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Professor LINDA McMURRY (Author, "To Keep the Waters Troubled: The
Life of Ida B. Wells): It came from a quote that Wells made herself.
She was run out of Memphis, Tennessee, because of an editorial on
lynching she did. And she later asserted that the reason that she was
run out is because the Free Press, the paper that she owned, was the
"disturbing element that kept the waters troubled." And to me, it
seemed like a pretty good way to summarize Wells herself because there
were a lot of exasperating qualities that Wells had, but she was not
somebody that could be ignored. And I think that there is a definite
place for people who will not allow complacency to develop.

LAMB: When did she live?

Prof. McMURRY: She was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi,
and she ended up moving from there to Memphis when her parents--both
of her parents died in the yellow fever epidemic in eight--1878. And
so she, at 16, took over her f--the care of her siblings and h--became
head of the household. And she moved to Memphis in 1881 because it
became a better place to be a teacher.

LAMB: When did she die?

Prof. McMURRY: She died in 1931.

LAMB: And how old would she have been then? I guess...

Prof. McMURRY: Sixty-nine.

LAMB: Sixty-nine. You've got a picture that's on the cover and--and
I want to get a real good close-up of this. It's also inside the
book. What do you see when you look at that picture?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, to me, the--it was--this was made right about
the time that she was at the peak of her fame. And I see--I th--I
think it shows that she's a very attractive woman and it also shows
the kind of undercurrent of sorrow, to me, too. And there was a lot
in her life to be sorry about.

LAMB: Well, go back to Mississippi, where she was born. What--at
what age did her--both of her parents die?

Prof. McMURRY: She was 16.

LAMB: They both died then?

Prof. McMURRY: Mm-hmm. They were--they both died in the yellow
fever epidemic.

LAMB: How big was the yellow fever epidemic in this country?

Prof. McMURRY: It was huge. That was a b--that was the first time
that a yellow fever a--epidemic had come to--as far as Memphis, and so
there was not as much natural immunity that had developed. So it
was--it was huge...

LAMB: What was it?

Prof. McMURRY: ...thousands of people.

LAMB: How'd--what--what happened to you when you got yellow fever?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, a large percentage of people who got it died,
is what happened.

LAMB: How did you get it?

Prof. McMURRY: Through mosquitoes.

LAMB: Do we have that problem solved?

Prof. McMURRY: Through mosi--mosquito control and if you go into
places where yellow fever is rampant, they do get--give you an
immunization for it, I think. But she--her t--both of her parents
died and one of her siblings died. And the--her father was a Mason,
and so the Masons showed up at their house and said, `We're gonna farm
this child out here and this child out there,' and Wells just shook
her head and said, `No, my parents would--it would--it would just
destroy my parents to see the family split up. If you can help me
find work, I'll take care of them.'

LAMB: How many kids were there?

Prof. McMURRY: She had four younger siblings that were still alive.

LAMB: Did she take care of them?

Prof. McMURRY: Yes.

LAMB: Where?

Prof. McMURRY: She started out in Holly Springs, getting a teaching
job out in the country near there. And then in 1881, her aunt invited
her to come to Memphis. And at first, she wasn't able to get a job
teaching in Memphis, so she was teaching out in Woodstock, which was
nearby, but the--the kids--well, the two boys, by that time, were old
enough to be apprenticed out and to sort of be on their own. And her
two younger sisters came with her to Memphis and lived with her--her
aunt. She and her aunt lived together, and they lived there, but
Wells was the primary support for the family.

LAMB: And how far is Holly Springs, Mississippi, from Memphis?

Prof. McMURRY: Not that far. Holly Springs is in an extremely--the
extreme north of Mississippi, and so it's not a really long trip back
and forth.

LAMB: Have you been there?

Prof. McMURRY: Yes, I've been there.

LAMB: Is there a place that s--is there a Ida B. Wells home or a
museum or something like that?

Prof. McMURRY: Not much in Memphis. They do t--have a historical
marker now for her. But her home where she--where she eventually
lived, ended up, was in Chicago. And for her home there, it has been
made a national historic site.

LAMB: One of the previous BOOKNOTES, a young fellow was here when he
was 18--he's now in college--LeAlan Jones, and in talking about the
projects in Chicago, he mentioned the Ida B. Wells development. Let
me just run just a little s--50--40-minute clip...

Prof. McMURRY: OK.

LAMB: ...about him so we can make a contact there.

(Excerpt from BOOKNOTES, August 3, 1997)

LAMB: This is the four--actual 14th story...

Mr. LeALAN JONES (Co-Author, "Our America: Life and Death on the
South Side of Chicago"): That's the 14th story--that's the 14th
floor.

LAMB: And where is this?

Mr. JONES: This the--that's the Def Homes or the Darrow Homes,
whichever one you may prefer to call it.

LAMB: In the Ida B. Wells development.

Mr. JONES: In the Ida B. Wells. Now that building actually is
being torn down.

LAMB: You think that's a good idea?

Mr. JONES: It's a--it's--you know, it's a little bit too late, but
I'm--I'm glad it's coming down.

LAMB: Why?

Mr. JONES: Because it--it--it's a--they--they never really served
their purpose. They were put up there to say--they were put up there
cheaply, first of all, and yet, it's--it's--it's a sad sight. No one
can live in those conditions.

