Ida
B. Wells, a schoolteacher, was sitting in a woman’s railroad car, reading, when the conductor
ordered her to move to the “Jim Crow” car. She refused, saying that was a
smoking car and she was in the ladies car.
When the conductor grabbed her, she “sunk her teeth” into his arm.
The 1875 Civil Rights Act had banned discrimination based on race on
transportation but in 1883, the Supreme Court declared this act
unconstitutional. The ruling said
Congress did not have the power to void discrimination acts by individuals as
it did on state action or laws “Private acts of racial discrimination were simply private wrongs that
the national government was powerless to correct”.
When she sued the railroad for
her treatment, her attorney was paid off by the railroad, so she hired a white
attorney and won a $500 settlement. The
judge says she was indeed a lady. She
was a schoolteacher and was “dressed accordingly.” Her victory was overturned by the Tennessee
Supreme Court. Ms. Wells went on to be a
civil rights activist by being a journalist.
As a journalist,
she became aware that the new black middle class was at risk when three of her
friends were lynched. Before this, she
had thought such lynchings, while deplorable, were targeted at those in the
lower class who may have been involved in activities that merited a kind of punishment. Her eyes were then opened to see that
lynchings were a way to “get rid of negroes who acquired wealth and property
and thus keep the race terrorized…..”
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