EXPOSING THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH: IDA B. WELLS
ALLIES
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
“But my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealth with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.”
- Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass' Letter
Douglass, abolitionist leader and a genius orator, was touched by Wells's writing and ability to leave soul- stirring imprints in people's minds.
"Then these lynchers went quietly away and the bodies of the woman and three men were taken out and buried with as little ceremony as men would bury hogs."
-Ida B. Wells, The Red Record
Frederick Douglass
(Library of Congress)
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
Washington shared Wells's goal to fight for Black rights, but his passive approach focused on industrialization rather than civil rights; he believed this would earn respect and equal treatment. Wells opposed this in "Booker T. Washington and His Critics", claiming discrimination based upon race cannot be stopped even by sacrificing rights and education.
Booker T. Washington
LIbrary of Congress
"No race can prospoer till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
-Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Library of Congress
"Mr. Washington knows when he says this that lynching is not invoked to punish crime but color, and not even industrial education will change that." - Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington and His Critics
WILLIAM PENN NIXON
Nixon invited Wells to Daily Inter-ocean, making her the first black female writer for a white-owned newspaper.
William Penn Nixon
Nicholas Horsch
CATHERINE IMPEY
Impey invited Wells to Anti-Caste: an anti-racism pamphlet. Wells's outcry against lynching attracted attention from the British public.
Isabella Fyvie Mayo
In 1893, Mayo invited Wells to Britain to give seminars on the horrors of lynching, raising international awareness.
"For honesty is before honor; and though man must write his poems in sounding words, God's poems are printed best in the brave and silent duties of common life."
-Isabella Fyvie Mayo
Isabella Fyvie
Mayo Public Library