(End of excerpt)

LAMB: What do you think--wh--why would they name a whole project
after Ida B. Wells?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, she was always, I think, perhaps more
recognized in Chicago than elsewhere in the country, so that was
really her first major honor, was having this housing complex named
for her. I think it was 1940 it was built or something like that. Of
course, she would have been horrified at what the--the style and--and
c--and level of living that developed out of that complex.

LAMB: Why?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, it ha--is the scene--it has been a scene of
many sad occurrences because it has all--as he was saying, it has all
the--the terrible disadvantages of that high-density pr--housing
project kind of subsidized housing.

LAMB: What had she done in her life that they would name a project
like that after her?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, one reviewer of the book said he wished that I
could have put the brakes on Wells so that he could have had--could
have caught his breath between it. There was a lot that she did. She
first became well-known--or her first major event actually came two
years after moving to Memphis, when she rode a train between
Woodstock, where she was teaching, and Memphis, where she was living.
And about that time, segregation had not been firmly established. It
was just in the process of being established. And so she always got a
ticket and rode the ladies' car. And one day they came and told her
to move from the ladies' car and she refused, and so they--he reached
over to grab her and throw her off the train, and she bit him. That
didn't get as much publicity. It does--you know, it does illustrate
her temperament, however. But what happened after that is not only
did she refuse to leave the train willingly, but she sued the railroad
company and won, initially. It was eventually overturned on appeal.

But she won, and that got a lot of publicity in the black press and it
actually launched her career into journalism because she began to
write articles about her suit and then that de--launched into writing
articles on all kinds of things to the various black newspapers of the
time, and many of them had national readership. And so she assumed
the name Iola and became pretty well-known as a black journalist.

LAMB: Iola Wells? Is that what her...

Prof. McMURRY: No, her--her name--she just used the...

LAMB: Iola.

Prof. McMURRY: ...Iola, period. She didn't use her full name. May
have been because she was a little bit concerned about the ap--impact
it might have on her teaching career if it was wild
known--wi--widespread knowledge of who--who was writing these
editorials. And--but she never did check her pen for anybody. She
eventually did get fired from teaching because she criticized the
school board for some of its actions and a newspaper.

LAMB: Go back to the train. What were the different classes at that
time in the South? You say the ladies' car. And--and why would she
have--why would they have asked her to leave?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, to a large extent, the designation of--of
ladies' cars was a contradiction to what the image that whites wanted
other whites to have of black women. Beginning in slavery, black
women had been sexually exploited and--with impunity. And in the
classic argument of the racist--of the rapist, I mean, they--they
said, you know, `She really wanted it,' so a picture of black women as
being particularly sensual and depraved emerged. And so consequently,
at the end of slavery, it was a very important priority for black
women to get the respect they had never had. And it also was a high
priority among Southern white racists to see that she didn't get the
designation of `lady.'

So it was a big deal to black women to be forced to leave the ladies'
car and go to the smoking cars, where they normally were sent. And
they were sent there, and the smoking car became the Jim Crow car, the
segregated car.

LAMB: And in the South in those years--and what years are we talking
about now in Memphis?

Prof. McMURRY: In the 1880s.

LAMB: What was the population base? How big was Memphis? What was
the ratio, black and white? Do you know?

Prof. McMURRY: I--I really don't recall exactly. It was--Memphis
was a relatively new city and it had been wiped out by the yellow
fever epidemic, too. And so to some extent, it really had begun over
in--in 1878, so it was not nearly the size it is today, but it was
still--it was a very rapidly growing city. And African-Americans made
up a sizeable minority of the residents in Memphis.

LAMB: When did the--Beale Street, the jazz and all that come to
Memphis?

Prof. McMURRY: It--it--it was developing while Wells was there.
Beale Street was a long street and--and the part that most Americans
are familiar with are where all the blues clubs and things like that
were. There's another part of Beale Street that was kind of the black
Wall Street of--of Memphis, where black professionals had their
offices and all. And that's something I think a lot of people who
read this book would be surprised, is the extent to which the
el--black elite had developed into professionals. There were a lot of
black doctors and lawyers in Memphis. There was quite a black elite.
As a matter of fact, probably the wealthiest man in Memphis was black,
a man by the name of Robert Church.

LAMB: You talked in here about a senator, a black senator--I
can't--can't find the name right quickly, but--and--and I remember you
saying that he was the last black senator up until the 1964 Voting
Rights Act, and this was back in the 1800s--or 19...

Prof. McMURRY: N--well, in actually 19--he--I think he left the
House--it was the--it was the Congress rather than the Senate. But,
no, George White was from North Carolina and was elected and served
till 1901, and then once he left, there were no other
African-Americans from the South elected until after the Voting Rights
Act of 1964.

LAMB: Sounds like you have a little bit of a Southern accent. Where
are you from?

Prof. McMURRY: I was born in Montgomery, but that was only because
women went home to have their babies at that time. I grew up in
Atlanta.

LAMB: And where are you now full time?

Prof. McMURRY: I'm prof--a professor at North Carolina State
University.

LAMB: Where is that?

Prof. McMURRY: That's in Raleigh, North Carolina.

LAMB: And what's the population of the North Carolina State--what
kind of school is it?

Prof. McMURRY: We have about--close to 30,000 students. It's one of
the two major research universities of the Uni--University of North
Carolina system. Most people are more aware of our sister in Chapel
Hill, but we're both part of--we're the two designated research
institutions in there. We are more engineering and technical stuff.

