Ladies and Lynching: Southern Women, Civil Rights, and the Rhetoric of Interracial Cooperation

493

Jordynn Jack is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Lucy Massagee is a senior undergraduate at the same institution majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication. Th e authors thank Laura Clark Brown and Matthew Turi, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Jack Selzer and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

© 2011 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 14, No. 3, 2011, pp. 493–510. ISSN 1094-8392.

Ladies and Lynching: Southern Women, Civil Rights, and the Rhetoric of

Interracial CooperationJordynn Jack and Lucy Massagee

As a women’s antilynching association in the 1930s, the Association of Southern

Women for the Prevention of Lynching (aswpl) developed a repertoire of

rhetorical strategies to encourage communication between their white supporters

and their African American counterparts. Th ese strategies included choices that

may not seem overtly rhetorical, but can nonetheless be understood as laying

the groundwork for communication between groups. Strategies such as choosing

meeting facilities, composing official statements, and listening to guest speakers

helped members to forge common ground, but ultimately, larger disagree-

ments prevented the aswpl supporters from reaching consensus with African

American campaigners who were pushing for federal antilynching legislation.

Nonetheless, this example contributes to scholarship on the rhetoric of the civil

rights movement by highlighting the importance of interracial communication

as a rhetorical practice.

It is a remarkable photograph for 1938. Outside the Tuskegee Institute

in Tuskegee, Alabama, a group of women stands in two rows, clothed

in long coats, some with fur collars, a picture of matronly middle-class

This work originally appeared in Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 14:3, Fall 2011, published by Michigan State University Press.

494 Rhetoric & Public Affairs

respectability. Some wear small, dark hats. Some of the women are black, some

are white. All are luminaries from two early civil rights organizations: the

Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (aswpl) and

African American members of the Women’s Committee of the Commission

on Interracial Cooperation (CIC). On the photograph, the latter group has

been labeled “Negro Women of the Interracial Commission,” and its numbers

include Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Mary McLeod Bethune, Fannie Williams,

and Jennie B. Moton.1 A statue of two African American men towers behind

the group of women. One of the men appears as a slave, crouched beneath

the “veil of ignorance” that he casts off with the help of the other man, who

stands proudly beside him.2 Th at man is Booker T. Washington, founder of

the Tuskegee Institute.

Th e Washington statue off ers a fitting backdrop for this meeting of women

who hoped to lift the veil of ignorance that had shrouded white southerners

in hatred and black southerners in fear. Th ese women were meeting to

discuss lynching and other issues of mutual concern, but their purpose was

also rhetorical: the meetings served as opportunities to forge lines of com-

munication between the two groups of women. According to Jessie Daniel

Ames, the leader of the aswpl, the photograph was taken as “a memorial to

our meeting and to our friendship.”3 As part of what Ames called the aswpl’s

“interracial project,” the photograph testifies not only to friendship, but also

to the possibilities (and difficulties) of interracial communication between

black and white women in the South.4

Scholars including Kimberly Powell and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall have

examined the media and messages that white women in the aswpl used to

persuade white audiences to condemn lynching, including speeches, editorials,

petitions, and flyers. Powell and Hall agree that the aswpl primarily drew on

the social status of the white southern lady to advance such arguments. Yet,

scholars disagree in their assessments of how well the so-called interracial

project enabled connections across the color line. Powell argues that the aswpl

made some gains in race relations, concluding that, though segregated, the

aswpl “helped to bring the races together by opening the lines of communica-

tion.”5 However, in her biographical account of Ames, Sheryl Kujawa states

that the aswpl “failed to collaborate with black reformers or to significantly

include blacks within the aswpl,” remaining “unresponsive to issues raised

by blacks themselves.”6 Similarly, in her history of women and gender in the

New South, Elizabeth Hayes Turner argues that the aswpl leaders “were never

entirely open to interracial work.”7 Th e goal of this article is to adjudicate


Ladies and Lynching 495

these contradictory claims, focusing especially on the rhetorical strategies

used by aswpl members to reach out to African American women.

We draw on archival records to show what kinds of collaboration and

communication occurred between the all-white aswpl members and African

American activists. To investigate the degree to which the aswpl enabled

interracial communication to occur, we will examine a series of 1930s meetings

of the aswpl and their African American colleagues. Th ese events highlight

the repertoire of rhetorical strategies Ames and the aswpl used to facilitate

communication with African American groups that were also tackling the

lynching problem: arranging meetings, writing statements, conducting

surveys, and writing reports.8 We argue that what may appear to be a failure

to collaborate or an unresponsiveness on the part of the aswpl stems in large

part from the private nature of these strategies (as opposed to the more public

speeches, editorials, and pamphlets the aswpl designed for white audiences),

as well as from the diff ering rhetorical strategies espoused by the aswpl and

the African American groups to argue publicly against lynching.

Background: Interracial Communication in the Anti-Lynching Movement

Women’s activism against lynching began well before the twentieth century.

