While on a speaking tour of England in 1894, Wells re-published the interview, calling into question Willard’s moral leadership and using it to apply pressure on Willard to live up to her reputation as a Christian reformer.
Wells charged that Willard, as a reformer and the leader of an organization with many African-American women members, carried a special duty to speak out against the violence of lynching, rather than perpetuate the stereotype that drunken black men threatened “the safety of woman, of childhood, of the home.”
At first, Willard tried to defend herself, insisting she had “not an atom of race prejudice,” citing her family’s involvement with the abolition movement and her work supporting African-American women in the WCTU. In the face of mounting pressure, Willard eventually took measures to address the issue, and the WCTU passed anti-lynching resolutions in 1894, 1895 and several years following.
Willard died in 1898 with this conflict unresolved. Wells continued to work against racism and injustice until her death in 1931, not hesitating to criticize white women reformers when she believed they ignored or perpetuated racial discrimination.