LAMB: How did you talk Oxford Press into doing a book on Ida B.
Wells?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, actually, I didn't. An agent did. But I had
already published a book with Oxford, a biography of George Washington
Carver, so that I don't think it was too much of a hard sell. It had
done very well.

LAMB: And what was that all about? What's--who is--who was George
Washington Carver?

Prof. McMURRY: He was probably one of the best-known
African-Americans in the 1940s, '50s and so forth. He was a
agricultural scientist at Tuskegee Institute and became really
well-known as a--as a black scientist.

LAMB: And how did you get your interest in this?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, I went to school--I got my PhD at Auburn
University, which was 25 miles away from Tuskegee, and that's where
all his papers were, which is one reason nobody had done a full-scale
biography of him, I think, is that Tuskegee was kind of inaccessible
for most researchers.

LAMB: Why?

Prof. McMURRY: It's just--it's just kind of remote. I mean, you
know, it's not one of those places that is--and the Carver papers were
very expens--extensive, I mean. There were something like--there was
a whole wall of document boxes because he di--he saved every letter he
ever wrote. So--and--or got and...

LAMB: And what he--when did--when did he live?

Prof. McMURRY: He was born in 1865 and died in 1943.

LAMB: Did they know each other?

Prof. McMURRY: Not personally, I don't--I'm--I'm almost sure they
didn't.

LAMB: But someone that she did know is Booker T. Washington,
according to...

Prof. McMURRY: Oh, yes.

LAMB: And--and where was he from and...

Prof. McMURRY: He was the president of Tuskegee Institute, where
Carver was working, and he was also known as the kind of combination
of s--spokesperson for African-Americans. He--he essentially told
African-Americans to work hard and to make themselves respectable and
acceptable to whites and economically important to whites, and that
their rights would automatically come to them if they did that.

LAMB: And what did Ida Wells say to him about that?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, it completely contradicted her own experience,
although it was very consistent with his experience. What I think was
the turning point for her on this whole issue of winning rights by
respectability was the lynching of three of her friends in Memphis,
which also was a key factor in the change of the course of her career.
These three individuals including--included Thomas Moss, who she was
close enough to to actually be the godchild of his--of his child. And
they were lynched primarily because they opened up a supermarket in
competition with a white supermarket. And so these were young men who
were very respectable, they worked hard, they were making themselves
economically important and independent. And they were lynched because
they were successful. And so that caused her to turn her considerable
anger towards the l--anti-lynching violence.

LAMB: Who is this in this picture?

Prof. McMURRY: That is a picture of Wells, standing up, with Tom
Moss' wife and two children at the...

LAMB: And Tom Moss...

Prof. McMURRY: Was one of them that was lynched.

LAMB: Go back to the lynching story. What year was this?

Prof. McMURRY: It was 1892.

LAMB: She would have been in her 30s?

Prof. McMURRY: Let's see. I've got it.

LAMB: She--she was 62--32--yeah.

Prof. McMURRY: No, it was 18--yeah, it was 1892. She would have
been 30 years old.

LAMB: And what were the circumstances?

Prof. McMURRY: As I explained...

LAMB: But, I mean, where--where was the grocery?

Prof. McMURRY: It was right in--it was in an area that was kind of a
fringe between white and black sections, and there was a single white
grocery store there. And Moss was the president of this company that
was kind of a cooperative grocery store, the people's store that
opened up. It was in direct competition with the grocery store that
was there. And there was bad blood between them all along. I mean,
the white owner wanted to run them out and--because they were actually
winning the battle of competition. The--Moss was so influential in
the black community, he drew in a l--most of the black business and
even some of the white business. So he was capa--kept trying to find
ways of--of running him out. And then they had an altercation and he
convinced a judge that Moss was a danger, and so they had been
in--informed that a white mob was gonna attack the store, and instead,
there was a group of deputies who came that were dressed in civilian
clothes, and they thought it was the mob. And so when--there was an
exchange of gunfire and it was blown into a conspiracy, supposedly, of
a black insurrection. And so they arrested about 30 people, but the
only people they lynched were those people who were directly tied to
the store.

LAMB: Three black men...

Prof. McMURRY: Three black men. And...

LAMB: ...Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Lee Stewart.

Prof. McMURRY: Right. And Thomas Moss wasn't even at the store when
it happened, but he was lynched anyway.

LAMB: Then what happened?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, Wells happened to be out of town at the time,
and when she came back, it immediately caused her to focus her
attention on the issue of lynching. And in the course of doing this,
she began to refute the myth that had been perpetrated to justify
lynching by white mobs, and that was that black men were essentially
so bestial that they had to have the restraining hand of, you know,
the white mob to keep them under control. And so rape was given as
the major reason for lynching and even people who disagreed with
lynching essentially believed that, you know, rape was the cause.
Well, with this lynching of these three people, she knew that it was
not--rape wasn't in any way involved, and so she began investigating
and began to discover that rape wasn't even a charge in the vast
majority of lynchings. And in this particular--and even when it was
charged, it could be something a black man winking at a woman would be
attempted rape or something like that.

So she began to challenge that, and she wrote an editorial in the
Memphis Free Speech, but--of which she was editor at that time--by
that time, and essentially implied that this cry of rape was--could be
a source of embarrassment for white women because--that most of--or at
least many white women were willing participants in sexual liaisons
with the black men and didn't raise the rape until afterwards. Well,
needless to say, her editorial infuriated white Memphis and she was
out of town then. And they came to the offices of the Free Press and
ran her partner out of town. And eventually all of the presses and so
forth were confiscated, and she was told by people from Memphis that
she should not come back.

