ipl-logo

Ida B. Wells An Indian's Perspective (1879)

847 Words4 Pages

The first document, “An Indian’s Perspective (1879)” was written by the leader of a group of Nez Perce Native Americans named Chief Joseph (pg. 50). This group of Nez Perce was loyal to the American government by helping it fight other Indians, but was treated horribly in return (pg. 50). Chief Joseph explains that white people stole horses from them, lied to them, drove off their cattle, and attempted to spark war (pg. 50). Even when Chief Joseph gave up some of their land as a peace offering and tried not to fight back, the white men persisted to kill them and take more of their land (pg. 50). Eventually, this group of Nez Perce surrendered to the government under terms that the government took years to fulfill. This document was written …show more content…

Wells (pg. 117). Even though African Americans had been “free” for thirty-five years by 1900, they still faced discrimination, violence, disenfranchisement, segregation and lynching. Lynching occurred when a mob of people (usually white) decided that someone (usually black) was guilty and deserved to be put to death without a trial or any other legal benefits guaranteed to all American citizens (pg. 117). These killers tried to justify their acts by stating that they were following an “unwritten law”, especially when any white woman claimed that a black man harmed her (pg. 117). Wells explained that blacks of all races and genders were lynched for reasons such as raising concerns about their work contracts, for unfounded claims that they burned buildings, and for displaying courage by standing up for themselves (pg. 117). African Americans in the South constantly feared being murdered for minor or nonexistent offenses and having their killers not face any repercussions. I am saddened that the government did not step in sooner to stop these senseless …show more content…

For example, the government was not prompt in their response to the lynching of African Americans. State and local governments even ignored lynching, and white people were rarely or never charged for their actions because they held the political power. Ida B. Wells and others advocated for anti-lynching laws and other protections for African Americans, but it took decades for the federal government to take action (pg. 117). The government was even outright dishonest when dealing with Native Americans by violating treaties and agreements. For example, the government agreed that Chief Joseph and his people could return home after they surrendered in 1877, but then didn’t allow them (pg. 50). Chief Joseph even went to Washington D.C. to explain his situation in 1879, but he was not allowed to return home until 1885 (pg. 50). Chief Joseph expressed his frustration with empty words and broken promises by stating, “I have heard talk and talk but nothing is done… Words do not pay for my dead people” (pg. 51). The Dawes Act of 1887, explained below, was one attempt by the federal government to help Native Americans. However, it had significant flaws and forced Native Americans to

Show More
Related

Mcgillivray Moment And Chief Joseph's Surrender: A Comparative Analysis

1330 Words | 6 Pages

One of Washington’s goals was to have Native Americans “gradually, over the course of the very next century, become assimilated as full-fledged American citizens,”(Ellis 54). However, Native Americans were not granted citizenship until 1924, long after both the McGillivray Moment and Chief Joseph’s Surrender. Although the Creek nation chiefs in the McGillivray Moment were seen as a sign of hope, and treated with respect, “celebrated, feted, honored, and ‘speechified’ by local officials eager to acknowledge their passing presence,”(Ellis 52), they were still seen as the lesser race--Native Americans. White settlers refused to recognize them as citizens of the United States, regardless of the fact that they were here first. The Nez Perce Indians in Chief Joseph’s Surrender were, of course, treated with less respect, but were still not seen as fellow citizens.

Read More

Brief Summary: The Life Of Ida B. Wells

513 Words | 3 Pages

Ida B. Wells was a daughter born into slavery, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. She grew up to become an active journalist and led an anti-lynching crusade around the 1890s. She was an important woman towards the society we have today. Living as African Americans in Mississippi, life was hard for the Wells family as they had to face discrimination and prejudice. Her father helped start Shaw University; it was from here that Ida got her early education.

Read More

'Black Codes In Wells-Barnett's The Red Record'

830 Words | 4 Pages

In Wells-Barnett’s The Red Record (1895), lynching statistics show that many African Americans were accused of attempted crimes such as barn burning, robbery and murder. The white man began to invent accusations against African Americans and brutality was becoming a problem: African Americans were whipped, exiled, shot and hung whenever the white man pleased. African Americans were even killed for a crime someone else committed, a jury acquitted them and they were a scapegoat. Wells-Barnett even lost friends due to the fact that they were black and even had her own life threatened because she had tried to help them. In Mob Rules in New Orleans, Robert Charles was killed for killing a white cop in self defense.

Read More

Mary Turner Lynching Essay

1060 Words | 5 Pages

Lynchers were not punished for many decades and lived a free life despite their cruel and inhumane actions. From the deaths of Mary Turner to Emmett Till to George Floyd, lynchings have been a dark part

Read More

Indian Wars Textual Analysis

386 Words | 2 Pages

With the Expansion of the American people towards the West,many settlers faced challenges such as clashes with Native American people who have lived in the plans they are now claiming for centuries. How many battles were faced between the Native Americans and the United States government which came to be known as the Indian Wars. one of the many chiefs alive during the Indian Wars wrote the textual essay above this short speech was given by Chief Joseph on the day of his surrender in October 5th 1877.Chief Joseph surrendered on the day of October 5th 1877 after many days of pursuit alongside his people. The speech he gave was for General Howard where he asked for a favor. Chief Joseph asked for the ability to search for his people who had

Read More

Ida B. Wells Lynch Law In America

497 Words | 2 Pages

4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States from 1882-1968, of these people that were lynched, 3,446 were black. Lynching is a tragedy of our Nation’s past time, although tempting to try and erase it from the history books, it must be remembered to attempt to prevent such injustices from happening again. In Ida B. Wells’ speech, “Lynch Law in America.” Ida B. Wells talks about the discrimination and horrendous crimes black people face due to racist white men and a corrupt justice system. The laws created to protect the African Americans; 14th and 15th amendment was ignored, or loopholes were being used to justify the mainly Southerner’s actions.

