In 2016, Ava DuVernay produced the Netflix documentary 13th, which explored the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the legislative decisions that have resulted in the nation’s disproportionately Black prison population. Three years later, DuVernay created the series When They See Us, which told the story of the “Central Park Five” from their perspective and reframed them as the “Exonerated Five.”
Pop culture, cinema, and storytelling have a huge role to play in opening new eyes to the individual stories that make up America’s despicable history of race-based oppression, but the work cannot stop there. Cultural institutions are emerging nationwide to bring the African American experience to traditional platforms that have been slow to adapt. Under the leadership of Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Smithsonian Institution created the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. It opened in 2016 and showcases the African American story’s impact on American and world history, including an exhibit on Ida.
In 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative opened the Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. It humanizes the stories of slavery, mass incarceration, and lynching that stain American history while avoiding the stereotypes and false information that often infect the discussion. The Equal Justice Initiative and other local organizations, such as the Lynching Sites Project of Memphis, place markers throughout the country to honor the victims of lynchings alongside their personal stories—applying faces, names, and details to historical instances of people’s deaths at the hands of racist mobs.
EXONERATED CENTRAL PARK FIVE
The infamous Central Park Five case divided New York City—and the whole country—in 1989. Following the assault and brutal rape of a white woman who had been jogging through the Manhattan park, five Black and Latino teenagers were rounded up by the NYPD and coerced into confessing to the crime after at least seven hours of interrogation each. The national press played into stereotypes about Black criminality in its coverage of the case, swaying public opinion against the boys. Most notably, a local real estate guru named Donald Trump took out a full-page newspaper ad calling for the deaths of the so-called “wolf pack.”
Despite the evidence against them being circumstantial and often contradictory, four of the boys—Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, and Raymond Santana—all ultimately served between six and seven years in juvenile facilities. Korey Wise, known then as Kharey, served thirteen years and eight months in various state prisons. In 2001, at the Auburn Correctional Facility in New York, he met a man named Matias Reyes. Convicted of serial rape and murder, Reyes later confessed to the 1989 assault of Tricia Meili, the Central Park jogger. The original five, who had always maintained that they were innocent, would have their convictions vacated in 2002. They sued the city the following year and received a settlement over ten years later, in 2014.
National Memorial for Peace and Justice.
Historical marker for Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and William Henry Stewart.
As for the three owners of the People’s Grocery who were killed outside Memphis, the Mount Zion Cemetery restoration project in Memphis honored their memories with a marker in 2019.
We Shall Not Be Moved
Despite years of progress in the wake of Ida’s work, America continues to tolerate efforts to silence and disrespect Black women. But in the face of that harsh reality, there are still brilliant examples of contemporary figures carrying on Ida B. Wells’s example of resilience in the face of all obstacles.
Ida B. Wells was a powerful political figure in her time, but she never personally served in an elected political office. Despite that, her influence outside government as a journalist and organizer was immense. With both efforts for racial equity and women’s suffrage taking place within her own lifetime, Ida was perhaps fated to fight for the advancement of, rather than personally benefit from, the great causes of her time. Today Black women, along with others, are empowered to make change directly from within the halls of power.
It is to everyone’s benefit that racially targeted lynching—while by no means eradicated—is far less prevalent today than it was in Ida’s time. But a newer scourge, that of disproportionately Black gun victimization, has sprung up in its place. The United States in particular has seen gun violence spiral into an epidemic over the first few decades of the twenty-first century. In 2016, gun violence was the second leading individual cause of death for children and adolescents in America. And that spate of violence hits Black and brown children at an even more alarming rate: between 2013 and 2019, Black and Hispanic teens made up fifteen percent of the K–12 school population but were twenty-five percent of gun violence victims on school grounds. In Ida’s adopted Chicago home, a study found Hispanic children and Black children faced much greater odds (seventy-four percent and 112 percent higher, respectively) of being exposed to gun violence than their white neighbors.
MAXINE WATERS
California congresswoman Maxine Waters is one of those heroines who carry the torch for equal rights and representation in the twenty-first century. A frequent target for President Donald Trump’s stoking of racial and gender resentments, she stood strong in defense of herself and her constituents. She constantly spoke out against his policies, pointed out his personal flaws, and refused to be silent, despite facing incredible levels of criticism and even threats. Waters faced vilification and death threats as she stepped forward as a leader in the effort to impeach Donald Trump for ethical lapses and incompetence. Her cause ultimately succeeded on January 16, 2020, when Trump became the third United States president in history to be impeached.
While a flight attendant and part-time activist based in Atlanta, Georgia, Lucy McBath lost her son to gun violence in a 2012 shooting. Her subsequent campaign for stronger gun laws, fueled by personal tragedy, built into a successful run for the United States House of Representatives in 2018.
