Ida B. Wells - Europe

Europe

Wells took two tours to Europe on her campaign for justice, the first in 1893 and the second in 1894. While she was in Europe she spent her time in both Scotland and England, where she gave many speeches and newspaper interviews.

In 1893, Wells went to Great Britain at the invitation of Catherine Impey, a British Quaker. An opponent of imperialism and proponent of racial equality, Impey wanted to ensure that the British public learned about the problem of lynching. Wells rallied a moral crusade among the British. Although Wells and her speeches, complete with at least one grisly photograph showing grinning white children posing beneath a suspended corpse, caused a stir among audiences, they still remained doubtful. Her intentions were to raise money and expose the United States problem with lynching, but Wells was paid so little that she could barely pay her travel expenses.

Wells returned to Great Britain in 1894. Before leaving she called on William Penn Nixon, the editor of Daily Inter-Ocean. This was a Chicago paper that the local Republican Party organ and competitor to the Democratic Chicago Tribune. The Daily Inter- Ocean was the only paper in the US that persistently denounced lynching. After she told Nixon about her planned tour in England, he asked her to write for the newspaper while on tour. She became the first black woman to be a paid correspondent for a mainstream white newspaper. (Tourgée had been writing a column for the same paper.)

One article was "In Pembroke Chapel." She was invited to speak by the minister C.F. Aked. He found it difficult to accept her accounts, but after traveling to the New York World's Fair, read in local papers about the Miller lynching in Bardwell, Kentucky. He realized that Wells' accounts were accurate. Wells was effective in speaking to European audiences. They were shocked to learn about the extent of violence against blacks in the US. Wells' two tours to Europe helped gain support for her cause. She called for the formation of groups to formally protest the lynchings. Wells helped catalyze anti-lynching groups in Europe, who tried to press the US to guarantee the safety of blacks in the South.