In the 1890s, Ida B. Wells chronicled the prevalence of lynching in the South,

Members of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching and the Women’s Committee of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, Tuskegee Institute, 1938.

Fro

m J

essi

e D

anie

l Am

es P

aper

s #3

686,

Imag

e P-

3686

/374

a-b

, So

uthe

rn H

isto

rica

l C

olle

ctio

n, W

ilso

n Li

bra

ry, U

nive

rsity

of N

ort

h C

aro

lina,

Cha

pel

Hill



arguing against the “old threadbare lie” that supported it,. namely, the false

argument that lynching was used to punish black men who had raped white

women.9 At the turn of the century, African American women’s clubs such

as the National Association of Colored Women (nacw) also drew attention

to lynching. Members such as Wells and Mary Church Terrell argued that

lynching was not simply a punishment for rape, but part of a larger system that

worked to oppress African Americans.10 Th us, they focused their eff orts on

changing white public opinion about lynching and on discrediting the flawed

logic that supported it. Interracial groups such as the Young Women’s Christian

Organization (ywca), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

People (naacp), and the Urban League also began working in the early part

of the twentieth century on poverty, education, and many other concerns.11

However, communication across the color line posed challenges for many

groups. For Southerners, especially, decades of deeply engrained behaviors

and traditions made the path toward interracial cooperation a rocky one.

In her autobiographical and sociological study of the American South, Th e

Making of a Southerner, Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin recounts the trepidation

and confusion she and other student ywca members felt when presented with

the opportunity to hear an African American ywca leader speak to them at

a conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1915: “In one sense, was it so

out-of-the-way for a Negro to stand before us and speak to us? Th ere was

nothing to be scared of. . . . We were used to Negroes, weren’t we? Who could

be more so?”12 Yet, Lumpkin continues, “to concur in what was proposed, by

no stretch of our imaginations, would be other than breaking the unwritten

and written law of our heritage: ‘Keep them in their place.’”13 Lumpkin’s

words capture the tension, fear, and discomfort that interracial cooperation

posed for white Southern women in the early part of the century—simply

hearing an African American woman give a speech seemed an intimidating

occasion to Lumpkin.

In spite of these impediments, during the 1920s and 1930s Southern

black and white activists were laying the groundwork for later cooperative

movements, taking tentative but significant steps toward solidarity at a time

when shaking hands or sharing a meal required real courage. Church groups

oft en began by arranging meetings. For instance, the Woman’s Inter-Racial

Conference met for the first time in Memphis in 1920, bringing together

women from churches, women’s clubs, and the ywca.14 Another interracial

group was the Woman’s Committee of the Commission on Interracial

Cooperation, of which Ames was director. Nannie H. Burroughs, leader of



the Woman’s National Baptist Convention, wrote a handbook on interracial

cooperation entitled New and Old Paths to Fertile Fields, meant to be used by

Baptist church groups, and Dorothy Height wrote similar guides for members

of the ywca. Th ese books stressed the importance of working together on

small community projects, such as setting up child care centers or arranging

lectures and reading groups.

When it came to antilynching action, though, black and white women

came to favor diff erent rhetorical strategies. In the 1920s, African American

women turned their attention to legislative reforms. In 1922, the naacp’s

Anti-Lynching Crusaders was formed, drawing its membership largely from

black women’s clubs. Th e goal of the organization was to “unite a million

women to stop lynching.”15 Th e Anti-Lynching Crusaders, according to the

agreement drawn up upon its founding, was primarily a fund-raising group:

each woman who signed the pledge against lynching was asked to donate

one dollar to help the naacp lobby for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which

was under consideration in the U.S. Senate in 1922. Th e Crusaders focused

on generating publicity, lobbying Congress, pressuring state legislatures,

investigating lynchings, and raising money to support all of the above.16

Th ey also focused attention on white women, calling on them to join forces

to defeat lynching.17 Th e Dyer Bill did not pass because of a Senate filibuster,

but the Crusaders did raise over a million dollars for their cause. Although

the Crusaders disbanded shortly thereaft er, many women activists, including

Bethune, continued to push for another bill, the Costigan-Wagner Bill, which

was put forward in 1935.

