gled with the social expectations of womanhood, while emerging as an ac-
tivist more militant than most of her male colleagues.

Wells was barely twenty years old when she sued a railroad company in
1883 for expelling her from a first-class coach. Her account of the case
launched her into a part-time career in journalism, which became her full-
time vocation when the white school board in Memphis dismissed her for
publicly criticizing its actions. As editor of the Memphis Free Speech, Wells
began a crusade against lynching. Her editorials infuriated local whites,
who eventually closed down her newspaper and forced her exile. Moving
to New York, she immersed herself in the antilynching cause, which in-
cluded two British lecture tours.

For several years in the 1890s, no African American, except for Freder-
ick Douglass, received more press attention than Ida B. Wells. She played
a role similar to the aging abolitionist, arousing British public opinion
against the new evil of lynching as Douglass had against the old evil of slav-
ery. Both were entertained by royalty and other prominent people and
launched British movements that brought unwanted attention to Amer-
ica's racial problems. When Douglass died in 1895, Wells was his logical
heir apparent; they had closely collaborated on several projects. She was
better known than W. E. B. Du Bois and more ideologically compatible
with Douglass than Booker T. Washington -- the two men who eventually
became the main contenders to fill Douglass's shoes. However, Wells had
a major problem: She was a woman.

In post-Reconstruction America, black women faced a serious dilem-
ma. White southerners were attempting to repeal the advances made by
African Americans by stripping black men of not only their power but also
their pride. Southern white men defined manhood partly as the ability to
protect their "helpless" women. To deny black manhood, they forbade any
sexual contact between black men and white women, while claiming for
themselves the right of sexual access to black women. Lynching was a ma-
jor tool for the emasculation of black men. To support their men and to
counteract the challenges to black manhood, black women usually as-
sumed some of the roles played by white women in this patriarchal society.
They, too, were expected to be submissive and to lend support rather than
to provide leadership. For a woman to be spokesperson and leader for
African Americans belittled black "manhood."

The first step by Wells into the role of spokesperson grew out of her
rage over the lynching of a close friend in 1892. The horror of that event fo-

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