Frances Willard (suffragist) - Controversy Over Civil Rights Issues

Controversy Over Civil Rights Issues

Frances Willard often came into conflict with progressive African-American journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells. In their push to expose the evils of alcohol, Willard and other temperance reformers often depicted alcohol as a substance that incited black criminality, and implicitly made the argument that this was a serious problem requiring a serious cure. The rift first surfaced during Wells' first visit to Britain in 1893, where Willard was already a popular speaker. Wells openly questioned Willard's position on lynching in the United States, and accused Willard of having pandered to the racist myth that white women were in constant danger of rape from lusty, drunken black males, so as not to endanger WCTU efforts in the South.

Wells' ire at Willard had its genesis in a number of remarks Willard had made to The Voice, a temperance newspaper in New York City:

Alien illiterates ... rule our cities today; 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 ... The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt. The grog-shop is their center of power. The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities at this moment.

Wells' accusations were part of larger African-American critique of the temperance movement, which had always focused on post-Reconstruction blacks as a special class, with the idea that black people, like children, could not be expected to behave responsibly if left to their own devices and were just problems waiting to happen, and therefore needed to be protected from negative influences. When Wells returned to Britain in 1894, she brought a copy of the article with her, and openly mocked Willard and the temperance movement for its attention to the "evils" of card playing, sports and lewd dancing, while "during all the years which men, women, and children were scourged, hanged, shot and burned, the WCTU had no word, either of pity or protest. Its great heart, which concerns itself about humanity the world over was, toward our cause, pulseless as a stone."

Wells attempted to have Willard's remarks publicized in Britain by republishing the article, but was blocked by Lady Henry Somerset, Willard's lover and host in the United Kingdom, who threatened to use her influence to make sure Wells would never have another speaking engagement in Britain.

Willard repeatedly denied Wells' accusations and maintained that her primary focus was upon empowering and protecting women. And while it is true that up until that point neither Willard nor the WCTU had ever spoken out against lynching, the WCTU had actively recruited black women and included them in their membership. After their acrimonious exchange, Willard explicitly stated her opposition to lynching and successfully urged the WTCU to pass a resolution against lynching. Nonetheless, Willard "continued to accept the rape myth" that supposedly sparked lynching and denied "that white women could possibly take part in sexual relationships with black men."