Ida B. Wells-Barnett is recognized throughout history for her late 19th-century antilynching campaign. Her activism—through numerous essays and pamphlets—contributed to a decline in lynchings during her lifetime. Ninety years after her death, President Joe Biden’s administration passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, a federal law that defines lynching as a hate crime. While Wells-Barnett’s laborious efforts eventually bore fruit, we must ask ourselves: at what cost did it take for the U.S. to finally pass a federal law prohibiting lynching? (Tianna Mobley, “Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Anti-lynching and the White House).

I often reflect on the personal and professional sacrifices that Wells-Barnett made in order to speak truthfully about lynching. In this piece, I want to discuss one of the highest prices she paid to report on lynchings in the South: her exile from Memphis, Tennessee. According to her autobiography, diaries, and biographies, Wells-Barnett had no plans to leave Memphis. She decided to return to the city after realizing that staying in Visalia, California, with her aunt would not work out ((Miriam Decosta-Willis, The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells: An Intimate Portrait of the Activist as a Young Woman)). At that time, Wells (who would later marry Ferdinand Barnett and become Ida B. Wells-Barnett) found that Visalia lacked the social and political life she was accustomed to in Memphis. As a young Black woman, she knew she would not thrive in Visalia, prompting her return to Memphis ((Ida B. Wells, Crusader for Justice). We can assume that Wells intended to settle down and start a family there. However, after returning to Memphis from a trip to promote her newspaper, The Free Speech, she received devastating news: her best friend, Thomas Moss, had been lynched. Motivated by his murder, Wells embarked on a path that would begin her antilynching activism, fundamentally altering her plans to make Memphis her permanent home (Nathaniel C. Ball, “Memphis and the Lynching at the Curve”).

Wells began this journey by writing an exposé that revealed the true reasons behind the lynchings of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and William Stewart. This exposé would later transform into one of the most impactful pamphlets of her career, Southern Horrors (Ida B. Wells, The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader). In the South, Black men were typically lynched on the pretext of having raped white women. Wells’s exposé dismantled this “threadbare lie,” exposing the rape myth narrative surrounding Black men. Her reporting revealed that Southern white men used this narrative as a red herring to obscure their true motivations: to prevent Black men from advancing in economic, political, and social spheres. Many Southern whites were threatened by the rapid gains made by emancipated Black people during Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction, especially those who resented the South’s loss in the Civil War.

Wells’s exposé enraged white Southerners even further. After her article circulated in Memphis, white mobs planned to lynch her. They descended upon the Free Speech office in search of her, but she was away on business (Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching). They destroyed her office and threatened to lynch her upon her return. As a result, Wells’s career in Memphis ended, along with her dreams of a permanent settlement there. Yet, despite this setback, Wells bravely continued her fight against lynching by traveling to Britain for her antilynching crusade tour, which proved to be a success. She also found love with Ferdinand Barnett in 1895, and together they started a family in Chicago, Illinois, where they were well-respected politically and socially.

However, we should contemplate the “what ifs” of Wells staying in Memphis. When Southern Blacks like Wells were exiled for exposing racial violence, we need to consider what Memphis truly lost. While it is important to commemorate the impact that Memphis had on Wells, we should also ponder the further impact she might have had if she could have remained there. Instead of Wells’s family being based in Chicago, what if they had established roots in Memphis? Would there have been an Ida B. Wells Homes? What about Wells’s Black Women’s Clubs? Instead of the Ida B. Wells Homes being demolished in the early 2000s, could they have survived in Memphis? Perhaps the Ida B. Wells Woman’s Club and the Alpha Suffrage Club would have thrived in Memphis due to the deep Black Southern roots in the city.

I conclude with this thought: the past is immutable; we cannot change it. Because of her exile from Memphis, Wells became even more motivated to continue her social justice activism, which included public writing, speaking, and traveling. My aim is to highlight the imaginative possibilities of what could have been had Wells stayed in Memphis, while also addressing a larger reality. This reality is that Wells-Barnett and many other Black women sacrificed immensely for social change. We can admire their bravery, but we must also acknowledge the significant loss represented by the “what ifs.” I urge us to examine history not only through the lens of Black women’s courage but also through their sacrifices for the places and communities they cherished—motivated by a belief in a greater purpose: the freedom of Black people. I encourage us to consider how we can develop strategies to protect Black women without forcing them to abandon the places, spaces, and people they love, while still fighting for the advancement of their communities.

Sophia Muriel Flemming M.A.
PhD Candidate, University of Georgia

Sophia Flemming is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies with an emphasis on rhetorical studies. Generally, Flemming studies African American public address, specifically focusing on Black feminist and Womanist rhetorics from the 18th to the 21st centuries. Her research examines the topics Black women communicate about, their communication styles, how voice manifests in their experiences and epistemologies, how they interact and engage within and outside their communities, and, most importantly, how they communicate interpersonally and in public spaces.