by Cornel West
CHB: And yet Wells is so untiring in her activities. There is always so much she is doing at the same time, so that she is active instead of becoming discouraged or even depressed.
CW: That’s a good point: she is forever going at it. Even though, you know, there are moments in Crusade for Justice, her great classic autobiography, that bring tears to your eyes, when she feels as if she was often abandoned by her own people35 and never really appreciated by the movements that she helped initiate and create. She was willing to stand alone—her view was, “I don’t mind being the lonely Negro who stands up for truth”—and yet I also get a sense that she did yearn and long for some kind—not just of comradeship but an appreciation of the depth of her sacrifice and the breadth of her contribution to the movement.
CHB: There is something else linked to that, namely, that so many times her emphasis is on the unity of Black people, or rather the lack of it. In her autobiography, she quotes extensively from a provocative address W. T. Stead delivered at Bethel AME Church in Chicago in 1894, in which he exclaimed: “You people have not been lynched enough! You haven’t been lynched enough to drive you together! [. . .] Any ten-year-old child knows that a dozen persons fighting as one can make better headway against ten times its number than if each were fighting singlehanded and alone.”36 Wells-Barnett herself makes that point often, and like Stead, gets angry that it seems to be impossible for Blacks to show the cohesion that is needed for effective political fight. Unity, coherence in political struggle was of great importance to her, and she was often disappointed that she couldn’t make herself understood to her co-fighters.37
CW: I think that one of the loneliest roads to travel is to be a de-niggerized Black person among a niggerized people. She sees the great potential of Black people, but she also sees the fear, the insecurity, the inferiority complexes, the cowardliness, the conformity, the complacency, the apathy, the inertia among the people. I guess she felt what the great Harriet Tubman is known to have felt when she went into the belly of the slavocracy beast so many times: “I rescued many slaves, but I could have saved a thousand more if the slaves knew they were slaves.” Mentally, psychically, spiritually, they were still tied to the master, and the decolonizing of the mind, heart, and soul had to go hand-in-hand with an attempt to break from the institution of slavery, and I think this is something Ida B. Wells was wrestling with during the phase of American terrorism and Jim Crow. She was dealing especially with middle-class Negroes, because you are right that so much of her world was still circumscribed by a middle-class world. I think she had a deep love for poor Black people, but she was not a part of the organizations of poor Black people. Now as a Baptist, she was a member of the largest denomination of Black people as a whole, with large numbers of poor Black people. The best friend I have ever had—my dear brother James Melvin Washington—wrote the great book on Black Baptists called Frustrated Fellowship.38 Sister Ida was deeply frustrated with Black Baptists who were often stratified by class in local churches. This class division made it difficult for Ida B. Wells to be able to fully be what she would have liked to be, which was a freedom fighter grounded in the organizations of Black people across the board, poor, working class, rural, urban, whatever.
CHB: But although she was not based in the poor people’s organizations or activities, she would always work for them, and she went to their neighborhoods, and then, again, she was disappointed by the ladies in the clubs with whom she wanted to work in those neighborhoods, because they would say: “Oh no, we won’t go there.”39 She was ready to do just that and to be on the spot for the poor people to try to improve their situation. But it is really a question whether it was feasible for her as a member of the middle class to do what Ella Baker later did. I wonder was it feasible, historically? It’s something that we should not hold against her, because she might have risked losing what she needed to engage in a successful fight, namely being grounded in the middle class on whose support and money she depended.
CW: Scholars like sister Hazel Carby and Angela Davis40 and others have made the points—and rightfully so—that you already have a focus on the workplace in terms of the kind of violation and rapes of Black women in the white household, given the role of the white men with Black women working as domestic maids. And the women’s club movement was focused on the workplace in a way in which Du Bois and Washington were not. In the case of Ida B. Wells, you get the focus on the workplace and the lynching, and then, of course, you also have the focus on prophetic civic institutions that generate a certain kind of prophetic civic consciousness.
