- [Narrator] Production and distribution of City Club forums on Ideastream are made possible by the generous support of PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music) (bell dings) - Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, chief executive here and a proud member.

Today's April 16th, your with a virtual City Club forum.

We're live from the studios of our public media partner, 90.3 WCPN Idea Stream.

Again big thanks to them.

Last year, the United States commemorated the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment which guaranteed and protected women's constitutional right to vote.

Its passage marked the largest expansion of democracy in the history of our country and arguably set in motion much of the voting rights movement that continues today.

And yet as with most crucial moments in American history, the traditional story behind the women's suffrage movement is incomplete.

Our retelling office often focuses solely on Susan B.Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two white women, while failing to acknowledge their movements' roots in abolition and omitting the vital contributions of black women, working class women and immigrants.

Today we hope to offer a more complete history of the struggle for voting rights.

And by connecting the past to the present show how the work continues today.

Allow me to introduce our Friday forum speaker.

Paula Giddings is the Elizabeth A.Woodson 1922 Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College.

She's known for her writings on the complicated history of black women in America including the book "Ida: A Sword Among Lions" which was an award-winning biography of anti-lynching activist Ida B.Wells, which also won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

She's written extensively as well on the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

One of the largest black women's organizations in the United States.

We'll talk with Professor Giddings about the political tradition of black women, their struggle to be enfranchised, and how their activism led to the influence that black women have on today's electorate.

If you have questions for Professor Giddings you can text them to (330) 541-5794 that's (330) 541-5794.

You can also tweet your questions at the @thecityclub and we'll work them into the program.

Professor Giddings, welcome to The City Club of Cleveland.

- [Paula] Well hi, thank you for having me.

- Thank you so much for joining us.

And it is a delight.

We wanted to have you a year ago.

- [Paula] I know.

- And we're doing it today by phone, but it will have to do.

- Something got in the way I don't remember.

- [Dan] Something got in the way.

And you know as we get started professor, I just want to acknowledge the heaviness of this moment today when our conversation about electoral enfranchisement is also a part of a broader conversation around social justice and racial justice and which hangs very heavy over us all today.

- Absolutely.

- When you look at the history of the 19th amendment, where do you see that history beginning?

- Well let me start with saying it doesn't begin with Seneca Falls in 1848.

And that was organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

We now know that that is very questionable to mark that event as the beginning of the women's rights movement.

It's been considered that because Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony said it was and wrote an authored or edited multi volumes of history that said it was.

And really lobbied for this to be the origin story of women's rights.

But we know that it wasn't even a consensus that this was the origin story of women's rights until the 1880s, until after the Civil War.

So the importance of this is, is that origin narratives tend to structure the history and they tend to tell you who belongs in it and who doesn't.

And of course Seneca Falls as we know, which was unlike anything before us, it was just white women, did not talk about abolition or race.

And as you mentioned in that good introduction, abolitionism is really at the source of women's rights.

What Seneca Falls is first in, is one of the first conventions of this period that does not talk about race.

- When you say, Paula Giddings, when you say that it begins with abolitionism.

Abolitionism is where the fight for women's rights begins.

Could you unpack that a little bit?

Because I- - Well just about all of the early suffragists were first abolitionists.

And of course in the abolition movement and there's a number of reasons for it.

But there's certainly the abolition movement is the movement that attracts women and in a particular era in which they are looking for, they're looking for a means to deal with their own oppression.

And they also it means to do good in the world.

This is sort of the evangelical tradition.

And what better than to try to eliminate slavery.

And as they get involved in the abolition movement, they begin to understand oppression as a structural thing not just as an individual issue.

They began to understand the language of anti-discrimination rhetoric.

They begin to understand how to unpack themselves, how they are oppressed and how they're discriminated against.

Understanding this through the lens of race and through the lens of slavery.

And so they come to women's suffrage and women's rights well heeled in understanding of how to mobilize against depression.

And to also understand the language about it.

- Bring us up to speed then, or perhaps that's not the right way to talk about it because it's not really up to speed, but help us understand then, by the time that Seneca Falls happened, what had been happening among freed slaves, among black women that was being ignored by the white leaders at that moment.

- Everything, everything.

If we look at this time period and if we just sort of increase the aperture a little bit and look all around at what's happening.

