Playing the transatlantic card: the British anti-lynching campaigns of Ida B. Wells

• Autor(a) principal: Paisana, Joanne
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/46204
• topic: Ida B. Wells; Anti-lynching; Catherine Impey; Frances Willard; Lady Henry Somerset; Linchamento; Movimento temperance; Humanidades::História e Arqueologia

This paper shows the effectiveness of nineteenth-century transatlantic social campaigns, highlighting the usefulness of using existing reform networks for one black American female agitator in particular, Ida B. Wells. Wells’ 1893 and 1894 British anti-lynching campaigns aimed to raise public awareness and consequently support in Britain for stamping out lynching in America and thereafter to galvanize Americans into doing the same. She was supported by Catherine Impey and temperance campaigners, among others. The very popular American temperance and woman’s rights advocate, Frances Willard, convalescing in England at the time of Wells’ campaigns, was accused by Wells of not speaking out sufficiently against lynching in the American South. Supported by her stalwart friend and host Lady Henry Somerset, the Willard/Somerset partnership countered Wells and her British supporters. The dispute had consequences in Britain and America.