CHB: She also emphasizes women’s suffrage.
CW: And women’s rights, absolutely. But when you think of Black women grounded in and attuned to poor people’s struggles, as, for example, in the arts, as the emergence of the great blues singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith—and the first wave of the blues singers were primarily women before the men take over—and most of these talented sisters came from poor communities. There is no doubt that Ida B. Wells is one of the great crusaders for justice during the period of American terrorism in its raw form in the face of Black people. One can’t think of any greater figure, and yet when it comes to issues of poverty, race, and gender, we think of Fannie Lou Hamer; we think of Ella Baker; we think of Victoria Garvin;41 we think of subsequent freedom fighters, who hit those issues—legendary Angela Davis, now, Michelle Alexander come to mind. So that it is not in any way to put down the great Ida to acknowledge her middle-class context. But it is about how we appropriate, critically engage a giant like Ida B. Wells so that we can learn, and so that we can build on not just her great example but on her witness that connects us to the example of so many others at the time. But in terms of political affiliation—unlike Du Bois, King, Baker, and Malcolm X—she did not side with socialism, let alone Marxism. Yet throughout her life she stayed committed to the plight of working-class Blacks.42
CHB: There is very little about African American culture in her autobiography. It is very focused on the political situation.
CW: And you know that culture plays an important role, because she is in the church every Sunday.
CHB: Right, and that is, of course, an issue. One of the many battles she fights is the integration of the YMCA and YWCA.43 And she makes a very interesting point, namely—and I admire her sharp, analytical mind—she is discussing the crime rates in Chicago on a panel, and the statistics show crime rates among Black people are high. Now, the usual explanation is essentialism, naturalization, they are what they are. But she contradicts the common rationalization by pointing out that all the organizations of uplift that serve the white population are closed to Blacks:
The statistics which we have heard here tonight do not mean, as it appears to mean, that the Negro race is the most criminal of the various race groups in Chicago. It does mean that ours is the most neglected group. All other races in the city are welcomed into the settlements, YMCA’s, YWCA’s, gymnasiums and every other movement for uplift if only their skins are white. [. . .] Only one social center welcomes the Negro, and that is the saloon. Ought we to wonder at the harvest we have heard enumerated tonight?44
CW: It’s a social-historical explanation.
CHB: Exactly, and that is her strength in terms of her intellect, in terms of the kind of analysis she undertakes, systemic analysis, which was her forte when she revealed what was behind the lynching, because that’s a sociological argument as well. And she is avant-garde here, too.
CW: It’s amazing.
CHB: In A Red Record, for example, she explicitly refers to sociology:
The student of American sociology will find the year 1894 marked by a pronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy and outlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common, that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon the humane sentiments of the people of our land.45
So she talks about sociology when this is still a new discipline, and not only that
, but she understands sociological thinking, and she does so when she talks about lynching and then later on when she talks about institutions of uplift in the city. She was ahead of her time.
CW: Way ahead of her time, light-years ahead of her time. That is so true. Now, when you think, though, the same figure would work with Frederick Douglass and write with Frederick Douglass in a pamphlet in protest against the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893,46 but also would work with Du Bois,47 as well as with Garvey,48 it’s very interesting, and especially with the great preacher in Chicago, Reverend Junius Caesar Austin Sr. He worked with Garvey, with A. Philip Randolph; he was pastor at the Pilgrim Baptist Church; he was called the “Dancing Preacher”—no one like him. He had Mahalia Jackson in the choir; he had Thomas A. Dorsey, considered the father of Black gospel music, playing the piano, with the Dancing Preacher preaching every Sunday in Chicago. Now, that’s culture; it’s religious culture, but that’s culture, and it would be fascinating to know what Wells actually thought about those cultural dimensions you were talking about. Now, of course, Chicago was also the great center for the blues, probably the greatest center for American blues other than the Mississippi Delta, for so many Mississippi folk went straight up to Chicago. But she doesn’t tell us too much about that more secular form of Black culture,49 but we know it had tremendous impact on her in a variety of different ways. But what a life, what scope and what depth, bringing together so much of the best of the Black prophetic tradition in terms of being willing to bear witness and lay bare the truth, speak out with courage, keep somehow a love flowing, even given the kinds of betrayals by Black men and white men, and Black women and white women. It is an extraordinary life!
