Ida B. Wells - Willard Controversy

Willard Controversy

It was in England that Wells and Frances Willard first clashed. Willard was the secretary of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, one of the most formidable women's organizations in the country, with branches in every state and a membership of over 200,000. Willard had used the issue of temperance to politicize women who saw organizing for suffrage as too radical.

Wells' anti-lynching campaign brought the two to England concurrently. As Wells described the horrors of American lynchings, British liberals were incredulous that white women such as Willard–who had been heralded in the English press as the "Uncrowned Queen of American Democracy"–would turn a blind eye to such violence. Wells correctly accused Willard of being silent on the issue of lynchings, and of making racial comments which would add fuel to the fire of mob violence. To support her assertion, Wells referred to an interview Willard had conducted during a tour of the South in which Willard had blamed Blacks for the defeat of temperance legislation there and had cast aspersions on the race. "The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt," she had said, and "the grog shop is its center of power... The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities."

In response, Willard and her powerful hostess and counterpart, Lady Somerset, attempted to use their influence to keep Wells' comments out of the press. Wells responded by revealing that despite Willard's abolitionist forbears and Black friends, no Black women were admitted to the WCTU's southern branches.

The dispute between Wells and Willard in England intensified the mean campaign against Wells in the American Press. The New York Times ran an article insisting that Black men were prone to rape, and that Wells was a "slanderous and nasty minded mulatress" who was looking for more "income" than "outcome." These vitriolic attacks in the American press swayed many Britons to Wells' cause. "It is idle for men to say that the conditions which Miss Wells describes do not exist," a British editor wrote. "Whites of America may not think so; British Christianity does and all the scurrility of the American press won't alter the facts."

Wells' British tour was ultimately a personal success, and led to the formation of the British Anti-Lynching Committee, which included such notables and the Duke of Argyll, the Archbishop of Canterbury, members of Parliament, and the editors of The Manchester Guardian.