Crusade for Justice by Ida B. Wells

Author:Ida B. Wells [Wells, Ida B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS000000 History / General
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2020-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

28

UNGENTLEMANLY AND UNCHRISTIAN

My first attempt in Chicago to reach public sentiment was an appeal to Rev. Frank Gunsaulus, pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church. Dr. Gunsaulus was supposed to have the most liberal pulpit in Chicago. He was a most eloquent speaker, the president of Armour Institute of Technology, which he had influenced Philip Armour to establish. Dr. Gunsaulus was well known in London, where he made many trips on summer vacations and had frequently spoken from London pulpits. He readily consented when our local Anti-Lynching Committee approached him for an opportunity for me to speak on the subject of lynching, and set aside a Sunday evening for me to do so.

When we reached the church that evening, we found the entrance very poorly lighted and no one about to receive us. After we had waited some time in the pastor’s study a young man appeared who said he was the son of the pastor and that his father had sent him to say we could go right on with the services but that he himself would not be present. I immediately refused to enter the church and carry on our services ourselves. Within a very short time and before we could leave, Dr. Gunsaulus himself appeared, ushered us into the church, and carried on the services as it was his place to do, as pastor. He made no explanation, but his introduction was hearty enough and his denunciation of lynching was all that could be expected.

Miss Mary Krout, editor of the women’s page of the Chicago Inter-Ocean, invited me to be present at a meeting called by the women to organize for the election of a woman to the trustee board of the state university. The women insisted that, as I had been doing public speaking, and they needed public speakers, I should be one of their speaker’s bureau. We met in the Palmer House and organized what was doubtless the first political movement on the part of the white women of Chicago. Several dates were made for me in different parts of the state, and I joined very heartily in the movement, even though the women could only vote for the three trustees elected by the state for the University of Illinois. That took up a great deal of time until the election in November 1894.

My next trip out of town on this anti-lynching agitation was in Saint Louis, Missouri. Here we had a wonderful meeting, and at its close, a white gentleman came to the platform and introduced himself as the editor of the St. Louis Republic. He remarked that he had been to great pains in sending persons throughout the South where I had lived in the effort to get something that he could publish against me. He said, “I didn’t succeed in finding anything, I am sorry to say. I didn’t succeed in finding anything although I spent a pretty penny in the effort to do so.” “You are sorry to say,” I replied. “Well,” he

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