The WCTU and the Lynching Controversy
GROUP 3 PACKET
by Jennifer Erbach
©2003 Illinois During the Gilded Age Digitization Project.
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Introduction:
Ida B. Wells was an African American journalist and part-owner of the newspaper Free
Speech. In 1892, after writing editorials condemning lynching, she was forced to flee the
South by a mob who threatened her life. Wells traveled around Great Britian and the
northern U.S. lecturing on the horrors of lynching and trying to rouse public sympathy
against it. She published A Red Record in 1895, a compilation of lynching statistics.
Frances Willard was a northern school teacher who became actively involved with the
Women's Christian Temperance Union, an organization which worked to promote
temperance, purity, moral reform, and encouraged education and women's suffrage. In
1879, she was elected president of the National WCTU and in 1891 became the president
of the World WCTU. Willard traveled extensively, delivered lectures, and published
pamphlets pertaining to issues of social and moral reform.
In the early 1890's conflict arose between Ida B. Wells and the WCTU, particularly with
Frances Willard. Wells accused the WCTU of ignoring the atrocities being committed
against blacks by lynch mobs. Wells was also outraged by some of the statements made
by Willard concerning racial tensions in the south, statements which appeared to excuse,
if not condone, lynching. Willard in turn, accused Wells of being "overzealous" in her
attacks, and of painting a distorted picture of U.S. racial tensions during her lectures in
Great Britain. The conflict between the two women would last until Willard's death in
1898.
Directions:
Read through the documents and answer the guided reading questions included in this
packet. Write down any questions that you have, and come to class prepared to discuss
the readings.
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"Mr. Moody and Miss Willard"
The following excerpt is from an article that appeared in the British publication
Fraternity in May 1894. Ida B. Wells critcized D. L. Moody, a northern preacher,
arguing that because he had tolerated the southern practices of segregated churches on
his visit to the south, he had "strengthened the Southern white man in his prejudices and
his determination to enforce them even in the house of God." Wells then moved on to
criticize Frances Willard.
* * *
But Miss Willard, the great temperance leader, went even further in putting the seal of
her approval upon the Southerners' method of dealing with the negro. In October, 1890,
the Women's [sic] Christian Temperance Union held its national meeting at Atlanta,
Georgia. It was the first time in the history of the organisation that it had gone South for a
national meeting, and met the Southerners in their own homes. They were welcomed with
open arms; the Governor of the State and the Legislature gave special audience in the
halls of State legislation to the temperance workers. They set out to capture the
Northerners to their way of seeing things, and, without troubling to hear the negro side of
the question, these temperance people accepted the white man's story of the problem with
which he had to deal. State organisers were appointed that year, who have gone through
the Southern States since then, but in obedience to Southern prejudices have confined
their work to white persons only. It is only after negroes are in prison for crimes that the
efforts of these temperance women are exerted without regard to "race, colour, or
previous condition." No ounce of prevention is used in their case; they are black, and if
these women went among the negroes for this work, the whites would not receive them.
Except here and there are found temperance workers of the negro race, "the great darkfaced mobs" are left the easy prey of the saloon-keeper.
There was pending in the National Congress as this time a Federal Elections Bill, the
object being to give the National Government control of the national elections in the
several States. Had this Bill become a law, the negro, whose vote has been systematically
suppressed since 1875 in the Southern States, would have had the protection of the
National Government, and his vote counted. The South would have been no longer
"solid;" the Southerners saw that the balance of power which they unlawfully hold in the
House of Representatives and the Electoral College, based on the negro population,
would be wrested from them. So they nick-named the pending elections law the "Force
Bill"-- probably because it would force them to disgorge their ill-gotten political gains-and defeated it. While it was being discussed, the question was submitted to Miss
Willard: "What do you think of the race problem and the Force Bill?"
Said Miss Willard: "Now, as to the 'race problem' in its minified, current meaning, I am a
true lover of the Southern people-- have spoken and worked in, perhaps 200 of their
towns and cities; have been taken into their love and confidence at scores of hospitable
firesides; have heard them pour out their hearts in the splendid frankness of their
impetuous natures. And I have said to them at such times: 'When I go North there will be
wafted to you no word from pen or voice that is not loyal to what we are saying here and
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now.' Going South, a woman, a temperance woman, and a Northern temperance woman-three great barriers to their goodwill yonder--I was received by them with a confidence
that was one of the most delightful surprises of my life. I think we have wronged the
South, though we did not mean to do so. The reason was, in part, that we had irreparably
wronged ourselves by putting no safeguard on the ballot-box at the North that would sift
out alien illiterates. They rule our cities to-day; the saloon is their palace, and the toddy
stick their sceptre. It is not fair that they should vote, nor is it fair that a plantation negro,
who can neither read nor write, whose ideas are bounded by the fence of his own field
and the price of his own mule, should be entrusted with the ballot. We ought to have put
an educational test upon that ballot from the first. The Anglo-Saxon race will never
submit to be dominated by the negro so long as his altitude reaches no higher than the
personal liberty of the saloon, and the power of appreciating the amount of liquor that a
dollar will buy. New England would no more submit to this than South Carolina. 'Better
whiskey and more of it,' has been the rallying cry of great dark-faced mobs in the
Southern localities where Local Option was snowed under by the coloured vote.
Temperance has no enemy like, for it is unreasoning and unreachable. To-night it
promises in a great congregation a vote for temperance at the polls to-morrow; but tomorrow twenty-five cents changes that vote in favour of the liquor-seller.
"I pity the Southerners, and I believe the great mass of them are as conscientious and
kindly-intentioned toward the coloured man as an equal number of white Church
members at the North. Would-be demagogues lead the coloured people to destruction.
