Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T20:13:24.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ida B. Wells and “Color Line Justice”: Rethinking Reparations in Feminist Terms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2015

Abstract

In contrast to sterile forms of apology or the evasions of color-blind political discourse, calls for reparations explicitly link the realization of democratic ideals to a history of antiblack violence and exploitation. I explore three dimensions of Ida B. Wells's antilynching writings that anticipate and enrich contemporary demands for reparations for slavery and Jim Crow. First, Wells's commitment to truth-telling, a centerpiece of reparations efforts around the world, models how to criticize received understandings of both past and present and revise them in the service of more democratic ways of life. Second, her gender- and sexuality-conscious analysis of the political and economic causes and effects of antiblack violence adds a dimension that is missing from many reparations arguments. Third, Wells both advocates an active citizenry and demands collective responsibility for the protection of black citizenship; in so doing, she reveals the racial and gendered underpinnings of contemporary disavowals of responsibility for racial justice, dressed up as “personal responsibility,” and offers a powerful rebuttal.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Addams, Jane. 1977. “Respect for Law.” In Lynching and Rape: An Exchange of Views, ed. Aptheker, Bettina. San Jose: American Institute for Marxist Studies.Google Scholar
Aiyetoro, Adjoa A. and Davis, Adrienne D.. 2010. “Historic and Modern Social Movements for Reparations: The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) and Its Antecedents.” Texas Wesleyan Law Review 16(4): 687766.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Danielle S. 2004. Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Elizabeth. 2010. The Imperative of Integration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balfour, Lawrie. 2011. Democracy’s Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W.E.B. Du Bois. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Balfour, Lawrie. 2014. “Unthinking Racial Realism: A Future for Reparations?” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 11(1): 4356.Google Scholar
Bay, Mia. 2010. To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells. New York: Hill & Wang.Google Scholar
Bentele, Keith G. and O’Brien, Erin E.. (2013). “New Jim Crow 2.0: Why States Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Policies. Perspectives on Politics 11(4): 1088–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, Mary Frances. 2006. My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Biondi, Martha. 2003. “The Rise of the Reparations Movement.” Radical History Review 87: 518.Google Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence D. 2006. “Katrina: Unmasking Race, Poverty, and Politics in the 21st Century.” Du Bois Review 3(1): 16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogues, Anthony. 2003. Black Heretics, Black Prophets: Radical Political Intellectuals. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2006. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 2d ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Brezina, Timothy. 2008. “What Went Wrong in New Orleans? An Examination of the Welfare Dependency Explanation,” Social Problems 55(1): 2342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bridgewater, Pamela D. 2005. “Ain't I a Slave: Slavery, Reproductive Abuse, and Reparations,” UCLA Women's Law Journal 89(1): 89161.Google Scholar
Brophy, Alfred L. 2006. Reparations: Pro & Con. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Elsa Barkley. 1995a. “Imaging Lynching: African American Women, Communities of Struggle, and Collective Memory.” In African American Women Speak Out on Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas, ed. Smitherman, Geneva. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Elsa Barkley. 1995b. “Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom.” In The Black Public Sphere: A Public Culture Book, ed. Black Public Sphere Collective. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Carbado, Devon W., Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams, Mays, Vickie M., and Tomlinson, Barbara. 2013. “Intersectionality: Mapping the Movements of a Theory.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 10(2): 302–12.Google Scholar
Carby, Hazel V. 1989. Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carter, Niambi M. 2012. “Intimacy without Consent: Lynching as Sexual Violence.” Politics & Gender 8(3): 414–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2007. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. 2014. “The Case for Reparations.” The Atlantic 313(5): 5471.Google Scholar
Combahee River Collective. 1983. “A Black Feminist Statement.” In This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, ed. Moraga, Cherríe and Anzaldúa, Gloria. Latham, NY: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press.Google Scholar
