Trotter’s reaction to these statements got him thrown out of the White House. Once it was obvious that they would get no support from the federal government, Ida invited Trotter to speak in Chicago and stay as a guest in her home. With no friend to be found in the White House, they needed to come up with another strategy to win justice.
Throughout her life, Ida embraced direct, one-on-one advocacy. She frequently met with leaders—presidents, governors, and other officials—and spoke candidly about the injustices she saw all around her. Advocating on behalf of people who could not always walk into those rooms with her, she refused to homogenize her message or back down from her ideals.
Black Lives Matter
Today, Ida’s legacy of speaking truth to power lives on in the multipronged work that Black organizers, activists, and thinkers have done. While many view Donald Trump’s presidency to be a historical outlier, his tactics and rhetoric share much of those displayed by Ida’s contemporary Woodrow Wilson. Wilson and Trump both openly utilized economic distress and existing racial division to tap into working-class Americans’ willingness to stomach—if not outright support—destructive policies. Though the people who supported them span a range of economic backgrounds, both relied on heightened financial worries to boost their appeal.
2014 protest in Ferguson, Missouri, after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson.
In 2014, when the Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson killed the unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown, longtime organizers and newly galvanized people alike joined to protest the deadly racism of American policing. Those early days saw a swell of public demonstrations, most of them peaceful, which were met with violent repression from the police and military. It was clear that Black people could not mourn or express frustration publicly without being in danger.
President Barack Obama hesitated to meet with leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, only doing so eighteen months after Michael Brown’s death.
The protests grew into what is most often referred to as the Black Lives Matter movement. The specific phrase, coined by the activists Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza, is also the name of a broad member-based organization with chapters around the country. A number of other groups and individuals mobilized, decrying the racism of the American criminal justice system and extrajudicial killings that often target Black people. While they were met with some open bigotry and threats of violence from police while protesting, some members of these groups were invited to the White House by President Barack Obama in February 2016.
The meeting came eighteen months after the death of Michael Brown. In the interim, efforts to reform the criminal justice system, and especially to institute some kind of accountability for officers who used fatal force against unarmed people, had swept the country. That all happened because of the young organizers who rallied around Brown, one another, and the community more broadly. Obama, who had given only tepid support for the protestors to that point, seemed to be listening: “They are much better organizers than I was when I was their age, and I am confident that they are going to take America to new heights.”
Civil rights leaders spanning from the late freedom rider, Martin Luther King Jr. associate, and U.S. representative John Lewis to other activists like Rev. Al Sharpton were present. But just a couple of months later, Obama again turned to what some viewed as scolding: when he spoke at a London rally filled with young activists and organizers, he warned them not to agitate too much: “Once you’ve highlighted an issue and brought it to people’s attention… then you can’t just keep on yelling at them,” he said, noting that they shouldn’t dismiss elected officials. But ultimately, Trump’s election that followed a few months later bore out the organizers’ predictions, not his. And their work continues.
Trump’s election in 2016 saw a troubling resurgence of white supremacist sentiment reminiscent of racial backlash last seen in the late 1800s post-Reconstruction era. State governments issued new protections for Confederate monuments. Conservatives rolled out a wave of suppression efforts targeted to disenfranchise Black and brown voters. And police brutality against Black citizens continued to go unpunished by the courts. The similarities in response to Black progress have surged interest in the tactics used by Ida and her contemporaries to navigate a hostile social environment.
RECONSTRUCTION
The Reconstruction era (1865–1877) set the course for the nation’s post–Civil War future, and its shortcomings defined much of Ida’s life as a journalist and activist. Following the death of President Lincoln and the end of the Civil War, a sharp backlash to such progress as suffrage for freedmen emerged. Even when southern states were no longer able to legally enforce fugitive slave acts, Black people faced constant violence.
Among other horrors, the Ku Klux Klan was created during this time. Reconstruction brought with it unique threats to Black life—and a particular vitriol from white people who were unwilling to see Black people gain any semblance of rights. That kind of backlash is deeply American, so familiar now that many people have rightfully pointed to the election of Donald Trump as a direct result of racist anger about Barack Obama’s presidency.
Though the protests of recent years have been unprecedented in their breadth, Black women have been speaking out against racist police violence for decades—and in ways that often angered the white people who heard them. In early 1992, the rapper Sister Souljah, born Lisa Williamson, released the album 360 Degrees of Power. The year before, four Los Angeles police officers had severely beaten an unarmed Black man named Rodney King. Video footage of the brutality circulated, and the officers’ trials the following year were a tipping point for the city. Three of the four officers were acquitted, and the jury failed to reach a verdict on one charge for the last. Almost immediately, Los Angeles experienced mass unrest, six days in which a series of protests, demonstrations, and sometimes-violent displays saw Black Angelenos express the depth of their anger at the continuing violence that the police enacted with impunity.