Read More

Life Among The Piutes Analysis

515 Words | 3 Pages

In Life Among the Piutes, sarah winnemucca hopkins describes what happens when soldiers came to their reservation based off what white settlers tell the government. The most shocking instance of this happened when Winnemucca encountered a group of soldier who told her the white settlers accused the natives of stealing cattle, “the soldiers rode up to their [meaning the Piute’s] encampment and fired into it, and killed almost all the people that were there… after the soldiers had killed but all bur some little children and babies… the soldiers took them too… and set the camp on fire and threw them into the flames to see them burned alive”(78). This is an abhorrent act that is unthinkable in a functioning society. The natives had done nothing but want to hold some shred of land from the settlers who had taken everything from them and are exterminated like vermin. This was something that stayed hidden from many white settlers because of its barbarism and by exposing it Winnemucca truly educates the reader, past and present, on how natives are

Read More

Ida B. Wells: The Rise Of Lynching

856 Words | 4 Pages

The rise of lynching caused by White Americans spread fear through African Americans and of those, the ones who started the fight to end the racial targeting and fear. Lynching does not always mean a noose and gallow it can range from various methods of torture to executions such as burning at the stake, these methods were what made lynching such an effective tool to spread fear. “The classic public lynchings for which the South became so notorious always involved torture and mutilation and ended in death for the victim, either by

Read More

Native Americans In The Late 1800s

510 Words | 3 Pages

Nevertheless those laws and promises were broken with lies and deceit time after time. Racism and violence against the Indians persisted. In 1869 Ulysses Grant entered the White House, authors of Reconstruction

Read More

Trial Of To Kill A Mockingbird By Harper Lee

1196 Words | 5 Pages

Linked to the decreasing standard of living and the fear of losing their position to blacks the number of men lynched in the 1930s “rose to an average of almost twenty per year.” (Johnson “Without Tradition” 4). Lynching an extrajudicial punishment was seen as a “pinnacle of passion” (Johnson, “Without Tradition” 4) which enforced violence. It constituted an enforcement of the conviction of unwritten laws the white privileged followed because the judicative in the United States did not provide the kind of justice they favored for defendants. The demonstration of Black’s powerlessness to boost their own feeling of superiority was common and practiced.

Read More

Jim Crow Laws Against Lynching Essay

1317 Words | 6 Pages

After the Jim Crow Laws of the 1890s, white mobs flourished. With the black’s banned from voting, jury service, and public office, no one felt the need to respect the minority. “Between 1882 (when reliable statistics were first collected) and 1968 (when the classic forms of lynching had disappeared), four thousand seven hundred and forty three persons died of lynching, three thousand four hundred and forty six of them black men and women” (Zangrando). There were many more cases of lynching’s that were never reported beyond their community. White families would bring their children, newspapers would give advanced notices, and railroad agents sold tickets announcing the lynching sites.

Read More

Race Relations 1930s

1180 Words | 5 Pages

Racists in the 1930s committed several acts of violence and got away with it. Tom Dent writes in his novel Southern Journey, that the lynched body African American Man was found on the Pearl River bridge as traffic of the cars flowed normally; this was never brought to attention. People who would fight back or even cause minor racial flare-ups could end up dead or with severe punishments from gangs such as the Ku Klux Klan. The murder of an African American man was never brought to any attention the quote above demonstrates how the body of a black man was hanging and the traffic flowed normally as if someone was not just murdered. As mentioned in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, “The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people carrying resentments right into the jury box.

Read More

Native Americans In The 19th Century

951 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the 19th century Native Americans were treated far less than respectful by the United States’ government. This was the time when the United States wanted to expand and grow rapidly as a land, and to achieve this goal, the Native Americans were “pushed” westward. It was a memorable and tricky time in the Natives’ history, and the US government made many treatments with the Native Americans, making big changes on the Indian nation. Native Americans wanted to live peacefully with the white men, but the result of treatments and agreements was not quite peaceful. This precedent of mistreatment of minorities began with Andrew Jackson’s indian removal policies to the tribes of Oklahoma (specifically the Cherokee indians) in 1829 because of the lack of respect given to the indians during the removal laws.

Read More

History Of Racial Profiling

1083 Words | 5 Pages

The majority of Blacks in South Carolina and other southern state during the 1700’s were slaves who had to show a pass when leaving the plantation, to prove they had permission to leave., or, if freed, blacks had to carry what was called freedom papers to prove they were free. Black people during 1700-1865 were subject to harassment, interrogation, whippings, lynching and other physical punishment by whites that included hangings, beatings and mutilations of having their feet cut off if they were found to have run away from a plantation. Like modern-day racial profiling, since the 1700’s Black people 's skin color, not their actions, make them the subject of discriminatory treatment and the racial profiling of stop and search by whites

Read More

Ida B Wells Analysis

440 Words | 2 Pages

Ida B. Wells has been described as “a crusader for justice, a defender of democracy, and a militant and uncompromising leader in the efforts to abolish lynchings and establish racial equality (McBride).” Several years after Wells began her crusade against lynching, she published A Red Record that provided detailed statistics on the number of lynchings in the United States and their alleged causes from 1892 to 1894. A Red Record recounted the unjustifiable murders of African Americans by providing the hypocritical and constantly altering motives behind these murders as time progressed from slavery to the Jim Crow Era. Having examined various accounts of lynching based on alleged “rape of white women,” she concluded that Southerners used rape as an excuse to conceal their true reason for lynchings: black economic, social, and

Read More

More about Ida B. Wells An Indian's Perspective (1879)

Open Document