I enjoyed watching the documentary Ida B. Wells: A Passion For Justice (published 1989). I must admit, I was only vaguely familiar with Wells prior to watching this documentary. I found Wells’ passion and moral conviction inspiring. Here are a few things from the documentary that I found noteworthy.
The documentary illustrated how Wells was just as active and instrumental as her contemporaries in the cause for Black justice as well women’s rights. However, due to the intersectional nature of her identity, existing at the intersection between Blackness and womanhood, it seems she didn’t quite reach the same level of renown as someone like Booker T. Washington (a Black man) or Susan B. Anthony (a white woman).
The documentary also highlighted Wells’ uncompromising attitude and militancy. The narrator described two opposing forces in African American politics of the time: the uncompromising “radicals”, led by W.E.B. Dubois, William Monroe Trotter, and Ida B. Wells and the “accommodationists” led by Booker T. Washington who tried to work within the system of segregation.
Lastly, it was interesting how Susan B. Anthony was critical of Wells getting married, claiming that Wells’ marriage would cause “divided duty” and distract from Wells’ effectiveness as an activist. I thought this illustrated how both Audre Lorde and Kimberlé Crenshaw describe the fundamental difference in relational dynamic between Black men and Black women versus white men and white women.
Crenshaw in Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex:
…the politics of racial otherness that Black women experience along with Black men prevent Black feminist consciousness from patterning the development of white feminism.
Lorde in Age, Race, Class, and Sex:
Black women and men have shared racist oppression and still share it, although in different ways. Out of that shared oppression we have developed joint defenses and joint vulnerabilities to each other that are not duplicated in the white community…