LAMB: They didn't have free press in Memphis then?

Prof. McMURRY: Oh, that was the--that was the name of her newspaper.

LAMB: No, no, no, but, I mean, they didn't...

Prof. McMURRY: Oh, it--no, it didn't--that--that was the end of the
free press.

LAMB: You couldn't go to court and...

Prof. McMURRY: No. African-Americans had very little legal
protection during that period of time.

LAMB: What impact did the Reconstruction have on Memphis and that
part of the country?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, I'm not sure exactly what you mean.

LAMB: Well, you had the Civil War and then you had the Reconstruction
period and--were the blacks involved at all in any of the governing of
the city?

Prof. McMURRY: Yeah, there were--there was a good deal of black
involvement early on, but...

LAMB: Was there any occupation--troop occupation down there?

Prof. McMURRY: Yeah. Well, Memphis became kind of a headquarters
for the Northern troops, and so during the war--and large numbers of
slaves and freed blacks would--would run to Memphis to get behind
the--the Army lines. So there was a good deal of friction there and
you had a good deal of opportunity for blacks as well.

LAMB: When you went to find her story, how hidden was it? I know she
did an autobiography.

Prof. McMURRY: Well, it was--and to--to me, it was much too hidden,
although recent scholarship's beginning to recognize her importance.
She should have had a full-scale biography years earlier. She had her
autobiography, which her daughter tried to get published and was not
able to get published until 1970. She also h--wrote some diaries
while she was in Memphis, which were a wonderful source for her ideas
and her personality and so forth, although a good portion of the--the
diary was about her romantic affairs and things of that sort. It
still gave a lot of insight and...

LAMB: Where'd you--where'd you find the diaries?

Prof. McMURRY: The diaries were at the University of Chicago, where
all of her papers are. Her papers were very limited, though, because
I--I--I understand there was a house fire or something like that, and
so they don't have that many papers. But the--one of the sources I
got a lot of information from were the various black newspapers.

LAMB: And where did you find them?

Prof. McMURRY: Many of them have been microfilmed, and so you could
get them through microfilm.

LAMB: And how long did this biography take you?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, let's see. I started thinking about Wells
about probably 1991 and actively began working on the biography in '93
and it came out in '98.

LAMB: And you say that the ninety--1892 was when the Memphis lynching
occurred and then there's this--you have this in your book...

Prof. McMURRY: Yes.

LAMB: ...about the lectures that she used to give and that she was
called to New York some way and that began her whole career as a
lecturer?

Prof. McMURRY: Yes. She--when--when she was--from--essentially run
out of Memphis, what happened is that she moved to New York, where she
became affiliated with the New York Age, which was a leading black
newspaper. And the fact that she was in exile added to the interest
of her story and so forth, so that she began to give lectures. And
that was one of the lectures that she gave at the--the brochure there.

LAMB: Let me just look at this closely. It says, `Miss Ida B.
Wells, a lecture, Metropolitan AME Church, Monday evening, October
31st, 1892.' And it says--talks about Southern mob rule and will be
introduced by T. Thomas Fortune. Who was he?

Prof. McMURRY: He was the editor of the Free Sp--I mean, the editor
of the New York Age that she went to work for.

LAMB: And what was he like and what wo--what role did he play in her
life?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, he became a mentor early on in--in her course
of ja--journalism and so forth. T. Thomas Fortune also was the
founder of the Afro-American Council, and Wells was involved in the
founding of that organization as well as just about every major
organization that had to do with black rights. She was involved in
the founding of the NAACP, the National Association of Colored Women,
the Niagara Movement, she was the--probably the most active woman in
that that was W.B.--W.E.B. Du Bois' group and--oh...

LAMB: You've got this photograph or this full page of photographs and
Mr. Fortune is up there in the left-hand corner, and then you have
Bicker--Booker T. Washington off to the right, Frederick Douglass in
the middle and Ida B. Wells down there on the right. Who's down in
the left-hand corner? Do you know?

Prof. McMURRY: That's I. Garland Penn. He was--had just currently
written a book about black journalists.

LAMB: What is this we're looking at?

Prof. McMURRY: It came from a book of the period or s--I think it
was called "The College for Life" or something like that. It was kind
of a--a celebration of black life and culture. And what I think was
important about this photograph is that it illustrated--this was in
1895--it was sort of--Douglass was considered the outstanding leader
and spokesperson, and so he's in the middle, but it's almost like
these are satellites around him, or the contenders for his mantle,
because he was aging at the time, and I thought it was very
significant that Wells was one of them...

LAMB: Oh...

Prof. McMURRY: ...and W.E.B. Du Bois was not, but he was not very
well-known in 1895.

LAMB: What was Ida B. Wells' relationship with Frederick Douglass?

Prof. McMURRY: Pretty close. He very much supported her
anti-lynching campaign and wrote a preface for her first anti-lynching
pamphlet that grew out of her lecture and newspaper articles about
lynching. She also went to his house a number of times and she--he
especially appreciated her because she accepted his wife, his second
wife. After his first wife died, Douglass married a white woman and
many people were upset about it. But Douglass wrote her and said that
she always gave his wife the--you know, the kind of respect that she
deserved.