In the 1840s and 50s, I mean there's debate about the extension of slavery into the west.

And there is a Mexican-American war in which Tacoma women are trying to hold onto their property rights as Anglos come and take land.

And the Irish are coming in as immigrants, as very poor immigrants and needy immigrants.

So that there's also that issue.

And of course this is the period of a genocidal period of native Americans that's also happening.

There's a revolution in Germany and they're refugees coming, German refugees coming to the US.

So there are so many issues whirling around in this period.

And to think that someone could have a rights convention that only talks about individual whites, just in the more white women is quite incredible actually.

- And in the post Seneca Falls and then during reconstruction help us understand the true story of those ensuing years and decades that led up to the 19th Amendment.

- Well we know, and this is a story I think is pretty familiar.

We know that a lot of the conventions are suspended for the Civil War and after the Civil War and the passage of the 15th Amendment which gives black men the right to vote and not women, that this splits the suffrage movement with Anthony and Stanton on one side and Lucy Stone and others on the other.

Stan and Anthony of course are, and understandably, are really feeling betrayed about this amendment that women aren't gonna be able to vote but less sympathetically.

And they go on a national tour which really talks about the...

Which has this vitriol of racism against black men.

I mean sort of the idea of women first, meaning white women, and the Negro last.

And the idea is that, how can you white men in the legislature enfranchise black men who are dangerous, who are low, who will oppress us, and is also nativist, is also anti Irish?

And so it's this idea of trying to gain the vote by saying that white women of the republic need to be protected against these vicious men is a legacy that really echoes into certainly later periods from when lynching begins to increase, when there's a great deal of violence against blacks.

They really begin that language.

And they're after the Civil War and it's quite egregious.

And so then by the turn of the century, by the 1890s and the 1900's, the suffrage movement, we know that it supposedly comes back together, but it comes back together under Stanton and Anthony, which means that the same ideas are perpetuated.

And this combined with trying to attract southern white women, and trying to attract southern legislators who they need of course, to pass an amendment.

They begin to marginalize almost completely and exclude black women from the movement.

But black women, it's quite amazing that some of them still try to deal with the predominantly white movement.

But in the meantime, they're also forming their own movement and ideas around suffrage, mainly through, not just, but mainly through the National Association of Colored Women which was founded in 1896, which has its own suffrage department which by 1916 claims 100,000 members all across the country.

And so they're quite active in the suffrage movement.

And this isn't talked about and written about quite as much as it as it should.

But the idea of black women of course is as Della Hunte Logan said.

She said, "If white women think they need the vote for protection, black men and women need it even more."

So there is from the very beginning, and even from the very beginning black women activists have been very mobilized to vote.

- Let me jump in here to remind our listeners that you're with The City Club Friday Forum.

I'm Dan Moulthrop.

Our speaker today, Paula J.Giddings.

She's the Elizabeth A.Woodson 1922 Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College.

Also author of Ida: "A Sword Among Lions."

We had originally scheduled her to speak last year on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

And here we are one year later, picking up where we left off as with so many things.

And it's really a delight to have you with us, Paula Giddings.

- [Paula] Well, thank you.

- Paula I wanna ask you to talk about the unique contributions of Ida B.Wells.

- [Paula] Ida B.Wells, and to stick a little bit to the... First, quickly, Ida B.Wells really is a black woman journalist, an investigative journalist who begins the nation's first anti-lynching campaign in 1892.

And she mobilizes the nation really, and makes people understand the importance of lynching and how toxic it is to American culture and to the country.

And of course she, in terms of also looking at suffrage, she's really the first person, certainly the most articulate in understanding the relationship between lynching and racial violence and the need for political empowerment therefore suffrage.

So she's also an ardent suffragist, as well as a courageous and bold anti-lynching advocate which of course she begins her advocacy in the South, in Memphis, Tennessee, after a lynching of a friend of hers and is exiled to New York as a result of that.

And then finally settles in Chicago where she becomes also one of the great reformers in the nation.

She of course, she sustains her anti-lynching campaign but she also starts the first black women's suffrage club in Chicago.

She has a settlement house where she helps black migrants.

She's a co-founder of the NAACP, she will run herself for a state Senate seat in Chicago.

So she's quite an extraordinary figure.

