Essay Sample about Ida B. Wells’ Unsung Battle for Black Women’s Suffrage

Prominent journalist, activist, and researcher Ida B. Wells’ motto was that “one had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.”  And fight she did. Born a slave, she faced extreme racism and hardship first-hand, and exposed her and others’ experiences in her work. A major focus of her career was securing suffrage for all women, no matter their race. Although she was sidelined by many of the leaders of the suffrage movement, Wells’ contributions to the movement were invaluable. Her pushes for gender and racial equality were ahead of their time and led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Wells’ contributions to the suffrage movement, although dismissed at the time, aided in the fight for women’s suffrage and made significant progress in the fight for black women’s suffrage. The women’s suffrage movement was not exempt from racism. Even the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the country’s leading suffrage group, “did not include black women in its membership.”  So, in 1913, Wells co-founded a group called the Alpha Suffrage Club, with the goal of engaging Black women and mobilizing voters. She saw the organization as a vehicle that would “inspire a reconceptualization of the role of African American women in America.”  Wells and the Alpha Suffrage Club traveled to marches, fought for access to the vote, educated women on the political process and registered them to vote,  and also pushed for Black political leadership at the local level. However, her forceful efforts were ignored and often even actively turned down. When she and eighty other Illinois suffragists traveled to Washington D.C. for a NAWSA march, they were told they would have to march at the back of the demonstration with other Black suffragists, rather than with the Illinois group.  She was told her inclusion in the march would result in southern states withdrawing their support for the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Her persistence in the face of clear boundaries only increased her overall impact, as it displayed the strength of her convictions.

Wells’ tenacity contributed to the development and popularization of the idea behind the Voting Rights Act: suffrage for all, regardless of race or color. She believed strongly that the suffrage movement should either be aimed at suffrage for women of all colors or for no women at all. And she embodied this belief with her actions. When told by the organizers of the NAWSA march in Washington D.C. that she would have to march at the back of the demonstration, Wells replied, “when I was asked to come down here, I was asked to march with the other women of our state, and I intend to do so or not take part in the parade at all.”  She tried unsuccessfully to convince the organizers to let her march up front, and initially refused to take part in the march. But halfway through, she “gallantly emerged from the crowd to take her place at the front with the Illinois delegation, marching between two white supporters.”  This display of bold passion put the issue of black women’s suffrage into the public eye. As historian Joan Johnson wrote, “Ida B. Wells is enormously important to the suffrage movement for her role in the parade.”  Even though the march occurred over 50 years before its passing, Wells’ actions were vital to the eventual Voting Rights Act of 1965, which granted women the right to vote, no matter their race. She and the Alpha Suffrage Club called on all black citizens to join the fight for racial equality within women’s suffrage, writing in 1914, “we as a race everywhere expect you to do your duty.”  This defiance of the racism within the suffrage movement laid the groundwork for the eventual campaign for black women’s suffrage in the 1960s. 

Wells’ exposition of racial inequality accelerated the onset of the Voting Rights Act. After a white mob murdered her friend Thomas Moss in 1892, Wells decided to focus her reporting on lynchings. She spent the next phase of her career investigating and publicizing lynchings of colored people in the United States.  Despite facing threats of violence, she made it her mission to combat the racist lies that covered up the lynchings she reported on. She continued reporting, writing for The New York Age, the Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean, The Conservator, and many other newspapers, reaching thousands and thousands of people.  The injustices she exposed changed the public perception and fueled the public to fight for racial equality. Using facts, statistics, and her investigation skills, “she destroyed the mainstream media’s narratives that suggested lynching victims were criminals who got what they deserved.”  This shift in the mainstream media narrative was crucial for the eventual Civil Rights Movement (and therefore the Voting Rights Act), as one of the main causes of this movement was the public’s disapproval of racial discrimination.  

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 states, “no voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”  Although it was enacted over 30 years after her death, it accomplished one of the main goals Wells fought so adamantly for throughout her career: access to voting not only between the sexes, but also between all races. Nobody could stop her from marching, even 30 years after her death.

Bibliography

The Alpha Suffrage Record. Chicago, IL, 1914.

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/ead/pdf/ibwells-0008-009-07.pdf

Francis, Meredith. "Standing Up for Her Principles: Ida B. Wells and the Suffrage Movement." Window to the World. Accessed February 23, 2022. https://interactive.wttw.com/chicago-stories/ida-b-wells/standing-up-for-her-principles-ida-b-wells-and-the-suffrage-movement.

Carson, C.. "American civil rights movement." Encyclopedia Britannica, October 14, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/event/American-civil-rights-movement.

Jackson, Ashawnta. "The Alpha Suffrage Club and Black Women's Fight for the Vote." Jstor, September 8, 2020. Accessed February 23, 2022. https://daily.jstor.org/the-alpha-suffrage-club-and-black-womens-fight-for-the-vote/.

Little, Becky. "When Ida B. Wells Took on Lynching, Threats Forced Her to Leave Memphis." History.com. Last modified February 27, 2019. Accessed February 23, 2022. https://www.history.com/news/ida-b-wells-lynching-memphis-chicago.

Nettles, Arionne. "Ida B. Wells' Lasting Impact On Chicago Politics And Power." NPR.com. Last modified November 4, 2019. https://www.npr.org/local/309/2019/11/04/775915510/ida-b-wells-lasting-impact-on-chicago-politics-and-power#:~:text=Wells%20established%20the%20first%20black,%2C%20activists%2C%20and%20community%20leaders.

PBS Team. "The March of 1913." PBS. Accessed February 23, 2022. https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/the-march-of-1913/.

Smith, David. "Ida B Wells: the unsung heroine of the civil rights movement." The Guardian, April 27, 2018. Accessed February 23, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/27/ida-b-wells-civil-rights-movement-reporter.

Voting Rights Act of 1965, Pub. L. 89-110, 79 Stat. 437.

Walker, Malea. "Ida B. Wells and the Activism of Investigative Journalism." Library of Congress Blog. Entry posted February 12, 2020. Accessed February 23, 2022. https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2020/02/ida-b-wells-and-the-activism-of-investigative-journalism/.