LAMB: There's another lynching incident--a fellow named Sam Hoes.

Prof. McMURRY: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: What was that?

Prof. McMURRY: There's so many lynchings she was involved in.

LAMB: This was Newnan, Georgia.

Prof. McMURRY: Newnan, Georgia. Well, that was one that--it
occurred down there and it was--it was a pretty terrible lynching.
But it was also a lynching that occurred down in Booker T.
Washington's neck of the woods. And by--eventually, the role of
leadership from--that--of Douglass was gonna be filled by Booker T.
Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois as kind of contenders for the throne.
And he was somewhat apog--apologetic about the Hoes lynching, which
infuriated Wells. But it was impossible for Wells to accept Booker T.
Washington's philosophy later on. She had supported him early on
because, as I say, h--their ideas were to--totally contradictory. He
was saying that respectability would bring rights. And she was saying
that, you know, respectability is what caused many--much lynching.
White progress rather than aggression is what caused lynching.

LAMB: Who is this?

Prof. McMURRY: That's Fred--Ferdinand Barnett. She finally found
her soul mate when she met him while she--after she moved to Chicago.
He was a lawyer and activist also and owned a newspaper in Chicago,
The Chicago Conservator. Earlier, she'd had problems with men because
any man that was strong enough for her to respect, she was afraid she
would lose her independence if she, you know, became too closely
involved, or especially got married. She didn't really want to get
married. But Far--Ferdinand Barnett was the exception.

LAMB: How old was she when she got married?

Prof. McMURRY: She was 33, I believe it was.

LAMB: And how many children did she have?

Prof. McMURRY: She had four. She also had two stepsons that were
grown by the time her own family...

LAMB: Are these all her kids right here?

Prof. McMURRY: Those are all of her kids right there. There are two
stepsons that were probably in their late teens when that picture was
made.

LAMB: And are any of these kids alive or granddaughters or...

Prof. McMURRY: None--none of them are st--are still alive, but there
are some grandchildren around, yes.

LAMB: What were her kids like? And how did that work out in that
family?

Prof. McMURRY: They were--they were very different. The best source
of information on the Wells--the Barnett family is probably the
daughter that was instrumental in getting her autobiography published.

LAMB: Is this the whole family here?

Prof. McMURRY: Yes, I think that's got them all.

LAMB: Picture's in 1917.

Prof. McMURRY: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That was--that's the family including
grandson--their early grandchildren, too.

LAMB: And how did Ida B. Wells and her husband work together?

Prof. McMURRY: It was an unconventional marriage for that time and
certainly for to--maybe today. They were temperamentally opposite.
Barnett was very easy-going and there was nothing easy-going about
Wells-Barnett. She took the Wells-Barnett. She did not take his
name. She hyphenated her name. But he was supportive of her. He was
as militant as she was and supportive. He actually hired a
housekeeper to do the housework. And he did most of the cooking
because he liked to. And he would hire nurse maids to go with her
when she--so she could continue her lectures and activities and so
forth.

LAMB: You say they were Republicans.

Prof. McMURRY: Yes, most African-Americans at that time were
Republicans.

LAMB: What did that mean?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, the Republican Party was still identified as
the party of emancipation. And the Republican Party really was more
supportive of black rights than the Democratic Party for most of that
period of time. It begins to shift with the New Deal and Roosevelt's
election.

LAMB: What were the Ida B. Wells club? Or is it a club or clubs?
They have different...

Prof. McMURRY: Yeah. Well, they were clubs that formed even before
she came to Chicago, even before she became as famous as she was. She
was inspiring the formation of some clubs. The one in Chicago began
soon after she got there, and continued to be one of the groups
through which she worked.

LAMB: When did she go to England and why?

Prof. McMURRY: She made two tours to England in '93 and '94.

LAMB: 1893.

Prof. McMURRY: 1893 and 1894, yes. There was a woman who was over
in the United States touring. Her name--her name was Catherine Empy.
And she was--became alarmed about lynching. And she also met Wells.
And she figured that she'd be very effective to bring to England to
rouse the English sentiment against lynching. And so she and another
woman in Britain--in Great Britain--I think Isabelle Mayo was--was in
Scotland. I'm not sure. But at any rate, they brought her over for a
tour. And then brought--Catherine Empy brought her--no, Mayo brought
her back for a second tour in '94.

LAMB: Well, you know, part of what you wrote about the English
becoming sympathetic toward what Wells' crusade was about, but during
the Civil War, weren't the British somewhat sympathetic to the South,
the white South?

Prof. McMURRY: The leadership was, at least in the economic elite
because of the dependence upon cotton. But a large portion of the
people in general were anti-slavery, largely through the work of
Frederick Douglass, who went over on British tours like Wells did
later.

LAMB: Were there any people of color in Great Britain in that time?

Prof. McMURRY: Very limited numbers, yeah.

LAMB: So what would the pitch be when she would go over there? What
was the purpose?

Prof. McMURRY: The purpose was to play the role that Frederick
Douglass had played. That is to rouse British public opinion, so that
they would--it would embarrass the people in the United States to do
something about it.

LAMB: Did it work?

Prof. McMURRY: Yes. I mean, in the sense of getting whites'
attention, it definitely did. She--she began to be very highly
criticized in the white press for her efforts.

LAMB: When was this taken, do you know? And what was she doing at
this period?