Th ese eff orts focused on legislation, but the aswpl took a diff erent

approach, seeking to educate white Southern women about the South’s

shameful record of mob lynchings, murders justified by the supposed threat

to white women’s purity.18 For the most part, the aswpl focused on white

communities, drawing on existing white women’s organizations, such as

the Federation of Women’s Clubs, the National Council of Jewish Women,

and the Women’s Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Rather than acting as an organization in its own right, the aswpl served as

a clearinghouse for information and strategies that other women’s groups

could use to change public opinion about lynching. To do so, the aswpl

regularly issued press releases and sought coverage in the editorial pages of

local newspapers. Ames urged aswpl members to circulate pledges within

their communities, to be signed by other women, their friends and family

members, and by local sheriff s.19



Individual members of the aswpl were encouraged to give presentations

to church, missionary, and civic organizations in their communities about the

evils of lynching, to get signatures from men and women who opposed mob

violence, and to call on men to help them to prevent threatened lynchings.20

All of these state-level activities were reported to Ames, who intervened when

possible, drawing on her wide network of contacts. Ames also publicized

annual reports of lynching, citing the exact number and location of reported

lynchings (including those averted), the names of the victims and their assas-

sins, and descriptions of the apparent justification and manner of lynching;

these reports were distributed in aswpl meetings and published in the

nation’s leading newspapers.21 Although these rhetorical strategies primarily

involved white women communicating with other white members of their

communities, the bread and butter of the aswpl, members also developed

a repertoire of strategies to encourage interracial communication.

Joint Meetings of the AWSPL and the Committee of Negro Women

During the 1930s, Ames regularly arranged for African American women of the

Commission on Interracial Cooperation to attend the aswpl’s annual meetings,

held each January in Atlanta. Th ese meetings happened on an almost yearly

basis through the first part of the 1930s and then shift ed to biennial meetings

in the latter half of the decade.22 Th e goal of these meetings seemed to be to

educate women about each others’ concerns and to create opportunities for

interaction between the groups of women. Th e meetings themselves were

one of the key elements in the aswpl’s repertoire of interracial strategies.

Th e very act of arranging meetings between the two groups involved

important rhetorical considerations. To enable communication between the

two groups, Ames first needed to get white and African American women

together in the same place—not necessarily an easy task in the segregated

South. In a report of one of these joint meetings, Ames describes the logistics

of the meeting arrangements in some detail. Ames’s report indicates that

the aswpl secured a private hall at the Piedmont Hotel in Atlanta so that

they could host the African American women: “the management held that

since we were paying for these facilities we could have as guests anyone we

wanted.”23 Th ey chartered a private coach when the meeting transitioned to

the Tuskegee Institute, consulting the managers in advance to ensure that



both groups of women could use the white waiting room. Relegating the

African American women to the back of the bus, or to the colored waiting

room, would have highlighted the diff erences that existed between the two

groups, making it more difficult to establish common ground between them.

At the meetings themselves, Ames mostly eschewed political discussions

that might call up tensions between the groups, but she did invite speakers to

address the group on topics related to African history. For instance, in 1935,

Ames invited W. E. B. Du Bois to give a talk; Du Bois spoke about Abyssinia

and its status in the League of Nations.24 Th ese educational lectures were a

commonly cited tactic in women’s writing about interracial work. Nannie

Burroughs, for example, recommended them in her guide to interracial work,

New and Old Paths to Fertile Fields, as a means for women’s Baptist church

groups to build bridges.25

Another strategy involved writing and publicizing official statements,

which was done at the level of local aswpl associations. For instance, at

one meeting in 1931, Ames invited Moton, Brown, Sallie Stewart, and Mrs.

John Hope to discuss whether a double standard of moral conduct existed

in the South, so that white women’s purity was assumed and defended, while

African American women had to prove that they were not lascivious and did

not seek out male attention.26 Aft er this session, the state aswpl associations

each adopted a new statement decrying this double standard. Arkansas’s

statement, for instance, included these lines: “Recognizing with sympathetic

appreciation the high standards of virtue set by the best element of Negro

women, we pledge ourselves to an eff ort to emphasize the single standard of

morals for both men and women, that racial integrity may be assured, not to

one race but to both.”27 Statements such as this one seem carefully craft ed to

come across as measured and moderate. Terms like “racial integrity” seem

calculated to indicate a moderate stance, assuring readers that integration

or other, more radical goals were not intended. As middle-class women,

many with religious roots, the white and African American women seemed

to find common ground on the topic of morality. Terms such as “virtue”

rhetorically bind the two groups together on the basis of a common middle-

class standard of propriety, which evokes the Victorian era Cult of True

Womanhood.28 Whether individual women actually espoused those values

is beside the point. Rhetorically, official statements provided one way for the

aswpl women to identify publicly with their African American colleagues.

Th is was intended as a step forward, however cautious, in forming relations

between the two groups.



In addition, Ames collected surveys from aswpl members to assess the

impact of the meetings. Responses to these surveys suggest that the primary

gains were emotional—women felt uplift ed, encouraged, and inspired aft er

meeting with their African American colleagues. One woman, a Mrs. E. M.

Bailey, wrote that she treasured these joint meetings because they “help me

to understand more clearly just how far we have gone in the social develop-

ment of the human family” and because they “give me new inspiration and

encouragement to give myself more completely to the promotion of the

work.”29 Th ese survey responses may also have served as self-persuasion,

since they encouraged women to articulate their own stances on the value

of interracial meetings. Yet, they also served as arguments for the value of

interracial meetings such as the one Bailey attended.

