Ida wearing the MARTYRED NEGRO SOLDIERS

ThingIn 1917, the year the United States entered World War I on the side of the Allies, Ida turned fifty-five years old. She was now a stately, renowned woman, distinguished by decades of strife and perseverance under her belt. Her blazing character had never dulled with the passing years, either. She was still the spirited "Dark Damsel" who had had the daring to take on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad.

ThingDuring this period thousands of black men, like other Americans, heeded their call to duty by enlisting in the army. Though still subjected to racism and often forced into segregated fighting units, these blacks valiantly played their roles in the war. They logically expected after the war to be honored and esteemed. Had they not offered their very lives for their country? Yet prejudice, hatred, and oppressive Jim Crow Laws were all that greeted black soldiers when they returned home. Nothing had changed. Still regarded as second-class citizens, they had gained no additional rights by their services.

ThingIndeed, at times it seemed as if blacks were destined to forever be subservient and lie in fear of the whites in their communities. On July 2, for instance, a devastating race riot erupted in East St. Louis, Illinois. Blacks had to flee from their homes as whites set fire to their neighborhoods. Those who weren't burned alive were gunned down. Ida herself investigated the ruins of the city afterwards and saw remnants of what could only be described as a massacre, with over a hundred blacks killed.

ThingThe reality surrounding the African-Americans was indeed depressing. The troops of the Twenty Fourth Infantry in Houston, Texas, when they returned from the battlefield, came home to an oppressive environment. When the ex-soldiers attempted to exercise new liberties they assumed they had earned, for instance, they were ridiculed and verbally abused. Matters came to a head on August 23, 1917, when the black soldiers got caught up in a riot that left almost twenty people dead, all white. A swift and severe penalty was issued. Thirteen soldiers were apprehended, convicted, and hanged on December 11. To the blacks in the city, the sentencing had been overly harsh. After all, so many of their own had been lynched unjustly by whites over the years without so much as an investigation or a trial. Had the situation been reversed, and blacks the only casualties, they were sure the sentencing on the white accused would have been much lighter.

ThingThe African-Americans of Houston mourned the dead soldiers as martyrs, and when Ida heard of the story she did, too. She concluded the least one could do was hold a memorial service for the men, and so she began trekking from church to church in the Chicago area, requesting use of the building for the service. All the ministers she met forlornly gave her the same response, however: No. It was too risky--they did not want to chance trouble with white authorities. Miffed, Ida fell back on another plan. She started distributing buttons she had ordered with the words: MARTYRED NEGRO SOLDIERS.

ThingWhen a white journalist approached her one day, Ida figured he was planning on writing a paragraph or two for the papers. However, the journalist had come to see Ida for himself before he alerted the government about what she was doing. Before long, several Secret Service men apprehended Ida as she was giving out the buttons at the Negro Fellowship League. She was breaking the law, they informed her evenly. If she persisted, she'd be arrested. The charge? Treason. Ida could not believe her ears. Treason? She snubbed the officers and retorted that no, she would not stop. The agents weren't through, though. They tried to confiscate the buttons from her, but Ida fought them off. She exclaimed angrily, trying to make them see her point of view, "I think it is a dastardly thing to hang those men as if they were criminals and put them in holes in the ground as if they had been dogs. If it is treason for me to think so, then make the most of it. I'd rather go down in history as one lone Negro who dared to tell the government
that it had done a dastardly thing than to save my skin by taking back what I said. I would consider it an honor to spend whatever years necessary in prison."

ThingThe Secret Service officers were astonished by Ida's boldness. They had no doubt been expecting that she would meekly submit to their authority. But Ida was no ordinary woman, and she was positively immovable. The men were forced to leave her without further comment. Ida herself continued wearing one of the buttons for years after the incident.

ThingIda accomplished many more remarkable feats before her death in 1931 at the age of sixty-eight. Just a few years befroe her death, for instance, she ran for state legislature. It is the boldness she had to do these things, to challenge convention and promote what she passionately believed in, that can inspire people today to fight against the odds as well.