Within weeks of the Los Angeles uprisings, Sister Souljah appeared on a morning talk show alongside the New Jersey senator Bill Bradley and a New York congressman, Charles Rangel. In this conversation, she referred to the state of Black Americans in the country as one of constant oppression. But in a later interview, reported by the Washington Post, Souljah explained her empathy for the Los Angeles rioters in a way that sparked immediate backlash:
I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? You understand what I’m saying? In other words, white people, this government and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you’re a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person? Do you think that somebody thinks that white people are better, or above dying, when they would kill their own kind?
It was a shock to viewers—and to one candidate for president: William “Bill” J. Clinton. Soon after, the then presidential hopeful, who’d leaned heavily on support from Black voters, spoke to Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.’s Rainbow Coalition. In an attempt to balance his Black support with white voters’ perception that he was too close to the “radical” Rev. Jackson, Clinton took the opportunity to repudiate Sister Souljah—also in attendance as a guest of the conference.
Sister Souljah. The American artist, author, and musician received criticism for comments she made supporting the at times violent protests in response to the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police. Her remarks were condemned by then candidate Bill Clinton, in what many saw as a political move to distance himself from the Black American community.
Clinton made a pithy, ahistorical comparison: “If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black,’ and you reversed them, you might think [the Ku Klux Klan grand wizard] David Duke was giving that speech.” He was also unreceptive to Rev. Jackson’s assertion that Souljah had been
trying to express the extreme repression that Black people in America had faced since the country’s inception. To this day, the term “Sister Souljah moment” carries a specific meaning in political parlance: when a politician has one such moment, it refers to them distancing themselves from a member of their party or group whom others might see as an extremist.
Whether or not her confrontation with reporters was ultimately successful, Sister Souljah forced a national conversation about the resentment that injustice can breed. In that context, it’s hardly surprising that her name is invoked when describing the callous moves some politicians make.
Sister Souljah, like many others, was following in the long tradition set by Black women like Ida B. Wells to stand tall and let their voices be heard by those in power, even in the face of severe criticism and potential loss of work or money.
Working and Protesting Alone
Often, Ida took on the challenge and sacrifice of her work without anyone else’s assistance. In 1930, Ida B. Wells was almost sixty-eight years old and had been working for over fifty years. By then, she could have felt that it was time to slow down. But she was disgusted with the male political leadership and decided to jump into the Illinois state senate race as an independent candidate. Without support from a major political organization, Ida and Ferdinand funded most of her campaign themselves. They printed posters, newsletters, and letters, and distributed them all over the district.
Despite the grueling schedule of giving at least two speeches a day, Ida lost the race by a wide margin. However, her run for state senate was historymaking, as Ida was one of the first Black women in the nation to run for public office. Getting in the race was a victory in and of itself. She was a Black woman who had challenged a racist and patriarchal society to reject its assumption that Black Americans would be held subordinate indefinitely.
By the time Ida B. Wells reached her mid-sixties, she had been a firsthand witness to the realities of slavery, the freedom and hope of Reconstruction, the terror of post-Reconstruction, the implementation of Jim Crow laws, the Spanish-American War, World War I, segregation, mass migration, riots, and women fighting and winning the right to vote.
Ida’s determination and insistence on positive action over reconciliation was not always welcome within the civil rights organizations of her time. She did not possess the temperament for glad-handing and standing aside while her people “waited their turn.” But despite feeling alone and misunderstood at times during her personal fight for justice, she was firmly entrenched in the great social and cultural change seen during her lifetime and beyond. Of the organizations she played a personal role in founding, two are still functional to this day: the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Modern Mavericks
BREE NEWSOME
In 2015, months into the swell of activism that followed the death of Michael Brown, and weeks after the white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine Black people at a Bible study in Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, a South Carolina artist named Brittany “Bree” Newsome (now Bree Newsome Bass) did something that still stands as a powerful image even years later. The day before, President Obama had given a speech calling for the Confederate flag to be removed from the South Carolina statehouse. Newsome had decided even before Obama’s speech that she would scale the flagpole to remove the flag herself. And she did.
She raised it triumphantly, dominating over a potent symbol of centuries of white supremacy. The visual of the young Black woman scaling a thirty-foot pole to remove the flag was as controversial as it was powerful. Newsome was met with waves of harassment, as well as condemnation from the governor, Nikki Haley. (Haley would later go on to sign a bill removing the flag.) Even so, Newsome didn’t regret her decision. Two years later, she told Vox, “I grew up with my grandmother who was raised in Greenville, who told me about her experiences seeing the Ku Klux Klan beat her neighbor and things like that. The massacre in Charleston brought a refocus on the flag.” History is never too far removed.