CHB: I would like to raise the question that we addressed with regard to all our figures, namely, how she fits the category of an organic intellectual.
CW: I would argue that Ida B. Wells-Barnett is the most courageous Black organic intellectual in the history of the country, because when you look at what she faces: lynching, American terrorism, especially with vigilante activity of citizens condoned by the nation-state—and when the powers that be are able to use the repressive apparatus of the nation-state to come at you, you have to wait to get to Martin King to get another courageous intellectual like that, or Huey Newton. Imagine the raw power of the American racist imperial state coming down on you in that way—allowing its citizens to kill at whim, blow up homes, and so forth—and she remains as strong as ever, with her Winchester rifle and the Holy Ghost. It’s hard to think of a more courageous organic intellectual. Garvey as an organic intellectual and leader—he goes to prison, he is wrongly incarcerated, and so forth, but I don’t think he ever has to deal with the raw violence coming at him like Ida. I don’t think Malcolm had this raw repressive apparatus of the nation-state coming at him in that way. We know that it was targeting him, but not in that way. It’s not until we get to King and Huey Newton that organic intellectuals are targeted by raw state power like that faced by Ida B. Wells-Barnett. And we must keep in mind, she is a Black woman organic intellectual being targeted.
CHB: I mentioned her immensely broad activities in various organizations and the projects she takes care of. For example, she founds the first Black kindergarten in Chicago, and she also creates a social center with a reading room. This is in the Chicago phase, when she is still active in national issues like the anti-lynching campaign, woman’s suffrage, and so on, but at the same time concentrates very much on local politics and projects focusing on helping the people in her hometown. And I am wondering whether you see a parallel to the development of the Occupy movement, which started as a movement in the streets and now has shifted. Occupy still exists, but it exists in other forms, often local activities, for example, supporting people to prevent them from being evicted from their homes, activities like that.
CW: She certainly is so multicontextual in her radical activism. She is a radical reformist moving from a variety of different organizations all connected with a commitment to justice, but it’s rare to see someone involved on so many different terrains and spheres and fronts and still with a family, with children, with a husband, brother Ferdinand, who is a highly distinguished citizen and freedom fighter in his own right. I do think that the Occupy movement could learn from the kind of decentralization, the kind of differentiated forms of activism that she engaged in herself while still trying to keep that prophetic fire burning. I think you are absolutely right about that. We said that the age of Occupy is the age of Ella Baker; we could argue that the age of Occupy is Ella Baker in a deep sense in terms of organizing and Ida B. Wells-Barnett in terms of the multicontextual. Today, of course, it’s ecological, anti-corporate, critiques of globalization, of the oligarchs and plutocrats who rule around the world, but it’s still a general principle of multicontextual activism that we see enacted in Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
If Ida is to be judged by the great leaders of her time, when you think of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, and T. Thomas Fortune and Mary Church Terrell, and Mary McLeod Bethune,50 these are towering figures in their own right, but she would certainly be the most militant, the most outspoken, and, in many ways, the most courageous. Well, we don’t want to overlook George Washington Woodbey, the Black Socialist preacher who ran with Eugene Debs in 1908 as vice president.51 He was militant; he was uncompromising; and he was already connected to critiques of capitalism and imperialism and so forth. He was pastor at San Diego Mt. Zion Baptist Church for decades, a great towering figure who also deserves to be part of this great pantheon. But in the end, I think, we have to come back to sister Ida. We must learn from her in terms of moral integrity, spiritual fortitude, and political determination.
