Vol. 4, No. 11
November 2017

If Words Could Bite
By Jess Kozik
 
In 1884 before she became a well-known journalist and activist, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was riding the train when she was asked to move to a different and already overcrowded car in order for a white male passenger to take her seat. She protested. The conductor attempted to physically remove her, so she bit him. Later, she was dragged from the train car by other train workers. She went on to sue the railroad company and won, though it was later overturned, she continued to prove herself to be a defender of democracy and civil rights.
 
Ida B. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in July 1862, six months before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. She was the oldest of eight children. She lost her parents and one sibling to the yellow fever epidemic when she was in her teens. With her other siblings she went to live with their aunt in Memphis where she worked as a teacher in order to support her siblings.    
 
In Memphis, while working as a teacher, she also wrote article for Evening Star. She was fired from her teaching job after openly criticizing racism in the school system. At that point Ida B. Wells committed herself to being a journalist full-time. She eventually worked her way up to becoming the co-owner and editor of a local black newspaper, The Memphis Free Speech. Her writing style was simple and direct, as she aimed to help people with a lack of schooling understand the racist problems, especially lynching, going on in society. She stated, " I am only a mouthpiece through which to tell the story of lynching and I have told it so often that I know it by heart. I do not have to embellish; it makes its own way."
 
In 1892, three of her friends were lynched. She wrote about the incident and how white people were using lynching "to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property, and thus keep the race terrorized." This bold writing led to her office being destroyed and her life being threatened, thus driving her to leave town.
 
Ida B. Wells eventually moved to Chicago, where she continued to actively use her voice. In 1893 in Chicago, she protested the exclusion of African Americans from exhibits at the World's Columbian Exposition. Only the Haitian building stood in as the center for Americans of color. She used her writing as a form of activism again by writing "The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition" with Frederick Douglass. They passed out the pamphlet during the Fair. It eventually led to Fair officials creating a special day for African Americans, and although it was only a small gesture, it still helped spotlight the issues people of color faced.
 
In 1985, Wells-Barnett married writer and attorney Ferdinand Barnett. He shared her outspokenness and also served as an advocate for racial equality. Together they would go on to have four children.
 
In Chicago, she also became a part of the women's suffrage movement. She organized the Alpha Suffrage Club among Black women in Chicago. They participated in the the 1913 march for universal suffrage in Washington D.C. They were told to walk at the end of parade, but Ida, refusing to stand for segregation, found her way through the crowd and marched alongside the White Illinois Delegation.
 
Up until her death in 1931, she continued to fight for civil rights, and her legacy of having a bite as tough as her bark still lives on today.
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Campaign to Create Ida B. Wells-Barnett Way

In September of 2017 the League of Women Voters (LWV) of Chicago began a campaign to rename Balbo Drive for Ida B. Wells. As president of LVW of Chicago said, "All of Chicago should know about the great work that Ida B. Wells-Barnett did, and we should be inspired by her example. 2020 marks the centennial of women's suffrage in the United States. We can thank Ida B. Wells-Barnett for making that possible." Click here to read their full press release.
 
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Did the 1970s Witness a Decline in Labor Movement?

WWHP Board members Jackie Kirley, Helen Ramirez-Odell, Sue Straus, and Gwen Vaughn attended Lane Windham's presentation of her new book, Knocking on Labor's Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide at the Newberry Library's Labor History Seminar Series. Windham, Associate Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, was joined by a panel of historians and activists who reflected on her thesis.
  
Windham questions the idea that the decline of union membership in the 1970s was based on a loss of worker interest in forming unions. She believes this conclusion is a result of our focusing only on the decline in union membership of working class white men. We thus miss the contributions that people of color, women, younger workers and Southerners made to the union movement in the 1970s. However, those efforts were met by "state-rights" pushback and the bias of union leaders who found it difficult to organize these workers. Meanwhile employers manipulated weak labor law and launched attacks on union protection and Title VII, while companies sought cheaper labor overseas.
 
The book has been described as a must-read in labor, civil rights, and women ' s history.

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Politics of the Pantry: The Story of
Housewives, Food, and Consumer Protest
in the Twentieth-Century America
 
Book Launch at Piper Hall, Loyola University
November 18, 20017
 
Jackie Kendall, Bonnie Wilson, Lynne Heidt. Emily Twarog speaking.

What image does the word "housewife" conjure up for you? The dictionary defines the word as "a married woman whose main occupation is caring for her family, managing household affairs, and doing housework." The connotation is a tame person, in a caring position; it is not associated with political activism.

