Zora Neale Hurston And Ida B. Wells, A Wishful Literary Conversation

February is Black History Month. So if I could go back in time, I would want to be transported to the Harlem Renaissance and sit in a room with novelist/anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston and journalist/anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, two of my favorite African-American historical figures.

Both Hurston and Wells were contemporaries and probably knew about each other. For me it would be a joy to just listen to them exchange ideas and experiences, especially about the American South. Not only would their conversation be eye-opening, it would be intellectually stimulating.

We Need "A Red Record" For The 21st Century

In 1895, while living in Chicago, African-American social activist, journalist, public intellectual Ida B. Wells published A Red Record. In it, writes Iowa State University professor Brian Behnken in his essay,"The Quest for Racial Change," published in Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America (University Press of Mississippi, 2017), "Wells forcefully articulated an intellectual vision regarding how the government could work to end lynching." (Page 83)

We need a similar publication like A Red Record in the 21st century to document the numerous shooting deaths of black men, women, and children across the United States by police officers and non-police individuals.

These shootings have reached such an epidemic level that A Red Record-like publication would help put a human face to these deaths with photographs, background information, and a summary of each shooting incident. They would no longer be just statistics in a newspaper or an evening newscast.

A 900 to 1,000-page record of these deaths would demonstrate to political, civic, religious, and academic leaders that there is a dire need for a solution to this slaughter that's taking place in our urban areas. Gun violence is not just a legal issue, it is first and foremost a public health issue inextricably linked to mental health.

Ida B. Wells's Portrait On The Twenty-Dollar Bill?

At the risk of being labeled an elitist (and to some, a sexist or male chauvinist), I prefer to have the portrait of Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) on the twenty-dollar bill to replace Andrew Jackson's likeness instead of Harriet Tubman (ca. 1820-1913) as many have proposed. (Jackson (1767-1845) was the seventh president of the United States.)

I am not attempting to disparage or dismiss Tubman's efforts and courage in leading Southern black slaves to freedom in the North via the Underground Railroad. But I think Douglass, a fugitive slave himself, would be a better choice. Not only was he an abolitionist and advocate for women's rights, he was also an eloquent, persuasive orator and writer. In addition, he published an influential newspaper, The North Star and had a close relationship with president Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865).

But if we must have a woman of color on the twenty-dollar bill, then an excellent candidate would be Ida B. Wells (1862-1931). She was a journalist and activist who fought against segregation in the South, especially in Memphis, where she lived and published a newspaper.

One writer called her "a sophisticated fighter whose prose was as tough as her intellect." Another writer described her as "an incredibly courageous and outspoken black woman in the face of innumerable odds," such as intimidation and the threat of being lynched by white segregationists.

To re-evaluate my choice, I went back to listen to a 1949 "lost" episode of  NBC's Destination Freedom that I recorded off the radio in 2018. The half-hour episode called "Woman With a Mission,"written by black dramatist Richard Durham, was about Wells's work as a "famous social welfare worker and woman editor." In the broadcast it was noted that she traveled across the country and abroad advocating for freedom of speech and equal rights for women.

One male voice said she should stay in a woman's place; another described her as having "a tongue like a flaming sword." Such attitudes didn't bother her because she believed her "resistance to tyranny was obedience to God."

For those reasons, I think Ida B. Wells's portrait on the twenty-dollar bill should be considered.