A Charlotte, North Carolina–based filmmaker and activist, Bree Newsome reached acclaim when she climbed the flagpole at the South Carolina state capitol building to protest the state’s display of the Confederate States of America’s battleflag. Newsome scaled the flagpole near the capitol and removed the flag from its perch. She and an aide were immediately arrested.
Colin Kaepernick was a celebrated player on the San Francisco 49ers for years, leading them to the Super Bowl in 2012. Many of his supporters believe the league colluded to keep him out following his departure from the team in 2017.
COLIN KAEPERNICK
MUHAMMAD ALI
TOMMIE SMITH AND JOHN CARLOS
The name Colin Kaepernick now conjures an era that might feel like it was eons ago. The National Football League (NFL) has moved past him; the rapper Jay-Z teamed up with the league in 2019 to help bolster social justice and entertainment initiatives. It would seem that everything was neatly tied up.
But even if that were all true, it wasn’t the case at first. Before the NFL found indirect ways to talk about injustice that fit within the comfort zones of the owners and many fans, a significant chunk of the sports world turned on the San Francisco 49ers quarterback.
Kaepernick silently protested the injustice of police brutality—and racism in America more broadly—during the playing of the national anthem before each game. As his protest started to attract attention, Kaepernick became the target of nationwide ire from other players in the mostly Black league, as well as from the media and NFL fans. Some conservatives claimed he was disrespecting veterans with his protest; others said he had no right to protest because of his salary and position as a professional athlete, and should only be allowed to entertain, not cause a ruckus.
In 2019, Rihanna declined an invitation to perform at the Super Bowl, citing her support for Kaepernick as the reason.
In many of these complaints, even the ones that did not seem obviously racist, there was often contempt toward Kaepernick for the simple fact of his being a young Black man pointing out an inconvenient truth. Even other Black athletes were torn. He didn’t immediately receive wide support, and his method of silently kneeling while on the sidelines of the football field was considered too radical by some.
But the years after his original 2016 season protest saw a rise in athletes’ activism across different sports and leagues. Among other 2020 initiatives to acknowledge racial inequality, the NFL printed “End Racism” in the end zones. However, Kaepernick himself, despite reaching rare heights on the field prior to his demonstrations, has not secured another contract in the NFL as of the end of 2020. But the impact of his early actions—and his continued commitment to the causes he believes in—ripples out beyond Kaepernick, the NFL, and the country.
Kaepernick was denied the opportunity to play in the NFL during the peak of his career in much the same way that Muhammad Ali was arrested, found guilty of draft evasion, and stripped of his boxing titles in 1966 at twenty-four years old. He was unable to box for four of his prime athletic years while banned from the sport for his refusal to fight in the Vietnam War. Ali went on to become known as “the Greatest” based on the later years of his athletic career, a time when most in his field would be considered over-the-hill.
Two years later, the gold medalist Tommie Smith and the bronze medalist John Carlos each raised a black-gloved fist during the playing of the national anthem at their medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympics. The gesture, taken by many as a reference to the Black Power movement, is still seen as one of the most overtly political demonstrations in Olympic history. The 200-meter track stars Smith and Carlos were fed up. Fed up with Ali’s exile, fed up with the lack of access to good housing in their urban communities, fed up with the casual racism of the sports world. And they were punished greatly for it. A familiar pattern played out: Smith and Carlos were seen as good enough to compete for the Un
ited States, but they were not deserving of the right to point out the oppression that they, and other Black people, experienced in their country.
Muhammad Ali.
They were expelled from the Games and mostly ostracized from the sports world. They were met with racist criticism on sports networks, in newspapers, and in magazines. Their families received death threats. Over five decades later, their images have been somewhat rehabilitated by the passage of time and growing support for their positions, but the toll of those lost years cannot be undone.
Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos (right).
All these athletes transcended their sport and became more well-known as a result of their courage to speak out against injustice. They share this with Ida, who criticized the Memphis school system and then lost her job. When she spoke out against lynching, she lost her printing press and her life as she knew it. As a result of death threats, she never lived in the South again.
Speaking out about injustice can be a lonely experience and often comes with the loss of things that one holds dear. But the question must be asked: Is it better to be silent and endure hardship, or is it better to speak out and possibly effect change? Standing out and speaking out alone is something few are willing to do. And the ones who do often become historymakers, as Ida has. The attention she has gained posthumously surpasses the level of appreciation that she experienced while alive. During her life she was considered so controversial and “militant” that many times she stood alone.
Ida B. the Queen Page 8