- Specifically with respect to her activism around the 19th Amendment though.

How successful was she or what challenges did she encounter in trying to advance the cause for black women?

- Well, of course there's an interesting story maybe to frame this.

As we know, as many people know, there was a major women's suffrage March in 1913 on the eve of Woodrow Wilson's inauguration where thousands of women were really descending in Washington, DC and march, and the word had gone out that black women were to march in the back.

The organizers of the women's suffrage march, thought that southerners particularly would be offended if black women marched alongside of them.

And Ida Wells was in the Illinois delegation just soon after forming the Alpha Suffrage Club and came to Washington and with the majority white delegation.

And by this point, Ida Wells had been very active in the suffrage movements and the women's movements there in Illinois both in the interracial movement as well as predominantly black movement.

And she's suddenly told while she's there rehearsing with her colleagues that she is not to March with the Illinois delegation but to march in the back.

And the group discusses it.

They finally decide that they will go along with the organizers.

Ida leaves the group and then when they start marching, all of a sudden she is just a great story.

She reappears in the crowd and she takes her place in the middle of the delegation and walks with the delegation along with suffrage parade route.

But one of the things we don't always think about in this story and of course, and this is about demanding one's place in the suffrage movement and symbolizes that and the refusal to be excluded but there's also something else going on.

Ida Wells in Illinois, Illinois has just passed in this period a municipal suffrage bill which allows women to vote for municipal offices like mayor and alderman, et cetera.

And Ida as soon as that bill is passed, and she's helped to get that bill passed, she begins to mobilize black women to be as she says, "an electoral power and force in Chicago politics."

And one of the first things that she wants to do is to make sure that there's black representation in the burgeoning black ward of Chicago.

Which as more and more blacks...

This is a period of the migration.

More and more blacks are coming into Chicago, they're funneled into the second ward which is now probably majority black for the first time but it's still represented by whites.

So the first thing she wants to do is a sense of self-determination.

Black women's voice understood the connection between political power and suffrage which not all women have.

But so she wants the first black alderman to be elected in Chicago.

And by George, she does it.

She mobilizes women, they register people in the ward, they work very, very hard.

And I'm simplifying the story because a lot is going on back and forth.

But indeed, if you look at that election that you could look at the figures and see that black women are the reason why that Oscar De Priest becomes the black alderman in Chicago.

And he will later become a US Representative and the first black Congressman since reconstruction.

But this is as a result of the mobilization of the Alpha Suffragist Club and Ida Wells.

- We're talking with Professor Paula Giddings.

She's the Elizabeth A.Woodson 1922, Professor Emerita Africana Studies at Smith College.

Author of a award-winning biography of Ida B.Wells called "Ida:A Sword Among Lions."

She's our Friday Forum speaker at your City Club of Cleveland.

And if you have a question for her about the role that African-American women have played in advancing voting rights throughout history, send us a text to 330-541-5794.

That number again is 330-541-5794.

Or you can tweet your question @thecityclub and we'll work it into the program.

The Q&A with Paula Giddings with your questions is coming up in about seven or eight minutes.

Paula Giddings, as you tell this story, it is very clear to me that Ida B.Wells is probably the reason why Lori Lightfoot is mayor of Chicago or one of the many reasons.

- I think you can make an argument that Chicago, that Ida Wells was so instrumental in mobilizing women in Chicago politics.

The other suffrage organizations follow Ida Wells works.

The other suffrage clubs and other suffrage organizations work not just for black candidates but also white women candidates that she feels this is the progressive period.

And black women do become a power in electoral politics in Chicago.

And I said that there's no...

Which makes Chicago politics even more powerful in general.

And I think there's no coincidence that the first black woman US Senator, Carol Moseley Braun, comes out Chicago politics.

We know that Barack Obama comes out of Chicago politics, and of course the Chicago mayor comes out of politics.

There has been a long and hard fought context that made their emergence possible.

- And to sort of make the connection very explicit that I think is probably implicitly emerging in the minds of our listeners right now, the city of Cleveland of course is the city that launched the political careers of Carol and Louis Stokes.

- Absolutely, yes, yes.

And my friend Marcia Fudge.

- And Marcia Fudge.

- Absolutely who...

So yes.

I wish I could really articulate the challenge and the difficulty and the hard work for it to make it happen.