Congressional Record . 2005, 109th Cong., 1st Sess., vol. 151, no. 77, 6364–88.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1989. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine.” University of Chicago Legal Forum: 129168.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 1993. “Beyond Racism and Misogyny: Racism and 2 Live Crew.” In Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment, ed. Matsuda, Mari J., Lawrence, Charles R. III, Delgado, Richard, and Crenshaw, Kimberlè [sic]Williams. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé. 2012. “From Private Violence to Mass Incarceration: Thinking Intersectionally about Women, Race, and Social Control.” UCLA Law Review 59: 1418–72.Google Scholar
Davis, Adrienne D. 2004. “Slavery and the Roots of Sexual Harassment.” In Directions in Sexual Harassment Law, ed. MacKinnon, Catharine A. and Siegel, Reva B.. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, Angela Y. 1983. Women, Race & Class. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Davis, Angela Y. 1998. “Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves,” and “Violence against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Racism” In The Angela Y. Davis Reader, ed. James, Joy. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Davis, Angela Y. 2012. “Difficult Dialogues.” In The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues. San Francisco, CA: Open Media Series/City Lights Books.Google Scholar
Davis, Simone W. 1995. “The ‘Weak Race’ and the Winchester: Political Voices in the Pamphlets of Ida B. Wells-Barnett.” Legacy 12(2): 7797.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. 2011. Not in Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. 2013. Blacks in and Out of the Left. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dawson, Michael C., and Popoff, Rovana. 2004. “Reparations: Justice and Greed in Black and White.” Du Bois Review 1(1): 4791.Google Scholar
De Greiff, Pablo. 2007. “Justice and Reparations.” In Reparations: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, ed. Miller, Jon and Kumar, Rahul. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. 1999. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Duster, Alfreda M. 1970.“Introduction.” In Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells , Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Feimster, Crystal. 2009. Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Fogg-Davis, Hawley. 2003. “The Racial Retreat of Contemporary Political Theory.” Perspectives on Politics 1(3): 555–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frymer, Paul, Strolovitch, Dara, and Warren, Dorian. 2006. “New Orleans Is Not the Exception: Re-politicizing the Study of Racial Inequality.” Du Bois Review 3(1): 3757.Google Scholar
Giddings, Paula J. 2008. Ida: A Sword among Lions. New York: Amistad.Google Scholar
Glymph, Thavolia. 2008. Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goldsby, Jacqueline. 2006. A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Handbook of Reparations . 2006. Ed. Greiff, Pablo de. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Cheryl I. and Carbado, Devon W.. 2006. “Loot or Find: Fact or Frame?” In After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore the Meaning of Hurricane Katrina, ed. Troutt, David Dante. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Henry, Charles P. 2007. Long Overdue: The Politics of Racial Reparations. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Hesse, Barnor. 2011. “Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Postracial Horizon.” South Atlantic Quarterly 110(1): 155–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holt, Thomas C. 1982. “The Lonely Warrior: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the Struggle for Black Leadership.” In Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, ed. Franklin, John Hope and Meier, August. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, Darren Lenard. 2009.“Racial Exhaustion.” Washington University Law Review 86(4): 917–74.Google Scholar
Ifill, Sherrilyn A. 2008. On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Iton, Richard. 2008. In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics & Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Walter. 2007. “Slavery, Freedom, and the Mythic March of History.” Raritan 27(2): 4167.Google Scholar
Katznelson, Ira. 2005. When Affirmative Action Was White: The Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Kelley, Robin D. G. 2002. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston, MA: Beacon Books.Google Scholar
Kochhar, Rakesh and Fry, Richard. 2014. “Wealth Inequality Has Widened along Racial, Ethnic Lines Since End of Great Recession.” Pew Research Center: Fact Tank. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/ ,accessed February 2, 2015.Google Scholar