Prof. McMURRY: That was in 1917. And the little button on her
collar there is--says something like `our modern Negro soldiers.' It
was after a shootout in Houston between black troops and white
citizens. And without a trial, many of these black soldiers were
executed. And so she was essentially raising hell about that. And it
led to an interesting visit by the military intelligence or the Secret
Service or some agency like that that came to her house and told her
that she could be arrested for sedition if she did not decease in
this. And she essentially told them, `Well, if--if--if I'm to be the
one--I'm not gonna stop what I'm doing. If you put me in jail, all
right, because I would rather be sitting in jail than not speak up
about the truth.' But, of course, they didn't arrest her. She was 55
at the time and a mother of four, you know. So they--they did not
arrest her. And--but she--it does illustrate that she'd never back
down and she didn't care who she was talking to. She was gonna tell
the truth as she saw it.

LAMB: Was she religious?

Prof. McMURRY: Yes, very religious.

LAMB: Which--which religion?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, she kind of moved around. But she was Church
of Christ while she was in Memphis, which made sense because she was
kind of a freethinker anyway and the Church of Christ was one of--a
denomination that tried to--to be ecumenical in its Christianity sort
of thing--sort of, so that she was, too. When she was in Memphis, she
went to about a dozen different churches, but she was a member of the
Church of Christ.

LAMB: You have here in the book, page 339--I'll get it--three lessons
in life. I don't know if you remember this part or not but her list
of three began with the success of a local paper's campaign urging
people not to shop where they could not work. What was the point?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, a--by the way, these are lessons from--from
wo--the year past. She was--this was a New Year's thing where she was
writing about the lessons and that would have been in 1930. It was a
boycott against merchants who would not hire African-Americans
and--essentially saying that you should not shop there if you cannot
work there.

LAMB: The second on this was--she called this the bloodless battle
for recognition and progress in the economic field. The second lesson
was learned when lobbying efforts prevented the confirmation of John
J. Parker, a Southern segregationist, to the Supreme Court. This
victory taught, quote, "the strength of our political worth." Did they
stop this man from being...

Prof. McMURRY: Yes.

LAMB: ...a--approved for the Supreme Court?

Prof. McMURRY: It was--it was largely the work of the NAACP, but
i--the NAACP and Wells often duplicated efforts. She eventually had a
falling out with the leadership of the NAACP or at least the black
leader--leadership of the NAACP.

LAMB: What was the reason for the fallout?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, she and Du Bois became kind of a--to
loggerheads. And Du Bois was the highest ranking black member of the
NAACP in the early stages, the only one on the board.

LAMB: Was he the general counsel?

Prof. McMURRY: No, he was director of research and the publisher of
the Crisis, which was a publication of the NAACP.

LAMB: The third lesson for that year--and she died the next year, if
I remember.

Prof. McMURRY: Right.

LAMB: `Wells-Barnett praised pastures'--no, I mean, `praised the
critically acclaimed performance of black actors in the play "Green
Pastures," which she called a wonderful testimonial to Negro art and
religion. Wells-Barnett visited presidents and scolded newspapers for
using the term "darkie".'

Prof. McMURRY: Yeah, that's a--that's a very good quote. Let me
see, I--I have some quotes marked in here that...

LAMB: How much...

Prof. McMURRY: OK, here it is. She--the--she wrote to--a letter to
the editor of a Chicago paper and they were calling this retired--or
this--this--this man who'd--who had died or something--they were
talking about--I think they referred to him as a old Negro newsboy and
an aged darkie. And she protested the use of that terminology and she
closed the letter with a quote that I think is very significant. She
said, "This may seem a small matter to a large number of readers, but
it is part of the great whole. And after all, there is only a
difference in degree between taking a man's self-respect and taking
his life." Nothing was too big or too small for--for Wells to tackle.
She's best known for anti-lynching efforts, but she was a strong
lobbyist in Illinois and was responsible--or--or took part in
campaigns to turn back every attempt to segregate the schools in
Chicago. That's why--getting back to your earlier question about the
housing project, she also established a black settlement
hound--se--settlement house, kind of, in Chicago. She established the
first black women's suffrage group in Illinois. She was very active
in the fight for women's rights, as well as for black rights. But she
always put race concerns over gender concerns.

LAMB: Marcus Garvey's mentioned in your book.

Prof. McMURRY: Yes.

LAMB: Where did he come into the picture? Who was he? Where was he
from?

Prof. McMURRY: He was from Jamaica, and he became a challenge to Du
Bois' leadership because he formed the United Negro Improvement
Association. Anyway, he was living in Harlem at the time and he was
recruiting large numbers of essentially lower class African-Americans
into this organization, which was a black nationalist kind of
organization that rejected, essentially, any kind of racial
intermixing.

LAMB: And you say that he eventually was convicted on mail fraud...

Prof. McMURRY: Right.

LAMB: ...in 1924. What happened to him then?

Prof. McMURRY: He was deb--he served about two years in prison and
then was e--deported back to Jamaica, but a--he actually moved to
London after that.

LAMB: Now he was a separatist.

Prof. McMURRY: Right.

LAMB: Did she believe in separatism?

Prof. McMURRY: One of the things that I think is significant about
Wells--that this book I hope captures is that most of the labels are
far too simplistic. She bel--re--she did believe in self help of
Booker T. Washington, in some ways, but she didn't believe in his
accommodation. She believed in separatism in some ways, but she
remained a committed integrationist. There were a lot of ambivalent
feelings among much of the black elite about what were the appropriate
tactics and so forth and she, essentially, I think was for anything
that worked.

