Black Prophetic Fire by West Cornel; Buschendorf Christa

Author:West, Cornel; Buschendorf, Christa [West, Cornel; Buschendorf, Christa]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780807003534
Publisher: Random House Digital Dist
Published: 2014-08-12T04:00:00+00:00

But here, as in so many other cases, when she was really radical, she had to cope with the consequences, and the consequences were severe, because, in this case, with her insinuation of consensual relationships between white women and Black men, she had enraged the white elite of Memphis, who in reaction formed a “committee” of leading citizens who completely demolished the printing office of the Free Speech.16 But often she was even too provocative for her journalist colleagues, so even at a time when, as you pointed out, journalism was more substantial, she went over the top sometimes.

CW: Yes, when you think of the history of American journalism, people often evoke Upton Sinclair and even Jack London and other muckrakers who were investigating various forms of social injustice and social misery. But Ida B. Wells was there ten, fifteen years before. The Jungle was published by 1906,17 while Ida B. Wells was already there in 1892. As to her radicality, it shows in her statement about the Winchester rifle: that ought to have a place of honor in every Black household.18 Now that’s going to get our dear sister into a whole lot of trouble. She sounded like Deacons for Defense, Robert Williams down in North Carolina, the Black Panther Party, Huey Newton, which is about self-defense: arm yourself and make sure you police the police, so the police do not kill you.19

CHB: And, again, it was the incident of the lynching in Memphis, when she herself bought a revolver and said, “Well, if I’m attacked, I won’t die like a dog, but I will see to it that someone else—”

CW: “—Goes before me.”20 Now, you would not hear that out of a Booker T. Washington or W. E. B. Du Bois, maybe a William Monroe Trotter.21 I could hear William Trotter saying something like that, actually. But when you are so far ahead of your time, full of so much prophetic fire as Ida B. Wells—and then, when she marries Ferdinand Barnett, Ida B. Wells-Barnett—the level of loneliness is intense. You feel all by yourself, isolated, misunderstood, and misperceived. We see this over and over again in our prophetic figures. This is something she probably exemplifies more so than any of the figures that we have examined.

CHB: And in part because she is a woman, and you expect less of that kind of blazing spirit of hers, that militancy, in a woman.22 As I said before, she did not succumb to the image of the Victorian woman, although she grew out of an education that was very strict, teaching her to adhere to that very model, and you see the impact of that education in her early years,23 before she renounced that ideal, and said, “To hell with it, I am here to do something for others.” For example, when her case against the railroad was overthrown, she said she was very disappointed because with her trial she had wanted to achieve something for her people.24 The responsibility

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