For several weeks I’ve been mulling over the idea of featuring a profile of the men behind famous women. That idea was given impetus today as I was reading the Styles section of The New York Times, which had a story about the marriage announcement of Ida B. Wells and Ferdinand Lee Barnett in 1895. We all know about the incomparable commitment of Rosa Parks but not much about her husband, Raymond. The same can be said about Barnett, who languished in the shadows of his wife’s courageous fight against lynching and white supremacy.
But languishing may not be the right word, because much like Raymond Parks, Barnett was an ardent freedom fighter in his own way as a publisher, lawyer and an unflinching advocate for social and racial justice.
Barnett’s birthdate, depending on the source, is either 1858 or 1859. There is no dispute about his place of birth in Nashville, Tenn., where he was the son of a slave who purchased the family’s freedom and moved the family to Canada. The family moved to Chicago in 1869, where Barnett earned his law degree from an affiliate of Northwestern University in 1878. He was around 20 years of age when he founded the Chicago Conservator newspaper, the city’s first African-American paper and the state’s second. It was a four-page, six-column publication, although it’s not clear if it was a daily, weekly or monthly. Whatever the schedule, it had an approximate circulation of 1,000 in the early years, which was quite remarkable given that Chicago’s Black population was less than 7,000.
The paper’s focus was on race, politics and community news, but with an unusual even-handed approach. Even so, it was unwavering in its advocacy for social, economic and political equality.
In 1882, four years after launching the paper, Barnett stepped aside as the editor to concentrate on practicing law. Thirteen years later, in 1895, he sold the paper to Ida B. Wells, who continued to publish it until 1914. The same year he sold her the paper they were married. (His first wife, Molly Graham, died when their children were very young.) He and Ida purchased a home on East State Street, in an all-white neighborhood, and were met with hostility, but no overt violence.
As a prominent lawyer, Barnett served 14 years as an assistant state’s attorney. He also represented the Wells-Barnett Negro Fellowship League, and in that capacity won a case before the Illinois Supreme Court on behalf of a Black man wrongly accused of murder.
Barnett was a member of several organizations, including the National Conference of Colored Men of the United States. One of his most memorable public speeches was delivered before this body in 1879 in Nashville, and entitled “Race Unity.” Here are a few excerpts from it:
“Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Conference: The subject assigned me is one of great importance. The axioms which teach us of the strength in unity and the certain destruction following close upon the heels of strife and dissension, need not be here repeated. Race elevation can be attained only through race unity. It is a general enlightenment of the race which must engage our noblest powers. One vicious, ignorant Negro is readily conceded to be a type of all the rest, but a Negro educated and refined is said to be an exception. We must labor to reverse this rule; education and moral excellence must become general and characteristic, with ignorance and depravity for the exception.
“We are a race of leaders, everyone presuming that his neighbor and not himself was decreed to be a follower. Today, if any one of you should go home and announce yourself candidate for a certain position, the following day would find a dozen men in the field, each well prepared to prove that he alone is capable of obtaining and filling the position. Failing to convince the people, he would drop out [of] the race entirely or do all in his power to jeopardize the interest of a more successful brother. Why this non-fraternal feeling? Why such a spirit of dissension? We attribute it, first, to lessons taught in by gone days by those whose security rested in our disunion. If the same spirit of race unity had actuated the Negro which has always characterized the Indian, this Government would have trembled under the blow of that immortal hero, John Brown, and the first drop of fratricidal blood would have been shed, not at Fort Sumter, but at Harper’s Ferry.
“A few of the prominent causes which retard race unity having been noticed, let us look for the remedy. First, our natural jealousy must be overcome. The task is no easy one. We must look for fruits of our labor in the next generation. With us our faults are confirmed. An old slave once lay dying, friends and relatives were gathered around. The minister sat at the bedside endeavoring to prepare the soul for the great change. The old man was willing to forgive everyone except a certain particularly obstreperous African who had caused him much injury. But being over persuaded he yielded and said: ‘Well, if I dies I forgives him, but if I lives dat darkey better take care.’ It is much the same with us; when we die our natures will change, but while we live our neighbors must take care. Upon the young generation our instruction may be effective. They must be taught that in helping one another they help themselves; and that in the race of life, when a favored one excels and leads the rest, their powers must be employed, not in retarding his progress, but in urging him on and inciting others to emulate his example.
“We must dissipate the gloom of ignorance which hangs like a pall over us.
“In behalf of the people we are here to represent, we ask for some intelligent action of this Conference; some organized movement whereby concerted action may be had by our race all over the land. Let us decide upon some intelligent, united system of operation, and go home and engage the time and talent of our constituents in prosperous labor. We are laboring for race elevation, and race unity is the all important factor in the work. It must be secured at whatever cost. Individual action, however insignificant, becomes powerful when united and exerted in a common channel. Many thousand years ago, a tiny coral began a reef upon the ocean’s bed. Years passed and others came. Their fortunes were united and the structure grew. Generations came and went, and corals by the million came, lived and died, each adding his mite to the work, until at last the waters of the grand old ocean broke in ripples around their ireless heads, and now, as the traveler gazes upon the reef, hundreds of miles in extent, he can faintly realize what great results will follow united action. So we must labor, with the full assurance that we will reap our reward in due season. Though deeply submerged by the wave of popular opinion, which deems natural inferiority inseparably associated with a black skin, though weighted down by an accursed prejudice that seeks every opportunity to crush us, still we must labor and despair not patiently, ceaselessly and unitedly. The time will come when our heads will rise above the troubled waters. Though generations come and go, the result of our labors will yet be manifest, and an impartial world will accord us that rank among other races which all may aspire to, but only the worthy can win.”
Barnett died in 1932, one year after the death of his wife.