LAMB: When she spoke, was it to black audiences or white audiences?

Prof. McMURRY: Both. In England, of course, it was white audiences,
but she also spoke to white aud--audiences in Boston and other places,
too.

LAMB: Yo--you paint a picture in here of--from time to time of
someone who was argumentative, angry, didn't get along with some
people. I mean, how--give us that scenario. I mean, what was
she--what do you think she would have been like to know?

Prof. McMURRY: Exasperating.

LAMB: Why?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, because she never compromised. She
was--to--till the day she died, she was uncompromising. And it made
many people uncomfortable because it made males seem timid and...

LAMB: Who's this in the picture, by the way? Is that her husband?

Prof. McMURRY: Oh, that's her husband and that's Alfreda Duster, her
daughter. She was Alfreda Barnett at the time, but--who later was
responsible for getting her autobiography published and also did a
wonderful interview that's available, that is the best source on the
Barnett family life, I think.

LAMB: Have you ever heard her voice?

Prof. McMURRY: No, I haven't.

LAMB: Is it anywhere to be heard?

Prof. McMURRY: It may be, I don't know.

LAMB: Did--I mean, did you ever have a--did you ever read a
characterization of how she would speak? I mean, wh--what her diction
was like?

Prof. McMURRY: Oh--oh--oh, you mean...

LAMB: Yes.

Prof. McMURRY: You mean Wells-Barnett?

LAMB: Yeah.

Prof. McMURRY: I thought you were talking about Alfreda Duster for a
minute. No, I don't think there is any existing tape. There were a
lot of people who described her style of speaking, which was
constrained but impassioned. She was a--she had a difficult position
as a lecturer because at that point in time in the 18--at least before
the 20th century, it was kind of risky for women to speak out in
public, period. They tended to get criticized for that. But she was
not only speaking out in public, she was speaking out about sexually
explicit matters, like rape. And so she felt like she had to maintain
a very ladylike demeanor. And she use--usually used white newspapers
and so forth to make her point so that she was--she was quoting from
the enemy kind of thing. But apparently, she was a very dynamic
speaker.

LAMB: Go back to the beginning and--and her parents--you say that she
lost them both at age 16, l--yellow fever. Where do you think she got
this spirit that she had?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, I think somewhat--some--some degree of
temperament was inherited. You know, I--I think genetically, some
people are--are more combative. But I think there were a lot of
factors that met--played into her temperament. She was the oldest
child. And--especially after her parents' death, she had to really
become--as she's listed in the sentence, is that--as the head of the
household. She was angry because both of the gender roles she was
expected to play, which she wouldn't really consciously admit to
herself, but she balked at that. She also was angry at the treatment
that African-Americans got. She really was just uncompromisingly
militant.

LAMB: You have here in the beginning...

Prof. McMURRY: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...a dedication.

Prof. McMURRY: Uh-huh.

LAMB: And the dedication says, `To Allen W. Jones, who made a
historian out of a housewife, and to John A. Edwards,' who has bought
that historian ha--historian much--`brought that historian much
happiness.' Who are these two people?

Prof. McMURRY: Allen W. Jones was my major professor when I was at
Auburn, and a--a wonderful mentor and responsible for me becoming an
historian. He actually ran into me in the grocery store and got me
into graduate school. And John Edwards is my husband.

LAMB: Now go back to the--the first part of this, it--it made a
historian out of a housewife. What were you doing and what year was
this?

Prof. McMURRY: I w--I started graduate school in 1971, and I was...

LAMB: What had you been doing?

Prof. McMURRY: I'd been working as a customer service representative
at a manufacturing plant in--near Auburn. And I just happened to run
to--into him in the grocery store and he--this was actually earlier
than '71, and I--what I really wanted to do was get pregnant. And so
he finally got me to apply to graduate school and I got my acceptance
and a positive pregnancy test the same week. And so I stayed home for
a while with my daughter, but he kept calling every few months,
saying, `Are you ready to put that mind to use?' You know, and things
like--and she--he finally convinced me to go to graduate school.

LAMB: And where did you go?

Prof. McMURRY: At--to Auburn University.

LAMB: And what did you get? A PhD?

Prof. McMURRY: PhD, yes.

LAMB: In what?

Prof. McMURRY: In history. I t--majored in a m--my major field was
recent American history, but I--most of my research and most of my
emphasis was in African-American history.

LAMB: How did he know that you'd be a good candidate for a PhD?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, I had--I had come back to--I had been to Auburn
for the last two years of my college. I went to Emory first two years
and Auburn the second two years. And so I had been away and then came
back and--to finish my work at Auburn, and I had him as a professor
that--my last semester at Auburn.

LAMB: This--is he still alive?

Prof. McMURRY: Yes, he is.

LAMB: And has he read your book?

Prof. McMURRY: Yes, he has. He--he was very instrumental in the
first two, because the--I did a biography of Monroe Work, who almost
nobody knows about, but that was my master's thesis expanded, and then
my biography of Carver was my dissertation expanded. And, of course,
he was there at the inception of both of those. But even after I
graduated, he would call me or write me and say, `They're having a
conference on such and such here. You ought to go re--give a
part--paper on--on Carver,' and things like that. So he continued to
mentor me even after I got my degree.