Miller, Lisa L. 2014. “Racialized State Failure and the Violent Death of Michael Brown.” Theory & Event 17(3, Supplement). http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.its.virginia.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v017/17.3S.miller.html, accessed January 28, 2015.Google Scholar
Lerman, Amy E. and Weaver, Vesla M.. 2014. Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, Toni, ed. 1992. Race-ing Justice, en-Gendering Power: Essays on Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and the Construction of Social Reality. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Nobles, Melissa. 2008. The Politics of Official Apologies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Painter, Nell Irvin. 1995. “Soul Murder and Slavery: Toward a Fully Loaded Cost Accounting.” In U.S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays, ed. Kerber, Linda K., Kessler-Harris, Alice, and Kish Sklar, Kathryn. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Ransby, Barbara. 2006. “Katrina, Black Women, and the Deadly Discourse on Black Poverty in America.” Du Bois Review 3(1): 215–22.Google Scholar
Richie, Beth E. 2012. Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, Dorothy. 2014. “Complicating the Triangle of Race, Class and State: The Insights of Black Feminists.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(10): 1776–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubio-Marín, Ruth. 2008. “Gender and Collective Reparations in the Aftermath of Conflict and Political Repression.” In The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies, ed. Kymlicka, Will and Bashir, Bashir. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
S. Res, 39. 2005. “Apologizing to the victims of lynching and the descendants of those victims for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-lynching legislation.” June 13. Http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-109sres39ats/pdf/BILLS-109sres39ats.pdf.Google Scholar
Schechter, Patricia A. 2001. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880–1930. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Shklar, Judith N. 1991. American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Barbara, Guy-Sheftall, Beverly, and Giddings, Paula. 2014. “What Would Harriet Do? A Legacy of Resistance and Activism.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 12(2): 123–41.Google Scholar
Somers, Margaret R. 2007. Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Strolovitch, Dara Z. 2013. “Of Mancessions and Hecoveries: Race, Gender, and the Political Construction of Economic Crises and Recoveries.” Perspectives on Politics 11(1): 167–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teitel, Ruti. 2000. Transitional Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Deborah A. 2011. Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas-Lester, Avis. 2005. “A Senate Apology for History on Lynching; Vote Condemns Past Failure to Act.” Washington Post, June 14, A12.Google Scholar
Thompson, Mildred I. 1990. Ida B. Wells-Barnett: An Exploratory Study of an American Black Woman. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson.Google Scholar
Threadcraft, Shatema. Forthcoming. Intimate Justice: The Black Female Body and the Body Politic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tillet, Salamishah. 2012. Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2000. “Abortive Rituals: Historical Apologies in the Global Era.” Interventions 2(2): 171–86.Google Scholar
Turner, Jack. 2012. Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Washington, Booker T. 1992. “Atlanta Exposition Address.” In African-American Social and Political Thought, 1850–1920, ed. Brotz, Howard. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Wells, Ida B. 1970. Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wells, Ida B. 1999. “Lynch Law” and “Class Legislation.” In The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition, ed. Rydell, Robert W.. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Wells, Ida B. 2014. “Our Women,” “Afro-Americans and Africa,” “Lynch Law in all Its Phases,” and “Lynch Law in America.” In Ida B. Wells: The Light of Truth, Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader, ed. Bay, Mia. New York: Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 1977. “Lynching and the Excuse for It.” In Lynching and Rape: An Exchange of Views, ed. Aptheker, Bettina. San Jose: American Institute for Marxist Studies.Google Scholar
Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 2002. “Southern Horrors,” “A Red Record,” and “Mob Rule in New Orleans.” In On Lynchings. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Carl R. 2011. “The Strange Career of Confederate History Month.” OAH Magazine of History 25(2): 6364.Google Scholar
White, Deborah Gray. 1999. Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South. Rev. ed. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Willoughby-Herard, Tiffany. 2014. “More Expendable than Slaves? Racial Justice and the After-Life of Slavery.” Politics, Groups, and Identities 2(3): 506–21.Google Scholar
Young, Iris Marion. 2011. Responsibility for Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar