Memphis 1892: Ida B. Wells & the Fight for Justice | Road Trip to the South

<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:00:45</time>
<p>I saw a flyer for this 100th anniversary of a lynching that happened here in Memphis. Lynching is a southern historical thing that I should know more about. The black boy is Armor Harris. The white boy is Cornelius Hearst.

And they get into a fight over a game of marbles because the black boy won. It's hard to talk about, it's uncomfortable to talk about, but it's important to talk about.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:01:14</time>
<p>Welcome to Talk with History. I am your host Scott, here with my wife and historian Jen.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:01:18</time>
<p>Hello.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:01:19</time>
<p>On this podcast we give you insights to our history Inspired World Travels YouTube channel Journey and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers and the history lovers out there today. I want to share a powerful story about Ida B.

Wells, a pioneering investigative journalist and civil rights activist who exposed the horrific truth about lynching in America. Growing up in Holly Springs, Mississippi during Reconstruction, Wells faced the harsh reality of racial injustice from an early age.

In 1892, three of her friends were lynched in Memphis, Tennessee. And we're going to talk more about those successful black business owners who were murdered by a white mob.

This tragic event transformed Wells into a fierce anti lynching crusader. She launched investigations into lynchings all across the south, meticulously documenting these acts through careful research and interviews.

Through her newspaper articles and pamphlets like Southern Horrors, Lynch Law in all its Phases, Wells revealed that lynching wasn't about punishing criminals as was often claimed, but was instead a systematic form of racial terrorism used to maintain white supremacy. Her investigations showed that many victims were successful black business people or those who challenged racial inequality.

Despite death threats that forced her to relocate from Memphis to Chicago, Wells continued her anti lynching campaign. For decades. She traveled across America and even to Europe speaking out against these injuries, justices and organizing for civil rights.

Her fearless reporting helped lay the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement and organizations like the naacp.

Today we're diving deeper into Wells origin story and the event that turned her from an outspoken lady of Memphis to an unstoppable force shining the light of truth wherever she went.

Just before we go on and we start moving into the main topic, we want to let listeners know that this may be a slightly sensitive topic because we are talking on the 1890s, early 1900s and the topic of lynching.

So just kind of a heads up for your parents, you know, if you have kids in the car, if you want to listen to this at a later time, we just wanted to let you guys know in advance.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:03:45</time>
<p>Yeah, about 12 years old is a good cutoff for this type of information.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:03:51</time>
<p>All right, Jen, so you had done a fair amount of research, learned a whole lot about the lynching that later became known as the People's Grocery lynching. Now, this was a pivotal event for Ida B.

Wells, and you had learned about this through your work with the local Memphis organization, lsp, which is the Lynching Sites Project.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about kind of how you quickly how you started with lsp, but then really People's Grocery and how that kind of sparked Ida B. Wells and all her activism that came out afterwards.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:04:30</time>
<p>Okay, that's a lot, but thank you.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:04:33</time>
<p>This is a deep topic.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:04:35</time>
<p>So moving to Memphis, getting a master's degree of history, I saw a flyer for this 100th anniversary of a lynching that happened here in Memphis. It was a 1917 lynching, so this was 2017. And I thought, oh, I should go to this.

Lynching is a Southern historical thing that I should know more about. And since I'm getting a master's degree of history, I should learn more about this.

So when I went to this was the lynching of L Persons that happened here in Memphis.

When I went to that event, I met these people who were part of putting on this event, and they were the lynching side project of Memphis, and they were really inspired by Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. So if you understand the Legacy Museum and what he. His work that he does in Alabama, this all ties together.

And he had come to Memphis and he had told the people that Shelby county had more lynchings than any other county in Tennessee. And so it was a group of people who wanted to get together and commemorate that, find justice for that.

And part of that in my work as a historian is I volunteered my services as a researcher to help write these historic markers. Primary source. And that's the work I really do with lsp.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:05:59</time>
<p>Yeah.