A member of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017, Stacey Abrams fell short in a controversial election for governor of Georgia in 2018. She went on to spearhead voter registration efforts nationwide in the United States 2020 elections.
That tremendous burden has also led to remarkable bravery from women of color as they’ve stepped up to fix the problems that plague the country. Lucy McBath was born in Joliet, Illinois, just outside of Ida’s adopted city of Chicago. McBath is also the daughter of Lucien Holman—himself a former president of an Illinois chapter of the NAACP. She studied political science in college and interned for future governor Douglas Wilder in Virginia, but she ultimately worked as a flight attendant at Delta Air Lines as she raised her family in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2012, McBath’s seventeen-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was murdered at a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida. Michael Dunn, a forty-five-year-old white man, had been enraged by the “thug music” Davis and his friends were playing in their car. Dunn shot his handgun into the car, hitting Davis in his legs, aorta, and lungs, and continued shooting even as the car pulled away.
Six years after the death of her son, McBath ran for Congress in Georgia’s sixth congressional district. With a platform that included gun law reform, McBath won the congressional seat.
SYBRINA FULTON
Like McBath, Sybrina Fulton was prompted to turn her grief into action after losing a son to racist violence. The mother of slain Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, whose death at the hands of George Zimmerman catalyzed an activist movement around the country, Fulton announced a bid for county commissioner in Miami-Dade County in 2019. In 2020, with the support of other mothers including McBath, Fulton officially qualified to run, and later ended up losing the race by less than one percent.
2020 Black Lives Matter protest in New York, NY.
In 2018, a longtime attorney named Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia against Brian Kemp, then secretary of state, which meant he was in charge of elections and voter registration. Kemp re
fused all pressure to recuse himself from his position for the election and was allowed to run despite the conflict of interest inherent in administering his own election. He implemented numerous barriers targeted at denying the vote to groups projected to turn out strongly for Abrams (especially African American voters). Kemp “won” the election by fifty thousand votes.
Abrams refused to officially concede the race, and shortly thereafter announced the creation of Fair Fight Action, a nonprofit organization that combats voter suppression techniques. She sued the secretary of state and state election board in federal court, a lawsuit that was ongoing as of October 2020. In the interim, Abrams maintained a high profile in national politics and was even considered as a potential vice presidential candidate for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Even now, it often seems Black women frequently find ourselves fighting alone in the push for recognition. The Black Lives Matter movement, founded in 2013, grew out of mounting frustration with police violence against the Black community. Started by three Black women, Black Lives Matter ushered in a wave of national activism. The organization, with the simple affirmation at its core, was initially met with skepticism by those who believed accusations of racism across the country were overstated.
The group’s founding was yet another example of Black women’s refusal to be silenced, sidelined, or ignored when it comes to having equal rights under the law. In the years that followed, the election of Donald Trump would once again prove the nation’s deep and abiding devaluing of Black lives. As protests reignited following the May 25, 2020, police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, Black women organizing with Black Lives Matter, Black Youth Project 100, Movement for Black Lives, and countless other organizations continue to fight for the dignity and safety of all Black people.
Beginning with the suffrage movement, white women have repeatedly fought for “women’s rights” in a way that prioritizes their needs over those of all women. Many white women did not want Black people to get the right to vote, even as Black women were willing to work alongside them. During the 1970s movement for women’s liberation, white women advocated for concerns that didn’t affect Black women nearly as much. For example, Black women had been working—whether under the involuntary conditions of slavery or as sharecroppers and later domestics—since our arrival in this country. White women’s fight to integrate themselves into the workplaces that their husbands and brothers and fathers occupied simply didn’t resonate. Black women worked in their homes.
While moments of tension arise around the divide between Black and white women’s and civil rights movements, some efforts have been made by various organizations to bridge the gap a bit. In 2020, the Rose Parade featured a suffrage float in celebration of the centennial of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. I was asked to ride on the float in honor of my great-grandmother, alongside the descendants of other suffrage leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, and Harriet Tubman.
The fact that those of us who are three to five generations removed from the early leaders of the suffrage movement can meet, interact, and work with each other shows the level of improvement that this country has experienced. Yet there is still a long way to go before any of us can claim there to be true equality across the board. Having a few exceptional Black people overcome the unique obstacles that we face as a community is a sign not of absolute equality but of heroic feats by select individuals.
Self-Determination, the Law, and Politics
Black people have often taken to “making a way out of no way.” We built our own postsecondary schools, now known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). We started our own civic and social organizations, businesses, and business networks. We created our own guidebooks to promote and support our own institutions and ourselves. These were all part of myriad survival techniques that have been employed to maintain Black dignity and independence.