When we see it we just sort of see, oh isn't this nice.

Someone let them win.

But- - I mean it's there's something unique in American history about the role that African-American women have played.

And as we've been talking, I've been thinking about the most pressing and insistent and vital voices on voting rights over the last few years.

And they've been black women.

Latasha Brown, Stacy Abrams and others.

And there there's no one else who comes close to my mind.

And I'm sure that people will be correcting me on Twitter right now and offering other names but- - Absolutely, but let me again remind you the long legacy of their emergence.

And you know I think about, during the reconstruction period before women could vote, when men got the vote in reconstruction, women were as politically active even though they didn't vote as men were.

They used to have these huge forums where women were very important.

Where their opinions were sought and which they had a great deal of influence on what was happening politically.

The black women have been very political within the church in terms of leadership and keeping their power within the church.

And that's a long interesting story.

So they've been very political for a long time understanding the connection between empowerment and also their protection.

Ida Wells was one figure who she came of age in reconstruction, She saw what happened when her father and other men got the vote and how that community that she lived in, Holly Springs, was thriving and blacks leadership had come to the fore.

And then what happens when they lose the vote?

Because they're disenfranchised.

And so she sees also what happens with disenfranchisement.

And this is when lynching is on the rise.

This when violence is on the rise, this when mass incarceration is on the rise.

So we have long understood the relationship between voting and not individual rights, but a kind of collective need for protection and for power.

And so I think that's one reason why black women have always been instrumental in voting rights.

And remember people like Fannie Lou Hamer.

I mean, we fought for voting rights when it just seemed that it would be impossible that would ever happen.

And I think some of this has also to do with a kind of a sense of part of our culture which is it's kind of just kind of prophetic vision, able to work for things before we can even actually see a way that it can happen.

Stacey Abrams talking about being governor of Georgia, how impossible is that?

And yes, here we are on the precipice of it.

Georgia turning blue?

How is that possible?

Who's gonna work and sacrifice and put your life in danger for a vision that seems that far off?

Not many, but thank goodness for those who do, because here we are right now.

- I'm reminded as you're speaking about black political power that several years ago in 2019, when our community gathered in many different places to celebrate, looking back at the 50th anniversary of the election of Carl Stokes to the mayor's office and the launching of those careers of both Carl and Louis Stokes.

Cordell Stokes, the son of Carl Stokes, had said at one point, that we should not mistake this as some sort of nice sort of civil rights story, but that this was very clearly, and his father was always very clearly focused on black political power.

That is very different than simply a sort of feel good story about civil rights - That's right.

Or the first person to do this or that.

And sometimes that representation has its place and that emblematic idea has its place.

But sometimes we lose the fact that it's power that's important - As a historian, Paula Giddings, how do you see what has been happening particularly in just these last few months, since the election in November, of President Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris, and I can't believe we've made it a half hour into this program without talking about the fact that there is now a black female in the vice president's office.

- That's right.

And let me just say, I'm a journalist writes history rather than... That's the way I think of myself - And I'm thinking specifically, Paula, about the voting legislation, the electoral legislation that has been passed in many states by Republican legislatures that many accuse of rolling back voting rights.

But how do you see it?

- Oh, there's no question about that.

If you understand what the radical whites have always wanted to do and have been doing for the last 50 years, this is just one of the combinations of it, The radical right and libertarians, Charles Koch, et cetera always had a plan, we know.

That their views and their ideas are not popular.

They can never win it through a democratic... Get their ideas through democracy, particularly around Capitol.

Charles Koch said something like, "If Capitol is going to be free, democracy must be chained."

And so they have...

Ever since, and there's this historian, Nancy McLean who talks about this, since the Brown vs Board of Education really been talking about how to keep democracy at bay, how to keep voting rights at bay, how to see state legislators with people on the right, how to keep a very... One reason why they emphasize so much more than Democrats the need for judges, because they need to legalize these disenfranchisement efforts in a way for them to be sustained.

And they've been very clear about what they had to do.

And now and we are seeing it.

Can it be a coincidence that 47 states suddenly have these disenfranchisement measures?

Absolutely not.

And it's very much the same...

Sort of it's been... We always see this idea in American political culture.

- Some might see irony in the fact that Ida B Wells was herself a member of the Republican Party.