And Jen actually, and just a little brag on her, she actually got a historic marker put up in downtown Memphis, like, for the first documented lynching ever that happened in here in Memphis. And so that was something that she did kind of, I guess, as a project for her master's degree.

But she kind of ran point on it, got all the wording, worked with the organizations and all that stuff. And then actually, just after we moved, she came back when they finally kind of for the unveiling. So she did a lot with this.

LSP was kind of was there along the way as well. Now, what's the kind of genesis of People's Grocery lynching?</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:06:43</time>
<p>So there's been such a change. When you think of Women's History Month and you think of these historic women who have really made an impact on American history, Ida B.

Wells kind of rises to the top. She's one of these people, and people don't know much about her, but they're learning more about her. Like, what did she do?

What was so foundational to her work? And she's from Memphis, and Memphis has done a great job in these regions recent years of honoring her, spotlighting her.

They put a statue up to her downtown and information. But for this lynching, this particular lynching of 1892, this is the spark of starting Ida B. Wells on her whole activism campaign.

This event made her who she is today. So if you want to learn about Ida B. Wells, this woman that's so impactful to American history, this event is what did it.

And I would say it's because of how close she was to the people who were killed. So this is 1892. And like Scott had said when he first opened, a lot of these lynchings are tied to economics. And this is an economic lynching.

So you'll get some for sexuality, especially white women being or accusing black men of overstepping some social norm, whether it's stepping on their foot or propositioning them or touching, putting their hands on them. There's a lot of lynchings that have to do with that. But I would say double the lynchings are economic. So this is an economic lynching.

So in 1892, this is about 30 years after the Civil War, there is the outskirts of Memphis is called the Curve. And so it's not incorporated in the city, it's the outskirts. Today, it's more inside the city. But in 1892.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:08:38</time>
<p>Yeah.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:08:38</time>
<p>And you have a white grocer and a black grocer right across the street from each other. And the white grocer and the black grocer compete for the same business, which is the black community in the area. And the black grocer is owned.

It's like a co op. It's kind of owned by 10 black men. And one of those men is Thomas Moss. And Thomas Moss is a. A middle class black man. He is a postal work.

He is a part owner of this grocery. He does the books for this grocery. And because Ida B.

Wells is also a well educated black woman and writing a pamphlet with investigational journalism, they're friends. Yeah, right. They went in the same circles.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:09:25</time>
<p>Because she was. Wasn't she like godmother to his daughters or something like that?</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:09:29</time>
<p>Yeah, she was Godmother to his children. And so it's like you're in the same standing. You're in the same social norm standing, so you're friends with each other.

There's not a lot of people in 1892 in Memphis, and so they're close. So what happens in March of 1892? We're right in the same time frame. This is when the weather starts to get nice in Memphis, right?

And there's two boys out front of the People's Grocery. That's the name of the black grocery store, which is again across the street from the white grocery store.

There's two boys, a black boy and a white boy. The black boy is Armed Summer Harris. The white boy is Cornelius Hearst. And they get into a fight over a game of marbles because the black boy won.

And when the black boy wins, the white boy is upset by this. And the white boy's father steps in and begins beating the black boy right in front of the People's Grocery.

So the two workers, the two black workers in the People's Grocery, notice this and go outside and to defend the black boy. And that's William Stewart and Calvin McDowell. Remember those names?

So they're there from the very beginning, and they come to the defense of the black boy. And more black and white people get involved in this fight.

And at one point, the owner of the white grocery store, William Barnett, comes out, gets a part of it, and he claims to have been clubbed, and he claims that he was clubbed or hit by Will Stewart.

So I want to emphasize this, that I just told the story on the radio in Memphis and I got some kind of hate messages that I wasn't telling the white perspective. And I want to make sure you understand I'm telling both perspectives, the truth, the facts.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:11:18</time>
<p>There's no, you know, people always say, and you and I have said it right, is that there's. There's three sides to every story. There's the one person's side, there's the other person's side, Then there's the.