Ames’s reports also form part of the repertoire of interracial communica-

tion, since they off er official arguments for the eff ectiveness of the meetings.

For instance, in 1938, the aswpl’s status as a segregated organization generated

controversy among the other organizations with which Ames was associated,

particularly the CIC. Th at year, criticisms arose at the Annual Meeting of the

CIC, when some black male leaders asked why no black women were on the

aswpl. Aft er all, the CIC was an interracial organization, so it seemed unusual

that one of its key members, Ames, would simultaneously run a segregated

group. According to Ames, aft er some discussion, “all agreed that the aswpl

was set up by white women to cancel the claim of Southern white men that

lynching was necessary for the protection of white women.”30 Nonetheless,

in response to these questions, and “in order to make this purpose clear,” the

aswpl agreed to invite prominent black women leaders to their next meeting.31

Th e meeting was held later that year, and the report serves as an argument

for its eff ectiveness. Members of the Central Committee of the aswpl met

with prominent members of the CIC Women’s Committee at the Piedmont

Hotel and Atlanta University, then traveled to the Tuskegee Institute the

following day. In her report, Ames describes the logistics of the meeting, but

nothing about the substance of the discussion. Instead, Ames tacks on a line

that generates a sort of conversion narrative: “Some of the white women were

quite upset and even disgusted at the beginning of our interracial project

but before parting all of these few had become part of the group without

reservations.”32 Here, Ames argues that the success of the meeting lies in this

change in attitudes among the white women. Additional archival evidence

suggests that at least some of Ames’s constituents in the aswpl were initially

hesitant to attend these meetings. To persuade one woman, a Mrs. John F.



Davis, to attend, Ames assured her that the meeting would be “educational”

and “unofficial,” and that “no action, binding either on ourselves or on any

other organization” would be taken.33

Th is might explain why Ames emphasized the transformations that oc-

curred. In her report, Ames implies that it was the act of being together, and

the emotional impact of that act, that made the meeting a success. Meetings

were rhetorical events, wherein acts such as traveling, eating, and conversing

together helped to persuade participants to take a more favorable view of

interracial cooperation.

Th e photograph included at the beginning of this essay serves as further

evidence for this argument. It was Ames who arranged for a group photograph

to be taken at the meeting, and she circulated copies of this photograph in

her reports to the CIC. In her report, she declared that the meeting succeeded

in expelling doubts about the aswpl’s status as a segregated organization:

“Nothing more was heard at annual meetings of the Board of the Interracial

Commission concerning the absence of Negro women on our association.”34

The meeting succeeded in achieving another rhetorical purpose, then,

persuading the CIC that the aswpl had good ties with African American

women, despite its segregated status.

Choosing meeting spaces, composing official statements, responding

to surveys, and writing reports were all acts that, together, constituted a

repertoire of cooperative strategies. Th ese strategies served as the main ways

the aswpl engaged in interracial work, which supports Powell’s claim that

the aswpl made some strides in interracial cooperation. Although a cynical

perspective might suggest that these acts were no more than public relations

moves on the part of the aswpl, the survey responses suggest that they may

have had a more personal impact on individual aswpl members, who found

opportunities to interact with African American activists important for their

own inspiration and motivation in pursuing antilynching activities.

Tensions: The Debate over Antilynching Legislation

Despite these acts, Kujawa and Turner argue that the aswpl’s responsiveness

to African American women was limited. Th ese claims seem to be based

on two facts. For one, the aswpl remained a segregated organization, for

white women only. Second, the aswpl did not support federal antilynching

legislation. We argue here that both of these facts stem from the rhetorical



strategy the aswpl chose in its public rhetoric, not from a failure to com-

municate with African American women. Here, we explore archival sources

that show how these tensions played out in interactions between the aswpl

and African American reformers in 1935, when the two groups met to

discuss the proposed Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill. Transcripts of

the meeting suggest that interracial cooperation between these two groups

faltered, not because the women did not communicate with each other, but

because they had dramatically diff erent rhetorical goals and public strategies

for their organizations.

Th is meeting was held aft er a new antilynching bill was advanced in

Congress in 1935, called the Costigan-Wagner Bill. On January 11, 1935, Ames

and other members of the aswpl’s Central Committee met at Atlanta University

with African American leaders to discuss the issue of antilynching legislation.

Of the women at the meeting, some, like Bethune, backed legislative eff orts

to outlaw lynching, whereas others, such as Burroughs and Jennie B. Moton,

were interested in gaining the white women’s support for other issues, such

as domestic service, education, and voting rights. On the whole, though, the

African American women attending the meeting spoke in favor of the new

bill and urged the aswpl to support it publicly.