- Well, you remember that the Republicans for a long time were the party of Lincoln.

- They were the progressives in the American political ecology.

- Or at least they were more progressive than the Democrats.

The Republicans- - Everything's relative, isn't it?

- Mixed message.

But it's not until Franklin Delano Roosevelt that blacks begin to change it to change.

Well, not even so change parties, but they do support him.

- We're talking with Paula Giddings, she's a Professor of Africana Studies at Smith College and the author of an award-winning biography of Ida B Wells.

And we're talking about the look back at the role that black women have played in the fight for voting rights and the fight for suffrage for enfranchisement.

Looking back at 100 years since the passage of the 19th Amendment.

If you have a question for Professor Giddings, please text it to (330) 541-5794 The number again is (330) 541-5794.

Or you can tweet it @thecityclub and we will work them into the program.

There's a group of ladies from the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority at Eaton corporation who are sending their greetings.

And I wonder if you could talk a little- - [Paula] Greetings back to them.

I look forward to seeing them later.

- Yes, I know.

But I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your writing about Delta Sigma Theta and why they are such an important force?

- Oh, indeed.

I was very interested, after writing my first book mostly about the role black women played in racial movements and in gender movements.

I wanted to write a book about a black women's organization.

And I'm a member of Delta Sigma theta.

I pledged Alpha Chapter, Howard University and was very taken with this idea of...

In a country like this, this idea of women coming together as sisters, coming together in a sisterhood not just as a network, not just among friends which is all that as well, but this whole notion of a sisterhood of sharing in a particular way.

And of the history of an organization that's based on that foundation.

And that grows to tremendous numbers all over the country and also many parts of the world.

And that comes together over so many important issues as well.

And that forms the foundation for black women, who often find themselves sort of out in the desert.

So it was a joy to write about this history and about some of the most extraordinary women and also they are learning leadership ideas through the sorority.

This is the sorority of Barbara Jordan, of Shirley Chisholm, of Patricia Roberts Harris, of Marcia Fudge, of Sadie T.M Alexander, of so many extraordinary women.

And I said, what is it?

Let me try to understand what it is that provides both this sort of political vision and this nurturance for us.

- As you talk about the role of those women, and you mentioned Marcia Fudge, the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and formerly the Congressional Representative from the district in which we're broadcasting right now the 11th congressional district- - And formerly the president of Delta Sigma Theta.

- And formerly the president of Delta Sigma Theta and formerly the mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio and formerly the chief of staff to Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

But I was also thinking about the... We mentioned Kamala Harris, Vice President Kamala Harris earlier.

And the question from one of our listeners asks if you could just talk about the effect that her occupation in the vice presidency might have on the nation.

- Well, it's really extraordinary to think about a black woman who is a whisper away from the presidency of the United States of America.

And to think about everything that happened.

I mean, since 1619 to make this a reality and a possibility.

And of course she has before her a tremendous opportunity to have a great impact on the country and to also see someone who looks like you in the vice presidency, I was on a another program with a very young young woman.

And I said, "How fortunate you are at your age."

She was in her 20s.

She was just out of college.

I said, "How fortunate you are to at your age to be able to see that a black woman can be vice-president of the United States."

I mean, I started thinking about how this would affect her pathway and affect her sense of self and affect her sense of possibility at that age, versus those of us who felt like this could never really be possible with all the racism and the sexism and the classism in the country.

So this is an extraordinary moment that she becomes the vice-president of the United States.

And I'm just looking forward...

It's make me look forward to what is to come.

- Here's another question from our audience.

Could you comment on the relationship between Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony and its impact on the suffrage movement, the questioner notes that they had a friendship that fell apart because Frederick Douglas refused to lobby to include women in the 14th and 15th Amendments and likely because of the disagreement, Susan B. Anthony may have used some less than appropriate language about race, but nevertheless- - They probably lashed out.

- Nevertheless she spoke at his funeral though as well.

- Yes, that's right.

I should say this I've written about.

It's very interesting and it's a real lesson of how people can be.

Susan B. Anthony in her time was one of the very few whites who really had social relationships with black people a pretty much a peer level on one sense.

She was also a person who was very supportive of Ida B Wells and Ida Wells' campaign.

But let me get to the question.