Then there's the truth, right, in what you relay. And you do such a good job of this, of saying, here's the facts, right?

I can't give the perspective of William Barnett unless he wrote a journal, and then somebody published that journal at a later time of, like, this is why I went out there. Like, we can't say that. And there's many kind of quote unquote historians who do that a little too often.

But you always do a really, really good job of kind of stating the facts, giving the context of the time with the facts as kind of like the foil that drives us through this event.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:12:07</time>
<p>Yes. I will stress it, William. Will Stewart never admitted to this. He never said that he did this.

But this is Barnett, the white grocer, is claiming that Will Stewart, the black worker and partial owner of People's Grocery, did this.

So the very next day, March 3rd, Barnett, the White grocer, will return to the People's Grocery with a police officer and to arrest William Stewart, saying that he was hit. I want to have him arrested. And they're met by Calvin McDowell again, the black worker who helped in the very beginning to come out.

And McDowell told him no one matching, well, Stuart's description was in the store. Basically, Stuart's not here. And Barnett gets mad and he hits McDowell with a revolver.

So he has a gun in his hand and he hits, hits him, knocks him down, but drops the gun in the process. And McDowell is so mad, or, you know, he's been just knocked down, that he picks up the gun and shoots at them to get out of the store.

Now, some claim he shot at Barnett. Some claims that he just shoot him to get out of store. Either way, he misses Barnett, he doesn't shoot him.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:13:17</time>
<p>And let's think about it here, right? If you're inside of a store and you're holding a revolver like it, it would not be difficult to hit the target that you're actually aiming at.

Like, let's be realistic here.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:13:28</time>
<p>Yeah. So he's more than likely, I would think he's just trying to get them out of the store. Yeah. So McDowell is arrested for this.

So he's subsequently less arrested for doing this, for shooting at them. Even though we forget the part that he was. He was assaulted by Barnett. Let's just forget that whole thing ever happened.

But because he fired back to protect himself and who knows what he was trying to do, he's arrested for it. And. But he's released on bond the very next day. So this is March 4th. This is two days after the boys are playing marbles out front.

Now, warrants are going to be issued though that day for Will Stewart because Barnett claimed to be hit by him and for Armor Harris. Who's Armor Harris, the little black boy paying marbles.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:14:16</time>
<p>It's ridiculous.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:14:17</time>
<p>So what you start to see here is if you go into more of the research is there's a judge, Judge Dubose, and he has some quotes of. I believe in the law of revenge, and we need to clean out the people's Grocery. So as a judge, he's supposed to be impartial.

These are his quotes that he's saying so you can understand where his allegiance and where his justice lies and what he's thinking about. This judge is white, former Confederate soldier.

But this is what's happening and this is the backing of Barnett, the white grocer in his fight for justice.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:14:57</time>
<p>Now, if I remember right, in the video, because we made a video of this, right. We visited the sites of where the People's Grocery lynching happened and where the men were murdered and stuff like that.

I believe you said on the video that this judge was eventually ousted.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:15:12</time>
<p>Yeah.

So the best story is, and we'll talk about this, is he's, he's ousted by the other white lawyers of Memphis and he's, he's impeached and he loses the next year after this whole event happens, the very next year. And we'll talk more about that. He gets, he definitely gets his, his comeuppance. His comeuppance in the end.

So McDowell's arrested, released on bond March 4th. That's two days later, March 5th.

The judge is quoted in the Avalanche Appeal, that's the Memphis newspaper, as saying that they need to get rid of the high handed rowdies in the curve. Right.

And the other quotes that I gave you as well, and the evening of March 5th, six armed white men, including a county sheriff, and they recently deputized plain clothes white civilians.