LAMB: What reaction do you get from African-Americans, a white woman
writing about black people?

Prof. McMURRY: Mixed, but for the most part, I think fairly
supportive. I know--John Hope Franklin essentially told me
directly--he said, you know, don't--`Don't worry about anybody who
thinks you shouldn't be writing about black subjects.' He said, `You
ought to be judged on the merit of your work than on the color of you
skin,' so...

LAMB: Is he down there in--in your area?

Prof. McMURRY: He is--yes. We're all part of what they call
Research Triangle. Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh are all in a very
close radius and he's at Duke now. He was at University of Chicago
for a long time, though.

LAMB: And John A. Edwards, your husband--where'd you meet him?

Prof. McMURRY: In Raleigh.

LAMB: How long you been married?

Prof. McMURRY: Two years.

LAMB: Just two years.

Prof. McMURRY: Yeah. W--I think about two--yeah, about two years.

LAMB: What's he do?

Prof. McMURRY: He's an engineer, only retired.

LAMB: And what does he think of all this attention to history and
biography?

Prof. McMURRY: He's v--he's very supportive, too. I mean, he lov...

LAMB: That's what you say here, `Who brought that historian much
happiness.'

Prof. McMURRY: That is quite true.

LAMB: Who was Monroe Nathan Work that you wrote about?

Prof. McMURRY: He was a black sociologist and the significance of
him was that he actually joined Du Bois' Niagara Movement, which was
an anti-Booker T. Washington movement. But then--that was in 1905,
but in 1908, he accepted a job at Tuskegee, and moved over to the
Washington camp. So he was--actually had a f--the only person who had
a foot in both camps that w--became the mating--major two divisions
of--of power and tactics for African-Americans at the time. He also
was very interested in Africa well before most African-Americans were.

LAMB: When you look back on Ida B. Wells' life, what worked? What
moved people to do things and did you get any--any analysis from her
about what she thought really mattered, the speaking, the writing, the
marching, all that?

Prof. McMURRY: Her writing, probably, was--was the thing that was
most effective because, you know, she could only give a limited number
of speeches but there was certainly--she published numbers of
pamphlets, as well as newspaper articles and so forth, but her
speaking was very important as well.

LAMB: Did she make money from speaking?

Prof. McMURRY: No. No, they sometimes paid her expenses or
something of that sort. But she didn't really actually make her money
that way.

LAMB: Was she and her husband financially sound?

Prof. McMURRY: Yes, but they could have been a lot better off. Her
husband was a lawyer who tended to specialize in the rights of--of
defendants and so forth, and so he often took che--cases pro bono and
actually even would pay the clients' way to court and everything else.
And they even brought some of his clients into the house to live with
them. So they gave away a lot of what they had. But he was--he had a
certain amount of financial security because he was successful in law.
As a matter of fact, he became a deputy sade--state attorney at one
time.

LAMB: And in the end, you say she lived to be 69.

Prof. McMURRY: Yes.

LAMB: What did she die of?

Prof. McMURRY: I think it was uremic poisoning or something is what
the--the designation was.

LAMB: Was it quick or did...

Prof. McMURRY: Yeah, it was fairly quick. She--she'd been
deteriorating, but a--just the year before, she ran for the state
Senate and lost, but--so she--she was active up till the--practically
the day she died.

LAMB: Well, you suggest that she only got something like 583 votes or
something like that.

Prof. McMURRY: Yeah.

LAMB: Did she actually think she could win?

Prof. McMURRY: I don't know. I think one of the things that was
significant about her is she felt that there were battles worthy to be
fought, even if you couldn't win them. And I--to--to an extent,
th--that's what she did all her life. She fought battles over
everything that regarded black rights and also much in the area of
women's suffrage.

LAMB: Compared to your biography of George Washington Carver, was
this harder or easier?

Prof. McMURRY: Different. Carver, the sources were overwhelming
because of his personal papers being so extensive and so forth. And
he was much better known. So that it took a lot more work to tease
the story out, even though she has her autobiography. Of course, that
only tells one side and it kind of--it's--really reads more like a
legal brief for her against all her critics, you know. So that
finding the real her and finding information, the biographies pr--I
mean, the diaries were great, too, but it still was much more
difficult to pin down the information. So it--they were coming from
opposite what--ends of the extreme, as far as reco--research were
concerned.

LAMB: Do you have another book that you're gonna do?

Prof. McMURRY: Well, I've got several kind of working in the back of
my mind. The thing that I've launched into right now--or beginning,
is a study--a comparative study of black leadership and the
post-emancipation period throughout British America. I've just become
very fascinated--this is my favorite time period for research, is the
reconstruction and post-reconstruction period. And I've become so
consu--so interested in black leadership during that period in the
United States and the various forms and natures of it, and I also love
the Bahamas. We have a boat and take it down there quite frequently.
And so I started trying to figure out some way I could tie these two
loves together and--so I decided I'd--I started to do something about
blacks in the Bahamas. But I decided that it probably would be more
interesting to do a comparative leadership approach.

LAMB: Have any opinion on who the best leader was from that period?

Prof. McMURRY: You mean the Washington, Du Bois, Douglass--best
leader. Well, I think Du Bois ended up being the most effective,
whether you--you consider it best or not, he was the most effective.

LAMB: Here's the book. It's a biography of Ida B. Wells by Linda O.
McMurry. We thank you very much for joining us.

Prof. McMURRY: Thank you.

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To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells