Ida B. Wells - Rhetorical Style and Effect

Rhetorical Style and Effect

Wells’ 1892 speech, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases is important as a historical document and as the initiating event in what became a social movement; as a rhetorical work, it is significant in three respects.

First, as in her writings, she used evidence and argument in highly sophisticated ways, ways that prevented members of the audience from dismissing her claims as biased or untrue.

Second, the speech was an insightful and sophisticated analysis of the interrelationship of sex, race, and class.

Third, in contrast to the rhetorical acts of women, this speech contained no stylistic markers indicating attempts by a woman speaker to appear “womanly” in what is perceived as a male role-that of rhetor.

Wells’ use of evidence and argument had to overcome severe obstacles. She had to refute the cultural history of sexism that made the cry of rape (of a white woman) adequate justification for violence against Afro-Americans.

In order to prove this point, Wells’ used evidence from irrefutable sources. She used an excerpt from her own originally anonymous editorial in the Memphis Free Speech which was in response to the unlawful murders of three of her fellow townsmen, as well as two responses to her editorial from white newspapers: The Daily Commercial and The Evening Scimitar.

Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. —Free Speech May 21, 1892

The Daily Commercial of Wednesday following, May 25, contained the following leader:

Those negroes who are attempting to make the lynching of individuals of their race a means for arousing the worst passions of their kind are playing with a dangerous sentiment. The negroes may as well understand that there is no mercy for the negro rapist and little patience with his defenders. A negro organ printed in this city, in a recent issue publishes the following atrocious paragraph: "Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful they will overreach themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction; and a conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women."

The fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites. But we have had enough of it.

There are some things that the Southern white man will not tolerate, and the obscene intimations of the foregoing have brought the writer to the very outermost limit of public patience. We hope we have said enough.

The Evening Scimitar of same date, copied the Commercial's editorial with these words of comment:

Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the negroes themselves do not apply the remedy without delay it will be the duty of those whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation with a pair of tailor's shears.

Her seventeen relatively detailed examples of the lynching of African Americans allowed her audience to weigh the evidence and consider its plausibility, and the fact that much of it came from the public press, in some cases from white southern newspapers as shown above, added to the credibility of her accounts. Emotional response was prompted by the argument of these details rather than by exhortation.

By examining Wells’ speech through an application of the classical rhetoric tradition as influenced by the beliefs of Aristotle, it is obvious that by including the gruesome details of the several lynchings she uses for examples, Wells is appealing to her the ethos of her audience.

Throughout this argument there was a strong appeal to fundamental values of fairness, to the right to trial by jury, and to the right to full and careful investigation of crimes, appeals that added weight to her accusation that silent bystanders were guilty of complicity. These are also examples of Wells’ appeal to logos.

Wells was remarkable for her skill in the use of argument and evidence. Further, she was a woman who assumed the role of rhetor and made no attempt to give that role a womanly cast.

In addition to remarkable skill in the use of both argument and evidence, her work was also augmented through her exceptional personal record keeping; throughout her life she kept detailed journals which are kept at the University of Chicago in special collections. These journals in her own handwriting reveal notes on special events and in the drafts of her autobiography there are references made to records she kept decades prior to beginning her autobiography.

Her attention to detail in the midst of all the struggles that surrounded her adds to her historical significance as an important rhetorician. When she wrote her autobiography she referred not only to her own detailed notes in journals throughout her life, but also to newspaper and other historical clippings.

Looking at the legacy of her work as an entire collection reveals her additional noteworthy ability to adapt a message to the audience she was addressing as she wrote not only in papers, and for speeches, but also in church pamphlets and for community organizations.

Her life reveals a tenacity to push ahead despite every obstacle- to promote an idea and use every possible resource at ones disposal. Wells used her position as a teacher, a community member, a political activist, a mother, an editor, and an ordinary citizen to disseminate her rhetorical work. Her grandchildren have established a museum, a scholarship, a yearly birthday celebration, and a website to continue her extraordinary and historically remarkable work.