Th e 1935 meeting began with a brief report by Ames on a separate meeting

of the aswpl the previous day. Following Ames’s report, the African American

women began to argue that the aswpl should support the Costigan-Wagner

Bill. Th e first to speak at length was Bethune, an especially active supporter

of antilynching legislation:

We think one of the most significant and outstanding things that have been

done toward our redemption, for the thing we have been moving toward,

has been the work of this group of Southern women who have made this

very fine bold and Christian declaration to the world as to their stand in

regard to the situation.35

Bethune noted that the aswpl’s actions already made a “fine bold and

Christian declaration” against lynching. Yet, she went on to insist that her

unnamed collaborators in New York (perhaps members of the naacp, which

was headquartered there) would have been happy if “you had said in the

papers this morning that you had given your full endorsement to this bill.”36

Hawkins Brown reinforced this notion: “if we are ever to be free—I know

the North—the step must be taken by Southern people. Southern women,



you can do more with 24,000 signatures to bring about that freedom for the

Negro race than a million from the North.”37 Clearly, Bethune and Brown

were disappointed with the aswpl’s failure to take a strong stand on the issue,

and they appealed to the common Christian values of the two groups, as well

as the strength of the Southern women, to argue their case.

Other women, notably Lugenia Hope and Burroughs, were even more

direct. Hope suggested that the aswpl’s stand “will hold back our interracial

work and everything else in the South,” adding that “my heart is so sick

and weak” over the group’s failure to endorse the bill.38 Aft er Hope’s short

statement, Burroughs stated that the bill would pass, anyway, that the aswpl

had the right as an organization to form their own position, and that she

had not expected more from the white women’s group in the first place. In

her characteristically candid way, Burroughs said: “I am sorry, but I am not

disappointed. I did not think it was going to be done. I did not think this

organization was going to endorse the C-W bill.”39 Hope and Burroughs both

employed emotional appeals, apparently hoping to stir a sense of guilt and

shame on the part of the aswpl members.

Despite these forthright statements, others off ered more conciliatory

opinions, perhaps to maintain goodwill between the two groups. Moton

stated several times that she and the other women in her group “thank you

from the bottom of our hearts,” while Long noted, “You have been doing your

very best to educate your group aft er all.”40 African American leaders off ered

these mollifying statements, perhaps, to ensure a cooperative atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Ames and the other aswpl members said little throughout

the meeting. Ames did not defend the aswpl’s stand on the bill but only

stepped in a few times to clarify that the aswpl did not take a vote on the

issue since they were not themselves a direct action organization, but an

association of women’s groups. Overall, though, the transcript shows a civil

discussion in which African American members made candid arguments

in favor of antilynching legislation.

Focusing on public opinion off ered a more comfortable strategy to white

Southern women. Because these were the very women whose delicacy and

supposed superiority was used to justify lynchings, their status as an all-white

women’s organization was an important factor in their success, enabling them

to speak as insiders to other whites. As Hall shows, these audiences included

white church groups, women’s clubs, and the like, and the arguments they

used focused, accordingly, on how lynching undermined law and order,

discredited the United States in the global community, and encouraged



brutality.41 By focusing on public opinion, Hall argues, Ames hoped to attract

more moderate women who might have been scared off by larger steps toward

interracial cooperation.42 From this perspective, the meetings, surveys, and

statements encouraged this constituency to take smaller steps.

Meanwhile, African American women activists were oft en involved in

eff orts targeting a national audience, including white and black Northerners

who might be more sympathetic to legislation than Southerners who abhorred

any type of federal intervention. Th e two groups diff ered, then, in their stances

toward antilynching legislation. As the transcript from this meeting shows,

though, the two groups were able to discuss antilynching legislation together,

and the African American advocates had an opportunity to argue their case.

Th at the aswpl was not persuaded to support the legislation does not prove

that the two groups failed to communicate, nor that they could not get along

in interpersonal or group situations. Instead, it shows only that the groups

disagreed on this issue, especially because they were mindful of the tactics

they each needed to persuade their target audiences.

Conclusions

Ames never did endorse antilynching legislation, but this fact does not prove

a lack of interracial cooperation. Instead, Ames chose the stance she found

most in keeping with maintaining support from moderate white women in

Southern communities. For Ames, the most important goal for the aswpl

was to keep the focus on public opinion. Th roughout her tenure as leader of

the aswpl, Ames insisted that legislative reform was not the most eff ective

way to prevent lynchings in the South. Given the general sentiment against

federal intervention in Southern society, Ames and the aswpl insisted that

changing public opinion was the only way to eradicate lynching. In a note

written two days aft er the January 1936 joint meeting of the aswpl and the

African American CIC women, Ames wrote that she did not publicly support

legislation because “Th ere were some women, particularly in the churches,

who are opposed to what would seem to be politics.” Ames feared she would

immediately lose support from women’s church groups if the aswpl pushed

beyond public opinion eff orts.43

In 1938, yet another antilynching bill, this one called the Wagner-Van Nuys

Bill, failed to pass aft er a Senate filibuster. Apparently, Ames played a role in