At the start of the twentieth century, Ida and her attorney husband, Ferdinand, both sought to look outside the community to help change the laws that kept Black people unequal. In order to have this they needed to not only have the right to vote but also to get involved in politics. Some of Ida’s inspiration to advocate with the law might have come from the example her father set during Reconstruction. When the Fifteenth Amendment was passed in 1870, Black men were given the right to vote. Her father and many men around him earnestly engaged in political talk and exercised their newly found right.
HOLDING POLICE ACCOUNTABLE
In 1909 a penniless Black man named Will James, who was known as “Frog,” was arrested after the body of a white woman was found in an alley in Cairo, Illinois. Frank Davis, the sheriff of Alexander County, was involved in the hanging of James. He allowed a mob to take the prisoner to his certain death. With no due process of law, James was hanged from an electric pole and hundreds of bullets were pumped into him before his head was cut off.
If Ida B. Wells and other Black leaders had not put pressure on Governor Charles S. Deneen, the sheriff probably would have gotten away with this negligence. However, Ida traveled to Cairo and spent two days there talking to Black people in town to gather facts about what had actually occurred. Many were scared to say anything against Sheriff Davis because they had to live among those who had committed or sanctioned the murder of Frog. In Springfield, Ida testified in front of Governor Deneen and argued that the sheriff had violated his duty and knowingly released a prisoner into an assured death.
A sheriff of a town was legally obligated to protect its inmates from a mob, and Davis had not done that. If he got away with releasing someone to an assured death, then Ida felt there was no point in even pretending to have a law enforcement department. A few days after the hearing, Governor Deneen issued his verdict to not reinstate the sheriff. The impact of this decision was far-reaching. It was the first time that someone in Illinois who was complicit in a lynching was actually punished. This changed the way accused prisoners were handled in Illinois. When a sheriff saw signs of trouble with a mob, he would immediately call the governor for troops.
Governor Charles S. Deneen.
Though she didn’t yet have that right herself, Ida made her voice heard in a different way: in 1909, she testified in front of Illinois governor Charles S. Deneen to urge the permanent removal of a corrupt sheriff, Frank Davis of Cairo, Illinois, who had aided in the murder of an innocent Black man.
Many individuals and organizations have worked to hold law enforcement accountable since Ida’s years. The NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund was set up to fight against institutional racism. The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Equal Justice Initiative, the Sentencing Project, and many other organizations focus on assisting and defending the most disenfranchised in our society.
In the tradition of his grandparents, my father, Donald L. Duster, ran a social service agency in Chicago for over two decades. One program that was instituted was First Defense Legal Aid, which was a network of attorneys who volunteered to provide legal counsel to young people who had been arrested. The attorneys went to police stations and worked on behalf of the mostly young Black and brown males who had been arrested and did not know how to defend themselves.
Housing and Support
Throughout her life, Ida constantly straddled two worlds. She interacted with and worked with some of the most well-known leaders of the time, but she also had no problem working one-on-one with some of the most downtrodden or disenfranchised of her community. Ida often visited young prison inmates, who told her how their inability to find work had led to their troubles. Chicago didn’t offer the men as much opportunity as they hoped. It seemed to Ida that Black men were only welcomed by saloons, pool rooms, and gambling houses, confining them to environments that by their nature attracted undue attention from law enforcement. They were essentially entrapped right from the start. Ida felt in her heart that whatever outsized criminal element existed within Chicago’s Black neighborhoods
was exacerbated by the failure to provide alternative activities to attract young men’s attention.
She and Ferdinand opened the Negro Fellowship League in 1910 at 2830 South State Street, where it operated for almost three years, before it moved to the location where it would remain until its close in 1920. My great-grandfather Ferdinand was assistant state’s attorney for Cook County during the first two years the League was open. Many of his clients were exactly the kinds of otherwise promising young Black men who needed just one step up to improve their long-term prospects. They needed a temporary place to sleep, a library to help hone their work skills, and employment services to aid their search for honest work.
A prominent Black lawyer and civil rights activist in post-Reconstruction era Chicago, Ferdinand L. Barnett married Ida B. Wells in 1895 before becoming Illinois’ first Black assistant state’s attorney in 1896.
Institutions designed to help the most vulnerable people in society were nothing new, but building one that granted access to young Black people was far from the norm. Family, friends, and informal associations have held disenfranchised populations up through the ages, but the terrible history of the African American experience places many of us at a remarkable disadvantage. Generations of enslavement, disenfranchisement, destruction and theft of our property, and government policies that created barriers to the accumulation of Black wealth are challenges not equally shared across racial lines.
Ida B. the Queen Page 10