So again, they're coming into People's Grocery, they're not wearing any uniforms and they're people that they know, unknown, that they've been just deputized and they come into the People's Grocery and there's kind of a shootout that happens because they're walking into this people's Grocery. These, these, the judge and these plainclothes white men, six of them armed with guns, shooting at the black workers in there.

And they basically shoot back. And when they shoot back, two white men are injured. And that's the very next day on March 6, because those two white men are injured.

The judge gets hundreds of white civilians, deputizes them and they go house to house and arrest 40 black people in the curb. And that includes Armor Harris, a little boy playing marbles. It includes his mother. And it's going to include this time Thomas Moss.

So we're going to get Will Stewart arrested, Calvin McDowell arrested. The two men who've kind of been involved in this whole thing since the beginning, who own People's Groceries as a co op.

But Thomas Moss is going to be arrested on March 6th. This is four days after the Marvel incident, because he's part owner of People's Grocery.

He's never been there for any of these events, but he's arrested because he, he partly owns it. Now, during this time, you're going to get Tom, Thomas Moss's pregnant wife is going to try to come to the jail to bring him food.

They're going to meet with lawyers in the town, white lawyers. And how do we help our, our men that have been arrested? And they. And the judge will not give them access.

Judge gives them no access to seeing any of the men. And this is why, again, these white lawyers are going to take the judge up on impeachment charges because he doesn't.

He doesn't allow any habeas corpus. It's a habeas corpus. He doesn't allow any legalese to happen.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:18:04</time>
<p>He's not upholding the law.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:18:06</time>
<p>He's not upholding the law. So on March 8, it comes out that the two men who were shot in that shootout on the 6th are going to survive. The two white men are going to survive.

And so what they believe happen is it looks like now that they can't be held accountable for killing white men because they didn't. Because they didn't. And so it's going to go into this vigilante justice. So again, they're still held in, in jail.

And on the night of March 9th, like very early in the morning, 2:30 in the morning, 75 white men in black masks will surround the Shelby County Jail. Nine will enter and they'll start. They'll get the keys away from the jailers there. And they ask for the two men, Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell.

They don't make themselves known right away. And so they're kind of beating up people. They want more and more.

And so Will Smith and Kevin McDowell come out and they go, now we want Tommy Moss and another person. And Thomas Moss steps forward.

A man who hasn't been to any of these things, he just owns the People's Grocery, steps forward after he sees his two co workers get pulled by these men and says, I'm Thomas Moss. And they say, okay, we want. And he goes, no, you're not getting anybody else. I'm stepping forward. That's it. You have the three of us.

So it's such a hero in that moment to me. So they're taken. The railroad is right along the jail there. They're taking a mile up the railroad, so north of Memphis.

And basically, once they get There. There's reporters there. There's people waiting. That's how we know what happened.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:19:52</time>
<p>I didn't know that.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:19:53</time>
<p>Right. That's how we have, like, drawings of their bodies.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:19:56</time>
<p>Yeah. So there. There's a. There's a drawing from, I think was like published in the newspaper or something like that that I show in the video.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:20:02</time>
<p>And that's how we get Thomas Moss's last words. Right. So they beat McDowell. McDowell struggles mightily. Like you can imagine, he's the one who grabs the gun. And she was like, this is a big guy.

And he. They have to really like, he. He takes a shotgun from one of the guys and tries to shoot back. And the mob has to wrestle it from him. And.

And then he's just shot to pieces because he fights back. And. And it's just Will Stewart is the. Really. The biggest guy of them all. And he was. And again fought back until the end as well.

And then Thomas Moss is the last, probably because he is the most. He's probably not as a grappler as everybody else.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:20:51</time>
<p>You kind of offered himself up to prevent this mob from grabbing anybody else that was in that jail.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:20:58</time>
<p>And with his dying words, he's shot in the neck. He says, tell my people to go west. There's no justice for them here. And they leave their bodies there. And again.