CONCLUSION
Last Words on the Black Prophetic Tradition in the Age of Obama
The great irony of our time is that in the age of Obama the grand Black prophetic tradition is weak and feeble. Obama’s Black face of the American empire has made it more difficult for Black courageous and radical voices to bring critique to bear on the US empire. On the empirical or lived level of Black experience, Black people have suffered more in this age than in the recent past. Empirical indices of infant mortality rates, mass incarceration rates, mass unemployment, and dramatic declines in household wealth reveal this sad reality. How do we account for this irony? It goes far beyond the individual figure of President Obama himself, though he is complicit; he is a symptom, not a primary cause. Although he is a symbol for some of either a postracial condition or incredible Black progress, his presidency conceals the escalating levels of social misery in poor and Black America.
The leading causes of the decline of the Black prophetic tradition are threefold. First, there is the shift of Black leadership from the voices of social movements like those in this book to those of elected officials in the mainstream political system. This shift produces voices that are rarely if ever critical of this system. How could we expect the Black caretakers and gatekeepers of the system to be critical of it? This shift is part of a larger structural transformation in the history of mid-twentieth-century capitalism in which neoliberal elites marginalize social movements and prophetic voices in the name of consolidating a rising oligarchy at the top, leaving a devastated working class in the middle, and desperate poor people whose labor is no longer necessary for the system at the bottom.
Second, this neoliberal shift produces a culture of raw ambition and instant success that is seductive to most potential leaders and intellectuals, thereby incorporating them into the neoliberal regime. This culture of superficial spectacle and hyper-visible celebrities highlights the legitimacy of an unjust system that prides itself on upward mobility of the downtrodden. Yet, the truth is that we live in a country that has the least upward mobility of any other modern nation!1
Third, the US neoliberal regime contains a vicious repressive apparatus that targets those strong and sacrificial leaders, activists, and prophetic intellectuals who are easily discredited, delegitimated, or
even assassinated, including through character assassination. Character assassination becomes systemic and chronic, and it is preferable to literal assassination because dead martyrs tend to command the attention of the sleepwalking masses and thereby elevate the threat to the status quo.
The central role of mass media, especially a corporate media beholden to the US neoliberal regime, is to keep public discourse narrow and deodorized. By “narrow” I mean confining the conversation to conservative Republican and neoliberal Democrats who shut out prophetic voices or radical visions. This fundamental power to define the political terrain and categories attempts to render prophetic voices invisible. The discourse is deodorized because the issues that prophetic voices highlight, such as mass incarceration, wealth inequality, and war crimes such as imperial drones murdering innocent people, are ignored.
The age of Obama was predicated on three pillars: Wall Street crimes in the financial catastrophe of 2008; imperial crimes in the form of the USA PATRIOT Act and National Defense Authorization Act, which give the president sweeping and arbitrary power that resembles a police or neofascist state; and social crimes principally manifest in a criminal justice system that is in itself criminal (where torturers, wire tappers, and Wall Street violators of the law go free yet poor criminals, such as drug offenders, go to prison). This kind of clear and direct language is rare in political discourse precisely because we are accustomed to be so polite in the face of crimes against humanity. The role of the Black prophetic tradition has always been to shatter the narrow and deodorized discourse in the name of the funky humanity and precious individuality of poor people. How rarely this takes place today! The profound failings of President Obama can be seen in his Wall Street government, his indifference to the new Jim Crow (or prison-industrial complex) and his expansion of imperial criminality in terms of the vast increase of the number of drones since the Bush years. In other words, the Obama presidency has been primarily a Wall Street presidency, drone presidency, mass surveillance presidency unwilling to concretely target the new Jim Crow, massive unemployment, and other forms of poor and Black social misery. His major effort to focus on poor Black men was charity and philanthropy—not justice or public policy.
