Ida B. Wells was admired for her courageous activism against lynching, but also faced significant opposition.
Powerful figures openly supported racial lynchings, including government leaders like U.S. Senator Benjamin Tillman.
"We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him."
~Benjamin R Tillman, March 23, 1900
Benjamin R. Tillman
(Courtesy of Clemson University)
Newspaper clipping, "Driven from Home"
(Courtesy of Library of Congress)
White Southerners viewed Wells as a threat and wanted to bring an end to her journalism. On May 27, 1892, a white mob destroyed the office of her newspaper, The Free Speech and Headlight. She was told she would be killed if she ever returned to Memphis.
Frederick Douglass supported Ida B. Wells.
"Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves. Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured."
~Frederick Douglass, Southern Horrors:Lynch Law in All Its Phases, 1892
Frederick Douglass pictured in 1862.
(Courtesy of Library of Congress)
Newspaper Clipping
(Courtesy of History Matters)
In 1921, President Harding made a speech condemning lynching and supported the Anti-lynching Dyer Bill that was passed by the House but killed by the Senate.