So how do we know those were his last words? I found it so interesting that reporters met them at the location where they were going to kill them.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:21:18</time>
<p>Yeah.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:21:18</time>
<p>It's like someone let them know this was happening. And this is what lynching. People always ask, like, what is what makes lynching a lynching? It's that people believe they're doing justice.

They believe that they're justified in their actions, that these people deserve to be killed because they've stepped outside of the social norms to such a detriment that it needs to be corrected right away without lawful order. And you take away their constitutional rights and you just treat them like. Without any kind of judge or jury, they.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:21:54</time>
<p>You're.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:21:54</time>
<p>You decide. And it's so open. And usually people don't wear the masks. They're very.

They feel safe in doing this because they don't get any punishment on the backside. So that's what happened in this case. And we go to these locations so you can see in the video. We'll take you to where Thomas Moss's grave is.

Thomas Moss is buried in the oldest black cemetery in Memphis.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:22:20</time>
<p>It's Zion Cemetery.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:22:21</time>
<p>Zion Christian Cemetery. And the other two men are also buried there. Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart. We haven't found their graves yet, but Thomas Moss grave has been found.

And we take you to where the location of the People's Grocery is. We take you to Ida B. Wells statue in downtown Memphis.

We take you to her marker, and then we take you to the actual location where these three men met their end. And we're going to put a marker up there. We're going to put LSP is writing a marker. It should be built here soon.

And we're going to put a marker up in the same location. You'll see us put three American flags there.

And I feel very strongly about putting American flags there, because these are three Americans who never found justice, and justice has no expiration date. And so I feel very confident, like what we're doing is a piece of that. I don't know if they'll never find justice, really.

Their lives were taken from them without any wrongdoing, without any kind of lawful order. But what we're trying to do is tell their story and get their story out there and get the story of Ida B.

Wells out there, because that brings them some kind of justice today, because so we can learn from it and be better people today. And it belongs to all of us. It's all of our story. So Ida B.

Wells, after this happens, because she's so close friends with Thomas Moss, she's godmother to his children, she starts writing, and she's already a journalist, so she starts calling out, this killing was about the grocery store. This killing was about the white grocer and the competition.

And so much so that the day after these men are killed, the judge says we need to send a hundred white people into the curve to combat all the riots that are going to happen. Because we know now that we've killed their men, they're going to the black community is going to riot. Well, you know what happens?

Black community doesn't riot because they know these hundred white men are coming in and these people actually move. They leave. They pack up their stuff, these black people leave. This is what part of the great migration is.

They leave Memphis and The People's Grocery, March 10, is raided by these white they riot. They come in there, they destroy the People's grocery. They take all of the products in there.

The very next month, it's foreclosed on, and that white grocer got what he wanted. His competition was gone, and all of it was done under the ruse of the law with Judge Dubose backing them up.

And so that was such a injustice that the white Lawyers at the time who were also Confederate soldiers. I want you to know that this, the one who kind of leads the whole charge. Get his name right. Luke Wright, Confederate soldier.

He takes Judge Dubose up on impeachment charges, goes to Nashville, goes to the Capitol, and he's completely disbarred. He can never be a judge again. Luke Wright, this Memphis lawyer, goes on to be the Secretary of War for Teddy Roosevelt.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:25:49</time>
<p>Yeah, it's pretty wild. Like when you were telling me the story, right. And I started making the video, it was wild to me.

How, how much, how many cross crossroads, historic crossroads, cross at this event? Because you've never, you've probably never heard of it, right?

If you're listening to this, it's more likely than not that you've never heard of this event before. You maybe, if, maybe you've heard of Ida B. Wells. Right?

But then when we start talking about anti lynching campaigns and, and the, you know, we know that the justice system was kind of pushed forward in that era, right out of the Reconstruction era. Obviously it took some, quite some time, you know, for the civil rights movement.

