This blog post is about two great-grandmothers: Rachel Seat, my great-grandmother who was scarcely known beyond the county where she lived most of her life, and writer Michelle Duster’s great-grandmother, the world-famous Ida B. Wells.
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| Ida B. Wells (c.1917) |
My Great-Grandmother: Rachel Clark Seat
Rachel Clark was born in Perry County,
Illinois, in 1852 and in her tenth year migrated with her birth family to Worth
County, Missouri, where I was born 76 years later.
Great-grandmother Rachel married William Littleton
Seat in November 1870, the month after her 18th birthday. Sadly, he
died before they had been married ten years—and before Rachel’s 28th
birthday. At the time of his death, they had four children and one on the way.
Rachel was a widow for over sixty years, dying
in the summer of 1941. In addition to five children, she was the grandmother of
at least eleven, and I don’t know how many great-grandchildren there
were/are—but I am happy to be one of them.
Michelle Duster’s Great-Grandmother: Ida B.
Wells
Michelle Duster was born 101 years after her great-grandmother, Ida B.
Wells, whose birth was ten years after my great-grandmother Rachel, in 1862,
the year the Clark family migrated from Illinois to Worth County, Missouri.
Ida died 90 years ago today, on March 25, 1931, ten years before my
great-grandmother. But even though Ida’s lifespan was twenty years shorter than
Rachel Seat’s, her accomplishments far exceeded what my great-grandmother could
ever have imagined.
Early this year, Ms. Duster’s book about her illustrious great-grandmother was published under the title Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells. It is an informative book that is quite visually appealing because of its extensive artwork and other images.
No one would have the slightest reason to write a book about my
great-grandmother, although my Aunt Mary Seat did write a six-page,
unillustrated story about her (and available for viewing/reading here).
The Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells
In July 1862, James and Elizabeth Wells, who were both enslaved on a
farm in Holly Springs, Mississippi, became the parents of their first child,
whom they named Ida. She was a precocious child, and she learned to read at an
early age—and read the newspaper to her father and his friends.
When she was 16, Ida’s parents and her youngest sibling died of yellow
fever. Ida was determined to keep her surviving five siblings together. She
studied hard and passed the test to become a teacher in a rural Black school. For
two years she provided for her siblings in that way.
That was in 1878, just two years before Grandma Rachel became a widow
and had five of her own children to take care of from January 1881. So, Ida was
providing for her siblings by teaching school in the same year my
great-grandmother was working in her neighbors’ fields for 50 cents a week.
And at the same age Grandma Rachel became a widow, Ida became the one-third
owner of a newspaper and a journalist in 1889. Five years later she published
her first book, Southern Horrors: Lynch Laws in All Its Phases.
For forty years before her death on March 25, 1931, Ida worked as a
writer and activist, combatting the evils of lynching and other forms of racism
as well as sexism. She was a tireless, and effective, advocate for the social equality
of Blacks and of women.
Ida’s courageous fight for social justice has been recognized in various
ways, including the USPS issuing a Black heritage postage stamp in her honor in
1990, Chicago changing a street name to Ida B. Wells Drive in 2019, and her
being awarded a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation in 2020.
Thank God for the extraordinary life and legacy of Ida B. Wells!
_____
Here
are some notable books by and about Ida B. Wells (in addition to Duster’s 2021
book):
* Crusade
for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (1972, edited by Ida’s
daughter Alfreda Duster; 2020, with Afterword by Michelle Duster)
* Ida
in Her Own Words (2008, edited by Michelle Duster)
* The
Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader (2014, by Ida B. Wells)
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Interesting stories, Leroy! I read most of the pages about your great-grandmother. That’s an interesting life, too. You could have said more about her. Her life could be turned into a novel.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anton. I didn't know if anyone would be interested in Great-grandmother Rachel, but she was quite a woman, it seems. However, she had little impact on the lives of anyone outside the small rural Missouri community where she lived for 79 years except for her descendants, including several teachers, two (or more?) preachers, and at least one medical doctor (my sister). But it would take a lot of talent/imagination for someone to turn her story into a novel, but that is something one of my daughters might do after they retire from teaching.
DeleteAnother local Thinking Friend, Marilyn Peot, sent me these comments a few minutes ago:
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for introducing us to special women. I had never heard of Ida Wells and never saw the stamp. But your sharing her life story again reminds us that there are those whose role is to bring us forward by daring and caring. I believe Rachel, in her own way, was also one of them."
