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Ida, as a black woman, did not seem as
an able contender against Francis Willard. Yet, she held up her own in
the skirmishes that arose between the two of them.
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ThingIda
readily jumped at the chance to take her campaign against lynching abroad
once more in 1894. She was sponsored by the Society for the Recognition
of the Brotherhood of Man (SRBM ), headed by Isabelle Mayo. Yet this second
trip was peppered with one difficulty after another. Ida's first
trial came from a division that had formed between Isabelle Mayo and Ida's
friend, Catherine Impey. Impey had written a letter professing love to
a sponsor of SRBM, a man named Dr. Ferdinands. Ferdinands did not feel
the same way towards Impey and showed the love letter to Mayo. Mayo, becoming
distraught at Impey falling for a foreigner (Ferdinands was Asian) and
thinking that the woman's actions had tainted the image of the Society,
promptly requested that Impey give up her membership. Catherine Impey
flatly refused to do this, though Isabelle Mayo succeeded in swaying other
members of the Society to her side.
ThingWhen
Mayo approached Ida and asked that she condemn Impey as well, Ida shocked
her by calmly declining. In Ida's eyes there was nothing wrong with
interracial romance; she had addressed that very subject in the Free
Speech back in Memphis. Needless to say, Ida's decision did not
sit well with Mayo. She influenced the Society to significantly decrease
funding for Ida's campaign. No longer would Ida be able to have the
extensive speaking tour she had counted upon. With no one else to turn
to, she sought aid once again in her friend Frederick Douglass, who wrote
her a letter of recommendation that backed her cause.
ThingIda's
second trip became even rockier when she got locked in a serious of fiery
debates with Frances E. Willard, a prestigious leader of the American
Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Ida never hid from the
public her opinions of Willard, whom she stated maintained her high upstanding
in society by catering to wealthy whites who were prejudiced against blacks.
Ida cited an interview Willard had done in which she claimed, "The
colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt. The grog-shop is its
source of power. Better whiskey and more of it' has been the rallying
cry of great dark-faced mobs in the Southern localities where local option
was snowed under by the colored vote." Willard had even gone
so far as to suggest that blacks were out of control criminals, saying,
"The safety of women, of children, of the home
is menaced in a thousand localities at this moment, so men dare not go
beyond the sight of their own roof-tree." Brazenly, Ida had
Willard's interview published in the Society's journal, the
Fraternity. When the article came out Willard and her sponsor,
Lady Isabel Somerset, were enraged and lashed back out at Ida. As a result,
the rest of Ida's trip was hampered by the battle that raged between
the two parties. Still, the fact that Ida was even able to hold her own
against Willard was in fact remarkable, since Willard had been highly
esteemed by England, whereas Ida was seen by some critical newspapers
as an annoying firebrand involved in matters way over her head.
ThingDespite
all of the turmoil surrounding Ida she did not lose focus of her reason
for traveling in the first place: to expose the cruel lynch law that was
thriving in the United States. During her tours she met with England's
Parliament, spoke to people of Queen Victoria's staff, conducted
numerous interviews, and held lectures before thousands of people. As
Ida once wrote to Douglass, "I welcome gladly
every opportunity to spread the truth and shall continue to do so as long
as I am here."
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