Half-drunken white roughs murder them at the polls, or intimidate them so that they do
not vote. But the better class of people must not be blamed for this, and a more
thoroughly American population than the Christian people of the South does not exist.
They have the traditions, the kindliness, the probity, the courage of our forefathers. The
problem on their hands is immeasurable. The colored race multiplies like the locusts of
Egypt. The grog-shop is its centre of power. The safety of woman, of childhood, of the
home, is menaced in a thousand localities at this moment, so that the man dare not go
beyond the sight of their own roof-tree.
How little we knew of all this, seated in comfort and affluence here at the North,
descanting upon the right of everyman to cast one ballot and have it fairly counted; that
well-worn shibboleth invoked once more to dodge a living issue.
"The fact is that illiterate coloured men will not vote at the South until the white
population chooses to have them do so; and under similar conditions they would not at
the north." Here we have Miss Willard's words in full, condoning fraud, violence,
murder, at the ballot box; rapine, shooting, hanging, and burning; for all these things are
done and being done now by the Southern white people. She does not stop there, but goes
a step further to aid them in blackening the good name of an entire race, as shown by the
lines in italics. These utterances, for which the coloured people have never forgiven Miss
Willard, and which Frederic Douglass has denounced as false, are to be found in full in
The Voice, of October 23rd, 1890, a temperance organ published at New York City.
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IDA B. WELLS.
Manchester, April 5th, 1894.
From Ida B. Wells, "Mr. Moody and Miss Willard," Fraternity, May 1894, pp. 1617, (Temperance and Prohibition Papers microfilm (1977) scrapbook 69, frame
#395).
Text on-line at http://womhist.binghamton.edu/wctu2/doc27.htm.
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“Letter from Frances Willard”
The following is a letter from Frances Willard to the editor of the British publication
Fraternity, published on October 1, 1895. The controversy between her and Ida B. Wells
would continue until her (Willard's) death in 1898.
TO THE EDITOR, --It would be impossible for an association like the W.C.T.U., the
central object of which is the recognition and development of the brotherhood of man, to
be other than in warm sympathy with those who declare the substantial unity of the
human race, and endeavour to influence public opinion in the promotion of justice and
sympathy between all races, classes, creeds, and communities. It is our purpose, not only
by words, but deeds, to invest our lives in the effort to help on every member of the
human family toward freedom, opportunity, and every brotherly consideration.
Two principles underlie all our efforts in the nearly fifty countries in which the society
has obtained a foothold. The first has just been stated; and the second recognizes the
autonomy of each nation and state in respect to the manner in which its work shall be
conducted. In some of the Northern States it is thought best to organize in societies by
themselves groups of women who speak the Scandinavian tongue, and in the Southern
States colored women are organized in separate groups in the same way, by their own
wish and will. They realize that by working in this manner they will develop more rapidly
than they would if associated with white women, even as the W.C.T.U. itself does not
admit men, because we wish to become drilled and disciplined by having the entire
management of the society, so that when we are enfranchised, we shall be prepared to cooperate with men in the wider circle of Government.
So far as the World’s and National W.C.T.U. officers are concerned they would gladly
see white and colored women in the same societies, and no distinction is made between
white and colored delegates at the Conventions. From the first, colored women have been
among the Superintendents and Organizers of the National W.C.T.U. We are aware that
in the Southern States as a whole, it would not be practicable to group our local members
in this way, and we have reason to believe that coloured women, as a class, much prefer
to affiliate with those of their own race. We have been told this repeatedly by them, and
while there are exceptions to this statement, we believe it represents the current opinion
of the colored people up to the present time, but we think the development that will come
to the women who form these helpful groups of workers will at some time in the future
lead to the closer affiliation of the two groups of women in their work. We were obliged
to choose either not to organize in the South at all, or else to organize on this basis. We
have done the best we could under the circumstances, and we think those who have
criticized us so severely would take an altogether different view if they were better
informed concerning the local situation at the South.
The General Officers of the W.C.T.U. make no distinction on account of race, and the
attitude of the society toward the barbarity of lynching has been more pronounced than
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that of any other association in the United States, for not only has a resolution against
lynching been repeatedly enacted in the general society, but in many of its State branches,
while the utterances of its leaders have been made clear and unmistakable. With such a
record as this, White Ribboners need not fear to abide the verdict of fair-minded men and
women.
--Believe me, Yours sincerely,
FRANCES WILLARD
From "About Southern Lynchings," Baltimore Herald, 20 October 1895
(Temperance and Prohibition Papers microfilm (1977), section III, reel 42,
scrapbook 70, frame 153).
Text on-line at http://womhist.binghamton.edu/wctu2/doc38.htm.
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Guided Reading Questions
Answer the following in 1-3 complete sentences.
1. What does Ida B. Wells claim happened when the WCTU went to Atlanta for its
national meeting? How, according to Wells, is the WCTU showing prejudice against
African Americans in the south?
2. According to the quote provided by Wells, how does Frances Willard view the white
populations of the South? In her opinion, are they villains or victims? What reasons
does she give to support her opinions?
3. According to the quote provided by Wells, how does Willard view the black
populations of the South? Villains or victims? What reasons does she give to support her
opinions?
4. What are Wells' reactions to the statements made by Frances Willard?
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5. Frances Willard gives two principles on which the efforts of the WCTU are based.
What are they?
6. What, according to Willard, are the attitudes of the officers of the WCTU towards
African American members?
7. How does Willard justify segregated group meetings of the WCTU in the South?
8. What does Willard say about the attitude of the WCTU regarding lynching?
©2003 Illinois During the Gilded Age Digitization Project.
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