Thanks for reading and responding to this morning's blog article, Marilyn. I had never known much about Ida Wells until recently, and I have wondered why she had not been more widely publicized through the years. But now, 90 years after her death, perhaps she is getting the publicity she has deserved all these years.
DeleteLeroy:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information about two remarkable women. It was women like this who helped build this country and its character. I have to tell you a little about my great-grandmother. Caroline Frances Pattie was born September 1, 1818 in Fauquier County, VA. She married my great-grandfather, William McKane Baker about 1837. They had twelve children. Her last child, Charles Pierce Baker is my grandfather who was born in Culpepper VA in 1856. That same year, the family moved 900 miles to Texas County, Missouri by covered wagon. Think about it. My great grandmother was nursing Charles, taking care of the other ten children, (two had died in Culpepper) preparing meals, doing laundry and cleaning and supporting her husband. It took a toll on her and she died shortly after they arrived in Missouri. I think of her and the millions of other pioneer women whose lives were hard. Their heroism is hardly noticed but their legacy build a strong nation. I can't imagine what many of the black women, like Miss Ida, must have endured. Thank God for them!
Truett Baker
Great article Leroy and I commend you for honoring your Great Grandmother and the other Great Grandmother.
ReplyDeleteYou have a Good memory and a Wonderful way you honor Others!
Blessings,
John Tim Carr
This afternoon I received these welcomed comments from local Thinking Friend Kenneth Grenz:
ReplyDelete"I became acquainted with Ida B. Wells when she was the journalist hero of my Drake U. journalism student son. I own a couple of her bios and have visited the Wells museum in her parents’ slave master’s home in Holly Springs, Mississippi. A nice irony that the home is preserved to remember/honor the little slave girl whose first home was a no longer existent slave shack in the museum’s back yard. Yes, Wells did precede Rosa Parks in refusing to cede a seat on public transit. Yes, her name would likely be as familiar as Frederick Douglas had she been a male.
"Thanks for calling her to memory."
Thanks, Ken. I was happy to post your comments here for others to read. Actually, Ida was one of the co-founders of the NAACP, but after a few years she became somewhat disgruntled with them, it seems, and ceased to have much to do with them after that. I may be wrong, but it is likely that her unhappiness stemmed from the fact that when they decided to publish an NAACP magazine, they asked W.E.B. DuBois, who was six years younger, to be the editor instead of her. All her life she combatted sexism as well as racism, and my guess is she felt she was slighted because of being a woman. She certainly had the talent and the experience to have been the editor of The Crisis, which has been in print since its founding in 1910.
DeleteThanks for this post and sharing information about these two remarkable women. Your great grandmother most likely had a difficult life raising five children alone, her faith probably was her greatest source of strength.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Garth, for your comments [on my blogsite]--and for referring to my great-grandmother's faith. She was a charter member of the New Hope (Baptist) Church when it was started in 1878 (on land donated by her father-in-law, Franklin Wadsworth Seat). She lived close to the church for several years after her husband died. It seems that she was a very active member, attending Sunday morning and Sunday evening services with her children. So, yes, I think her faith, along with the community of faith, was probably her greatest source of strength.
DeleteThanks for this blog. Like others I had never heard of Ida Wells. It is definitely my loss and that of others who need to see what can be accomplished when color and gender are secondary to pursuing what is right. You are blessed to have such stories of your g-grandmother preserved. I fear none of the history of my g-grandparents was considered worthy of passing along. Only names and a couple of photos remain. I have a genealogy and nothing more.
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing, Tom. I am glad you have at least some knowledge of and appreciation for Ida B. Wells now. In recent years I have been puzzled that I had not heard more about her in the past, having heard very little until fairly recently, and I was a bit surprised that several, like you, wrote saying that they had not heard of her before. But she certainly was an outstanding woman, and I am glad I could have a small part in helping her to become more widely known.
DeleteMost of what I know about my great-grandmother comes from my Aunt Mary Seat, who wrote the story about her that I referred to in the article, and some that my father told about her as she lived with my father's immediate family when he was still living in his birth home. But I don't have one thing written by her or by any of her children whereas June has many letters etc. written by and to her great-grandmother and is just finishing a book about her and her family.
Just a few months after this blog article was posted, The Light of Truth: Ida B. Wells National Monument was unveiled in Chicago. The sculpture takes its name from Ms. Wells’s oft-quoted words, "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."
ReplyDelete