Of course, Frederick Douglas was there at Seneca falls.

And he, as the story goes at least, he is why women are hesitant about calling for women's vote.

He says, well, you must do it.

And of course, he's so eloquent and so highly thought of that this sort of helps the debate and women do then in their declaration of sentiments, say, yes the vote is important.

Of course, they split over the 15th Amendment.

And I think they would understand both of them, at least Frederick Douglas would understand why Anthony and Stanton would be upset about the 15th Amendment.

But to have that racist campaign was just so extraordinary.

Because one thing about black people they always sort of maintain, after the amendment, maintain ideas of universal suffrage.

This was not happening with Anthony and Stanton.

What one of the quotes, I wrote down a quote, when you talk about less than appropriate language one of the quotes is, listen to this.

This is in their editorials after the 15th Amendment.

As the celestial gate to civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it becomes a serious question whether we had better stand aside and see Sambo walk into the kingdom first.

This is the kind of language they used.

And I could give you more, but...

The family actually asks Anthony later to memorialize Frederick Douglas after his death in 1895.

And Douglas stays very much involved with the women's rights movement, even though he was excluded from the first, he would go to that conference, to the conventions.

But he was excluded in their convention in Atlanta, again because they didn't want to offend.

So after he got the vast of the votes in the first place, they excluded him from it.

They told him not to come to Atlanta because they didn't want to offend southerners.

I mean, it becomes a southern rights movement after 1890.

But the relationships are and particularly these kinds of relationships, political relationships are complicated.

I mean, if you look at, there are people who are angry on political levels, but their friends.

I mean, I had that experience myself.

My friends on personal levels but not on political levels or vice versa.

So it is a complex relationship.

Anthony admired all good activists.

- We're talking with Paula Giddings about the complicated history that involves the ratification of the 19th Amendment and the fight for voting rights throughout American history.

Paula Giddings is a professor of Africana Studies at Smith college.

She describes herself as a journalist who writes history not strictly a historian, but she's still the author of an award-winning biography of Ida Wells, called "Ida:A Sword Among Lions."

And this question about Ida Wells from one of our listeners.

And by the way, if you have a question for Professor Giddings, please text it to (330) 541-5794.

The number again is (330) 541-5794.

You can also tweet it @thecityclub and we'll work it in.

But Paula, this question is for you could you talk about Ida B Wells lasting impact on today's political landscape?

I'd be interested to hear more on how Wells transformed journalism since she was recently awarded the posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 2020.

- How times really are changed.

- [Dan] I know.

- But it goes back and forth.

Wells is one of the earliest investigative reporters.

When she gets involved with the issue of lynching, she begins to understand that the false accusations against black men raping white women, which is the rationale for this sort of lynching just beginning to increase exponentially across the country.

When she begins to understand that that this is not truth, this is not what's really going on with a few examples she knew, particularly the lynching in Memphis, which sort of gets her started, or thinking about lynching in a particular way.

She begins to actually investigate lynchings.

She goes to the scene of lynchings.

She records material in the newspapers to see what the true reasons and rationales for these lynchings are.

She interviews witnesses, going to the sites of lynchings.

And she begins to, which we begin to see now as well, she begins to not only use statistics which she does very effectively, and statistics is actually kind of a new innovation in this period of the late 19th century, social sciences.

She uses that.

But she also tells the story of many of those who were lynched.

She finds out who they are, she finds out what their families were like, she finds out how people thought of these lynch victims in the community.

She talks about what the true circumstances are, where are these lynchings.

She understands that blacks as we see now are being criminalized often in the press.

She understands what happens, which we're seeing now.

I was just thinking about this.

At one point she says lynching used to be sort of in the back woods and I thought ignorant people in the back woods were lynching blacks, but she also begins to tell when this begins to change.

She says, "Lynching is now on main street."

And I'm still thinking about George Floyd with this.

Lynching is no longer in the back woods.

It's in our cities.

It's in our main street.

They start lynching people from telephone poles to me which is a symbol of modern America which is gonna be even more violent than a pre-modern America.

And she understands that the press lies.

We think about that now.

Now we don't trust a lot of institutions but people didn't think the press lied so much before.

She begins to really understand what they're doing and how they're in a conspiratorial network with the government.

With people involved with the economy.