blocking this legislation by lobbying Senator Tom Connally, a Texas Democrat



who ended up leading the filibuster. Ames’s actions inflamed members

of the naacp. On February 3, 1938, Roy Wilkins of the naacp forwarded

to Marian Wilkinson a copy of a letter Ames had written to Connally, in

which she applauded the filibuster that had barred the bill from passing in

the Senate.44 Bethune wrote to Wilkins that she was disappointed by Ames’s

letter to Connally: “I thought I knew Mrs. Ames’s heart and intentions along

the lines of justice in all human aff airs too well ever to expect from her pen

or lips such a statement as contained in the first paragraph of her letter.”45

Ames’s attempts at interracial communication, including the regular

meetings held in conjunction with African American leaders, had failed to

address their larger disagreement on the topic of legislation, but it did not

fail altogether. Apparently, Ames took it upon herself to write to Bethune

and to clarify her position, because Ames’s files include a brief response from

Bethune, dated 1938: “Enough said. I understand you thoroughly. We should

all press forward, doing our best.”46

Th e aswpl voluntarily disbanded in 1942. Henry E. Barber attributes

the demise of the aswpl to their very success. According to Barber, their

message had successfully reached their audience, and the defense of women

as justification of lynching was no longer accepted.47 Ames herself off ered

another explanation: day-to-day life during WWII presented challenges that

preoccupied the women of the aswpl:

World War II began and the women were very much engaged in war work.

Transportation was hard. We may have had cars but we didn’t have gasoline.

Everything was rationed—paper, everything. We couldn’t get things out. We

couldn’t carry on.48

Th e war “dealt the final blow and ended all hopes of revitalizing the Association

. . . their concern over lynching continued to wane.”49

Our analysis suggests, however, that the aswpl may also have been

left behind as the Southern antilynching movement turned into a national

one, focused on antilynching legislation as well as federal voting rights,

desegregation, labor activism, and the like. Although antilynching legislation

was never passed, lynchings did decline to such an extent that Ames and her

counterparts in the naacp were tracking only a handful of potential incidents

each year. Meanwhile, organizations such as the naacp were shift ing toward

desegregation and voting rights—causes that the relatively conservative

women that made up the aswpl were unlikely to espouse.50 Ames felt that



her moderate supporters would not favor action on desegregation, nor did

they support federal intervention; instead, their concern with civil rights

stemmed from a preoccupation with law and order, justice, and peacekeeping.

Ultimately, the eff orts to forge connections between aswpl members and

other activists worked temporarily, when their interests aligned around the

cause of lynching. When the civil rights movement shift ed to broader goals,

the aswpl could no longer identify. Some white Southern women joined the

growing movement toward civil rights—notably Anne Braden and Virginia

Durr—but the more moderate members of the aswpl were left aside.

Kujawa is correct in her assessment that Ames, as leader, failed to include

blacks in the aswpl, but it is not clear that aswpl members failed to collaborate

with African American women activists, nor that they remained completely

unresponsive to issues raised by blacks—even if they did not always agree with

them. Yet, Powell’s claim that the aswpl “opened lines of communication”

does not specify what, exactly, those lines of communication were, how they

were established, or how eff ectively they functioned.

A closer look reveals that the aswpl’s semiregular meetings with African

American women created opportunities for these women to meet and poten-

tially change their attitudes toward each other. By successfully negotiating

the logistics of space, travel, and the like, Ames and the aswpl created the

background conditions necessary for both groups to meet on equal footing.

Th e main challenges the two groups faced lay in disagreements about how

to address outside audiences on the topic of lynching, tensions that arose

not solely from longstanding patterns of segregation and white superiority

in the South, nor from a willed failure to engage with African Americans, as

Kujawa suggests. To maintain the support of white moderates in the South,

Ames felt the aswpl had to remain a segregated organization focused on

changing public opinion about lynching, not an activist organization taking

aim at federal legislation. Th is public stance belies the strides Ames and the

aswpl made in opening lines of communication with African American

groups, strides made primarily through tactics such as arranging meetings,

writing mission statements and reports, and publishing lynching statistics.

Although none of these tactics, in their own right, was sufficient to overcome

diff erences in public strategy, they do not negate the steps Ames and the

aswpl took toward interracial cooperation.



notes

1. Th e “Interracial Commission” refers to the CIC, of which Jessie Daniel Ames was also a

member. Th e CIC included both black and white members, but the aswpl included only

white women. Th is meeting, and others like it, was meant to bring aswpl members into

communication with African American members of the CIC.

2. Th e statue has been named “Lift ing the Veil” and is now a national monument. An

inscription on the base of the monument reads: “Booker T. Washington, 1856–1915.

He lift ed the veil of ignorance from his people and pointed the way to progress through

education and industry.”