Researching consumer protests for her book Politics of the Pantry, Emily Labarbera-Twarog recognized that housewives who were often charged with managing the household money entered the public sphere as consumers. Working-and-middle-class women were concerned with making household money go as far as possible. Concerned that food prices were increasing their cost-of-living to the point that it impacted their family's well being, they protested. It began with meat boycotts, as early as 1902 and continued through to the 1960s.
 
Later consumer protests fought for transparency of the goods sold in grocery stores. How could the consumer know the date when an item was put on the shelf? Which items were already spoiled when they were sold? It was in this phase of Labarbera-Twarog's research that she interviewed the panelists at the book launch: Lynn Heidt, Jackie Kendall, and Bonnie Wilson, all of whom had interesting and lively stories about their activism.
 
Lynn Heidt had some previous experience with the grape boycott but her activism began when she found sour milk, out of date, at the National Tea grocery store. As this group of women found each other, and Representative Jan Schakowsky was one of them, they learned to decode the symbols printed on the food packages to discover their expiration dates. They were the "Code Breakers."
 
The code breakers eventually developed a "codebook" to decipher expiration dates that they sold nationwide at 50 cents a piece. They protested at stores; they spoiled out-of-date food so it could not be sold; they managed to obtain interviews on national radio and TV to discuss their concerns; and they even bought a share in National Tea to be able to shout questions at National Tea's president at a shareholders meeting.
 
National Tea was so rattled by their collective work that it hired a major law firm to investigate them, "spy" on them, and called the husbands of two of the women asking why "they could not control their wives." This grassroots activism provided the vehicle to launch these women into the public sphere, as office holders at different levels of government and as leaders of national and community organizations.
 
Emily Labarbera-Twarog has donated their lengthy interviews to the Women and Leadership Archives housed in Piper Hall. Archivist Nancy Freeman, who welcomed the audience, thanked Labarbera-Twarog for those donations and encouraged audience members to consider donating their papers as well. The audience filled Piper Hall. They asked questions of Emily and the panel and stayed afterwards for refreshments and further discussion.
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ACTIVATE: Chicago Foundation for Women
by Sue Straus and Helen Ramirez-Odell
 
Eighteen hundred people attended the Chicago Foundation for Women Luncheon and Symposium Oct. 19, 2017. Since its founding in 1985, CFW has awarded more than $31,000,000 to hundreds of organizations in and around Chicago.

CFW announced the creation of Willie's Warriors, a new initiative to support and invest in black women leaders in honor of the late Rev. Willie T. Barrow who was a founder of PUSH and a civil rights leader.

Akosuah Owusu was recognized for her work with the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health where she teaches sexual health, rights and justice to young people. She said she attributes her success to CFW because they believed in her.

The three co-chairs of the Women's March on Chicago, Jessica Scheller, Ann Scholhamer, and Liz Radford, gave credit to CFW for help in getting city permits and insurance. They said that without the expertise and financial help from CFW, the March on Chicago on Jan. 21, 2017 would not have been possible. 250,000 persons participated in the March.

Highlight of the luncheon was the keynote conversation with Alicia Garza and Dolores Huerta. It was moderated by Rebecca Sive whose book Everyday is Election Day was given to all attendees.
Alicia Garza, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter, shared her unflinching call to action against discrimination in the U.S. while galvanizing individuals to fight for freedom and justice for all Black lives. She stated, "We want justice, but we have to talk truth first. And that's work. That's hard. We have to talk about how we left black and brown people behind. We have to talk about lifting the way this economy works...By having those conversations we can come together."

Alicia is currently the special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She said, "The thing that keeps me going is dreaming. Not thinking of what is politically possible today, but about how to make things politically possible."
 
Dolores Huerta is internationally recognized as a feminist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez, and a tireless leader to advance the cause of marginalized communities. Her biographical film, Dolores, was recently shown at the Gene Siskel theater. She called for political activism: "We have to be political, elect feminist men and especially feminist women to all levels of government."

Closing their discussion, Dolores led the chants of "Who has power? We have power. What kind of power? Feminist power!" And "Si, se puede!" (Yes, we can!)

K. Sujata, President and CEO of the Chicago Foundation for Women stated, "The future is female and the future is black and brown. We must liberate the most vulnerable among us."

Prior to the luncheon, CFW held a morning symposium featuring three conversations between women of different faiths, different generations and different political parties to discuss how they are finding common ground and building bridges to support basic rights and equal opportunities for women and girls.
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