But when we start talking about white lawyers saying, hey, that white judge does not need to be there, basically working, running point on ousting this judge, that is not doing what a judge should be doing. And then this, this lawyer becoming the Secretary of war for Teddy Roosevelt, like, there's so many things that kind of sparked during this event.

And from Ida B. Wells, it was just fascinating.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:26:59</time>
<p>Yeah, I mean, so he's ousted in June of 1893. So this happens in March of 1892, and he's ousted a year later. And what I found most interesting is he tries to run again for Judge in 1902.

I think people might have forgotten about this, but he is, he's beat by the incumbent. It's not even a competition. And the incumbent's name that beats him is Judge John T. Moss. Like, that was just so amazing to me.

So part of this work is to kind of connect the dots for people. Why are, you know, Ida B. Wells becomes like a suffragette. She becomes an activist.

She starts to voice what's going on, what's wrong, and she becomes a woman of power and people look up to her. And even today, she's celebrated for taking that stance and calling out injustice in the world.

And what was so egregious to her, what hit her so hard that she had to do something, was her friendship with Thomas Moss, who was murdered in Memphis in 1892.

And that's what we like to do on Walk with History is connect those dots for you and to show you that how history is so connected and so taking you out to that location at the very end was just for us so important to kind of be there and to stand there and to know this is the location where these three men fought for their lives and that was it. After that, their people left the area. But the impact that they leave on American history today, the impact that they left with Ida B.

Wells and how she still impacts us all today, they resonate in American history. And if there is any justice, it's the justice that their story doesn't die. And the impact of their lives. And we learn something, we do better.

We don't let that happen again. And we don't forget who they were, who she was in American history. And as Memphis, like, she's one of those people that just.

Memphis is proud to celebrate her and this is the moment that made her who she is. And we're. We're proud to remember them.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:29:26</time>
<p>Yeah.

And it's one of those things that when you connect those dots, you can draw a direct line from the People's Grocery lynching to sparking that flame for Ida B. Wells and all her work that led to.

She's considered, but some consider her kind of a co founder of the NAACP to the civil rights movements in the 50s, Martin Luther King and all the stuff that we know a lot better. You can draw a direct line from those civil rights movements in the 50s and 60s all the way back to Ida B.

Wells and the People's grocery lynching of 1892. It's incredible.</p>
<cite>Jenn</cite>
<time>00:30:03</time>
<p>It's incredible. And that's a part of history. It's hard to talk about, it's uncomfortable to talk about, but it's important to talk about.

And we're just really proud to have done this video.

I actually got to interview Thomas Moss great, great grandson and have this conversation with him and let him know how important his ancestor is to American history. And I just think more of that. That is what we need today in our society is we're all in this together. History belongs to all of us.

And let's celebrate these heroes of history and what they overcame and sometimes how they were drawn to such action based on friendship. It's so important and let's never forget it.</p>
<cite>Scott</cite>
<time>00:30:46</time>
<p>Absolutely. As we wrap up today's episode, we reflect on the profound impact of the People's Grocery lynching.

The brutal murders of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Henry Stewart, three successful black businessmen and friends of Ida B. Wells weren't just individual tragedies. They represented a turning point that awakened one of history's most courageous voices against racial terror.

These men's only CR crime was running a successful business that competed with the white merchants.

Their deaths transformed Wells from a local teacher and journalist into a fearless crusader who would spend the rest of her life documenting and exposing the truth about lynching in America. Their story reminds us that history isn't just about dates and events.

It's about real people whose lives and deaths shaped the course of our nation as well. Wells herself wrote, the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.

By learning these stories and sharing them, we keep that light burning. This has been a Walk With History production. Talk With History is created and hosted by me, Scott Benny. Episode researched by Jennifer Benny.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode. Talk With History is supported by our fans at the History Road tr. Our eternal thanks to those providing funding to help keep us going.

Thank you to Doug with Liberty, Larry Myers and everything. Make sure you hit that follow button in your podcast player and we'll talk to you next time.</p>