3. “Meeting of the Central Council of the Association of Southern Women for the Preven-

tion of Lynching and a Special Committee of Negro Women of the Interracial Commis-

sion,” Box 1.1, Jessie Daniel Ames Papers #3686, Southern Historical Collection, Th e

Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (hereaft er cited as Ames

MSS).

4. Ames refers to the “interracial project” in “Meeting of the Central Council,” 2.

5. Kimberly A. Powell, “Th e Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynch-

ing: Strategies of a Movement in the Comic Frame,” Communication Quarterly 43

(1995): 96.

6. Sheryl A. Kujawa, “Ames, Jessie Daniel,” American National Biography Online, 2000.

http://www.anb.org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/articles/15/15–00014.html (Accessed June 2011).

For a general biographical note on Ames see http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/a/Ames,

Jessie_Daniel.html (Accessed June 2011).

7. Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Women and Gender in the New South, 1865–1945 (Wheeling,

IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 2009), 169.

8. Barb E. L’Eplattenier has suggested that scholars pay more attention to the methods they

use for archival research; see “An Argument for Archival Research Methods: Th inking

Beyond Methodology,” College English 72 (2009): 67–79. Accordingly, we will off er here

a brief overview of our research process. Our interest in Ames’s rhetorical work began

when Massagee wrote two projects for Jack’s course, Southern Women’s Rhetorics. Th e

following semester, Massagee continued her research as an independent study project

with Jack. Both authors met weekly, oft en in the archives, to work through the available

material. We examined all of Box 1.1, which includes all of Ames’s materials from the

aswpl. Th e photograph from the 1938 meeting was found in box 2.5.5. Th e remainder

of the collection includes personal papers, which we examined but did not quote in this

essay. To get a fuller picture of Ames’s interactions with African American leaders, Jack

visited the Library of Congress, where she used Robert R. Moton’s papers (Ames’s letters



are in Box 1, General Correspondence) and Nannie Helen Burroughs’s papers (Ames

letters were found in Box 6, filed under the Commission on Interracial Cooperation).

Together, the authors also examined all eight microfilm reels of the aswpl’s papers,

available through interlibrary loan from Woodruff Library Archives and Special Collec-

tions Department, Atlanta University (hereaft er cited as aswpl MSS).

9. Ida B. Wells, “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” in Southern Horrors and

Other Writings: Th e Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892–1900, ed. Jacqueline

Jones Royster (Boston: Bedford Books, 1997), 52.

10. Mary Jane Brown, “Advocates in the Age of Jazz: Women and the Campaign for the Dyer

Anti-Lynching Bill,” Peace & Change 28 (2003): 378–419.

11. For a deeper history of lynching and the groups who opposed it, see Philip Dray, At the

Hands of Persons Unknown: Th e Lynching of Black America (New York: Modern Library,

2003). On the ywca’s interracial eff orts, see Kate Dossett, “Black Nationalism and Inter-

racialism in the Young Women’s Christian Association” in Bridging Race Divides: Black

Nationalism, Feminism, and Integration in the United States, 1896–1935 (Gainesville:

University Press of Florida, 2008), 66–106.

12. Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, Th e Making of a Southerner (Athens: University of Georgia

Press, 1992), 190–91.

13. Lumpkin, Making of a Southerner, 191.

14. Turner, Women and Gender in the New South, 1865–1945, 167.

15. “Agreement between the Anti-Lynching Crusaders and the N.A.A.C.P.,” Document 9 in

How Did Black Women in the naacp Promote the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, 1918–1923?,

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600–2000, http://womhist.alexan-

derstreet.com/lynch/doclist.htm (accessed May 2011). See also Brown, “Advocates in the

Age of Jazz,” for more on the role of women in the naacp’s anti-lynching activities.

16. Mary B. Talbert et al., “Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Anti-Lynching Cru-

saders,” naacp Papers, Part 7: Th e Anti-Lynching Campaign, 1912–1955, Series B: Anti-

Lynching Legislative and Publicity Files, 1916–1955, Library of Congress (Microfilm,

Reel 3, Frames 565–66).

17. See Crystal N. Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 226.

18. In the period between 1889 and 1923, the total number of lynchings declined from a

high of 839 in the years between 1889 and 1893 to a low of 100 in 1924 to 1928. See

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women’s Cam-

paign Against Lynching (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 134.

19. “Resolution on Lynching,” Box 1.1, Ames MSS.

20. “Report of Mississippi Association,” Box 1.1, Ames MSS.