And she also sees that there was, before Ida Wells, there was a sense, even though a lot of black people said, "Well, lynching is terrible."

But there was this kind of assumption that you probably did something wrong if you were in that position to be lynched.

Booker T Washington used to say, Booker T Washington, who was the president of Tuskegee and who was completely the opposite of Wells in his thinking like he said, "Well, no Tuskegee graduate ever got lynched."

It was like, if you lived a respectable life, you weren't you didn't put yourself in that position.

But she begins to turn that completely around when she says, well, it's the respectable people who are the targets because they're more competitive economically, et cetera.

And so this idea that if you just behave yourself you're gonna be protected in this country, you're wrong.

You better mobilize, you better have a political power and you better protest.

- Another question for you, Professor Giddings about your perspective on Ida Wells' role in developing international solidarity campaigns for human rights.

- Ida Wells was in 1893 and 1894, Ida Wells is invited to the British Isles with her anti-lynching campaign.

And she's actually very successful in the British Isles.

This actually is one of the high points of the campaign particularly the second, at a time she goes to Great Britain because she was able to to articulate and get people to understand of race being a global issue and racism being a global issue.

At this time, she's in Great Britain.

Of course, there's also a lot of activism in Great Britain because of how Great Britain is treating its people in India.

It's because of Britain's own colonialism.

And so she begins to awaken people to this larger idea of what is happening to people of color and why it's happening.

It's not personal.

It has a lot to do with economic exploitation.

It has to do with the need of a whiteness to perpetuate itself and to remain superior in many ways.

And so in Great Britain actually, they actually form an anti-lynching committee in Great Britain, which includes a number of very important activists, it includes the Duke of Argyll the Bishop of Canterbury and others.

And so it becomes very important.

And in one year, at least in one year that we know of, the group of Brits come to the US to investigate lynching which of course drives the southern governors apoplectic that they would come and write a report on...

They're trying to understand what is going on in the US, what is at the heart, which we need to think about now.

What is the heart of this deprived violence that we see?

And so she was quite significant in that realm as well.

- Professor Giddings, as we wrap up, we just have another couple of minutes but I'm really struck by the fact that this history that we talk about, when we really unpack the history of the 19th Amendment of the fight for voting rights that it's not a hidden figures sort of story as you have said, in fact, we've centered it on all the wrong things and all the wrong people.

- Well, not necessarily the wrong people.

It's not a zero sum game.

They have been important, but what we have to understand, the one thing I'd like for us to understand, is how much we've lost by not enfranchising black women.

The people sort of understood in some ways the politics of marginalizing black women before the 19th Amendment because they needed southerners to support the the amendment.

And southerners were frightfully fearful of black women becoming enfranchised.

In fact, they really believed, that as one of them said that white supremacy might end if black women are enfranchised, because they're so active.

And that the civil rights stuff will start all over again, if they get the vote.

But imagine that, that white supremacy might have ended in the south if black women had the vote.

Imagine how the country would be different.

The southerners are...

It's the same group of people who are blocking things right now.

And that blocked so much civil rights legislation and progress for centuries.

- Indeed.

Professor Paula Giddings is the Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College.

She's the author of the book, "Ida:A Sword Among Lions" and she's been our Friday forum speaker today.

Professor Giddings, thank you so much for your time today.

- [Paula] Thank you!

- It's been a pleasure talking to you.

- [Paula] It's a pleasure talking to you.

Our forum today is the Cleveland Association of Phi Beta Kappa Endowed Forum established in 1947.

The Cleveland Association of Phi Beta Kappa seeks to support the ideals of society through academic, social and community-based programs.

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Thanks to, as well, to you and members like you and sponsors and donors who support our mission to create conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

We have two such conversations coming up next week.

Wednesday, we'll talk about the movement to add public comment to Cleveland City Council Meetings and will feature a mock virtual public comment session.

You can participate, check us out online to find out more.

Also next Friday, we'll talk with outgoing Downtown Cleveland Alliance President and CEO, Joe Marinucci, about his long and storied career with the organization and where he sees Downtown headed post pandemic.

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I'm Dan Moulthrop, It's been your Friday Forum.

Stay close in your hearts, my friends.

It won't be long before we can be close in person once again.

Our forum is now adjourned.

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