21. Larry J. Griffin, Paula Clark, and Joanne C. Sandberg posit that between one-half and


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227939588_Advocates_in_the_Age_of_Jazz_Women_and_the_Campaign_for_the_Dyer_Anti-Lynching_Bill?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-438a6940-49a9-4c38-92a2-c5e35b3f4532&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzNjcyNzgxMDtBUzo5OTQwMzcyMTM0NzA3OUAxNDAwNzExMTAyNDgw

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227939588_Advocates_in_the_Age_of_Jazz_Women_and_the_Campaign_for_the_Dyer_Anti-Lynching_Bill?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-438a6940-49a9-4c38-92a2-c5e35b3f4532&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzNjcyNzgxMDtBUzo5OTQwMzcyMTM0NzA3OUAxNDAwNzExMTAyNDgw


two-thirds of all threatened lynchings were averted through the actions of law enforce-

ment officials. Ames herself estimated that 762 lynchings were averted between 1915

and 1942. See “Narrative and Event: Lynching and Historical Sociology,” in Under Sen-

tence of Death: Lynching in the South, ed. W. Fitzhugh Brundage (Chapel Hill: University

of North Carolina Press, 1997), 26–27.

22. Nannie Helen Burroughs’s papers at the Library of Congress contain letters from Ames

announcing joint meetings of the CIC and the aswpl in 1934, 1935, 1937, and 1941

(see Box 6). Th e committees agreed not to meet in 1936 because of financial constraints:

see Ames to Burroughs, September 20, 1935, Box 6, Nannie Helen Burroughs Papers,

Library of Congress (hereaft er cited as Burroughs MSS).

23. “Meeting of the Central Council,” 1.

24. Ames to W. E. B. Du Bois, January 4, 1935, and January 21, 1936, aswpl MSS, Microfilm

Reel 4.

25. Nannie H. Burroughs, New and Old Paths to Fertile Fields (Washington, DC: Woman’s

Convention, Auxiliary to the National Baptist Convention, 1935).

26. Minutes, Central Council Committee of the aswpl, November 20, 1931, aswpl MSS,

Microfilm Reel 4.

27. “Statements on Double Standards—1931,” aswpl MSS, Microfilm Reel 4.

28. On the Cult of True Womanhood, see Barbara Welter, “Th e Cult of True Womanhood:

1820–1860,” American Quarterly 18 (1966): 151–74.

29. Survey response of Mrs. E. M. Bailey, aswpl MSS, Microfilm Reel 4.

30. “Meeting of the Central Council.”



33. Ames to Davis, December 6, 1934, aswpl MSS, Microfilm Reel 4.


35. Transcript of Meeting at Atlanta University, Box 1.1, Ames MSS.

36. Transcript of Meeting at Atlanta University, 1.




40. Transcript of Meeting at Atlanta University, 8. Moton’s comments might reflect the fact

that she was a close friend of Ames. Robert Moton’s papers at the Library of Congress

suggest that Ames and her children oft en visited the Motons at Tuskegee. See Robert R.

Moton Papers, Box 1, General Correspondence, Library of Congress.

41. Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry, 195–97.

42. Hall, Revolt Against Chivalry, 181.

43. Ames, January 13, 1936, aswpl MSS, Microfilm Reel 4.



44. Wilkins decried Ames’s action, writing that it was “hardly a contribution toward inter-

racial peace, nor does it mark her as a person having special fitness for such delicate

negotiation.” Wilkins continued, suggesting that “Mrs. Ames is not only harmful to the

cause of wiping out lynching but is harmful to the general cause of race relations.” See

Wilkins to Wilkinson, February 3, 1938, Box 1.1, Ames MSS.

45. Bethune to Wilkins, February 14, 1938, Box 1.1, Ames MSS.

46. Bethune to Ames, March 24, 1938, Box 1.1, Ames MSS.

47. Henry E. Barber, “Th e Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching,

1930–1942,” Phylon 34 (1973): 387.

48. Pat Watters, “Reminiscences of Jessie Daniel Ames: ‘I Really Do Like a Good Fight,’”

trans. and ed. Jacqueline Hall, New South 27 (1972): 31–41.

49. Barber, “Association of Southern Women,” 387.

50. Ames herself supported voting rights for African Americans, and she encouraged Bur-

roughs to start a grassroots citizenship campaign through African American women’s

organizations. However, she feared that the white women she relied on for support

would be less interested in lobbying for voting reforms, and suggested that African

American women would be more eff ective in this regard. See Ames to Burroughs, Janu-

ary 31, 1934, and March 9, 1934, Box 6, Burroughs MSS.


https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273103303_The_Association_of_Southern_Women_for_the_Prevention_of_Lynching_1930-1942?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-438a6940-49a9-4c38-92a2-c5e35b3f4532&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzNjcyNzgxMDtBUzo5OTQwMzcyMTM0NzA3OUAxNDAwNzExMTAyNDgw

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273103303_The_Association_of_Southern_Women_for_the_Prevention_of_Lynching_1930-1942?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-438a6940-49a9-4c38-92a2-c5e35b3f4532&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzNjcyNzgxMDtBUzo5OTQwMzcyMTM0NzA3OUAxNDAwNzExMTAyNDgw

Ladies and Lynching: Southern Women, Civil Rights, and the Rhetoric of Interracial Cooperation

Documents

Transcript of Ladies and Lynching: Southern Women, Civil Rights, and the Rhetoric of Interracial Cooperation