Truth in Black Ink: How Lucile Bluford Heard "The Call" and Penned Her Way Towards Black Feminist Activism
Lucile Bluford working at The Call newspaper in Kansas City, Mo. Photo courtesy of lucileblufordbook.com
As part of our observance of Juneteenth, the Jackson County Historical Society is reprinting the following article, which first appeared in the Autumn 2006 issue of the Society’s Journal.
A “clarion call” is like a spiritual bringing forth. It is the ushering in of the gifts embedded into a person, drawing them to fulfill a divine purpose already predestined for them. It is a sound measured by one’s restlessness of the harsh realities of life and drawn in by the cries of inequality on the basis of one’s human rights.
Lucile Harris Bluford heard “the call” and decided to act. In doing so, she carried the plight of African Americans with the power of the pen, even stepping into the headline to become the story. She had effectively done what the black press often encouraged. She fulfilled the prophetic activism of African American women in general, and, in particular, her mentor, Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
By Dr. Delia C. Gillis and Keana Jarvis
History has deemed Wells-Barnett a prototypical investigative journalist who fought vigorously against the injustices committed against African Americans during the Post-Reconstruction Era. Anthony Bogues claims that she was a black radical intellectual who wrote to, “demonstrate truth, to deconstruct some of the deepest racist arguments of the period, and in the end, to mobilize a reform movement against the ritual burning of the black body - known as lynching” (Bogues).
Comparatively, Bluford was able to use her journalistic abilities and activist tendencies to fight for racial equality. Her editorials for the premier Black newspaper The Call guided Kansas Citians through the charge for integration and the Civil Rights movement. Additionally, since joining The Call in 1932, she wrote about lynchings, redlining and other history-making issues (Penn). In a speech she once gave, Bluford is quoted as stating that it was the job of black newspapers, “to fight racial segregation and discrimination, wherever they exist in American life, to secure full citizenship rights for blacks, and to give inspiration, encouragement, guidance and a voice to a struggling people” (Bluford).
PARALLELS IN BACKGROUND
Lucile H. Bluford
Overall, the parallels between the lives of Bluford and Wells-Barnett are striking. Both women were testaments to the Black race and women in general, through their time and insistence with letting the public know the truth. Furthermore, Wells-Barnett’s spirit for truth and knowledge was carried on through Kansas City’s legendary journalist, Lucile Bluford. Similarities between the two abound, even in their biographical historiography.
Lucile Harris Bluford was born on July 1, 1911, in Salisbury, North Carolina to John H. Bluford Sr. and Viola Harris Bluford. Her father, an educator, in her youth spent time between Salisbury and Greensboro where he taught at North Carolina A&T University. Her mother passed away when she was only four years old and so she and her two brothers (John Jr. and Guidon Bluford) were raised with the help of their grandmother, Mariah Harris. (A striking parallel to Wells-Barnett, who also lost her own mother at a young age.)
At the age of ten, her father was offered a position as a science teacher at Kansas City’s Lincoln High School. He accepted, and in 1921 the Bluford family (including Lucile’s step-mother Addie Alston) moved to Kansas City, Missouri.
In Kansas City, Lucile attended Wendell Phillips elementary school. She also became a member of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church.
Lucile Bluford high school picture. Photo courtesy of the Black Archives of Mid-America.
Lucile entered Lincoln High School and quickly developed an interest in journalism. As one of the leading students at Lincoln and under the guidance of her English teacher, Trussie Smothers, she worked hard on the school newspaper and The Lincolnian (Jones). Lucile also started working after school at The Call. Additionally, her extracurricular activities included membership in R.O.T.C. and the student chapter of the N.A.A.C.P.
In 1928, she graduated as valedictorian from Lincoln High School. Lucile pursued a degree in Journalism from the University of Kansas (K.U.), in Lawrence, Kansas. Bluford had to attend K.U. because the University of Missouri system did not allow African Americans to attend their institution, a discriminatory practice that would culminate into Bluford taking action against the University almost 11 years later.
As written in Lucile H. Bluford’s “Home Going” celebration booklet, Marie Ross, former editor of the Kansas City, Kansas, section of The Call, paved the way for Lucile and other African American students, by becoming the first African American to receive a degree from K.U. Bluford always credited Ross for, “lightening the torch for her and other Black students who were interested in studying journalism at the University of Kansas” (Lucile Bluford Obituary).
The office building for the Kansas City Call newspaper. Photo courtesy of https://pendergastkc.org/local-subjects/kansas-city-call-building
Lucile Bluford was the only African American journalism student at the University of Kansas during her four years there. As a college student, she worked on the student newspaper, the Daily Kansan, where she served as the night editor, telegraph editor, and in other capacities. She also worked at The Call under Roy Wilkins, then the editor of the newspaper, during her summers while attending K.U. Mr. Wilkins would later become the executive director of the N.A.A.C.P. Bluford became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
She had great academic credentials as an undergraduate, but it would be the fact that she was then called “Negro” which would deny her membership into an honor society for journalism students. After being asked to pledge Beta Sigma Pi, she discovered that the national headquarters in Chicago had objected to her pledging the sorority. This incident was even used as a practical joke in the student paper, the Kansas Jayhawker (Chapman).
In 1932, Lucile received her Bachelor’s degree in Journalism with honors. Shortly after, she began her professional career at the Atlanta Daily World, a black owned newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia. Once returning to Kansas City, she initially turned down a formal position at The Call, and even had a short stint as a reporter at its rival The Kansas City American weekly newspaper. However, after a personal call from The Call founder, Chester A. Franklin, Lucile returned to The Call as a cub reporter and police reporter.
Lucile Bluford continued to work at The Call until her death in 2003. Photo courtesy of lucileblufordbook.com
By 1938, she worked her way up to become the managing editor of the thriving and growing black owned newspaper and with the subsequent deaths of The Call owners, Chester A. Franklin, in 1955, and his wife, Ada Franklin, in 1983, Lucile Bluford became the editor, publisher, and majority owner . . . a position Lucile held until her death in 2003.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Nearly a half century before Bluford, Ida B. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She was born into slavery on July 16, 1862, six months before the Emancipation Proclamation freed all of the slaves in the Confederate states. Her father was a carpenter and her mother was a cook who always stressed the importance of education to her and her six siblings.
Ida B. Wells circa 1893. Photo is public domain.
At the age of 14, both of Wells’ parents died from the Yellow Fever epidemic, leaving her to care for and keep her younger brothers and sisters together. Convincing the superintendent of a rural school some five miles outside town that she was eighteen, she obtained a position as teacher that paid her $25 a month (Wells-Barnett). Wells managed to continue her education by attending nearby Rust College.
She eventually moved to Memphis with her aunt to help with the raising of her siblings. There, Wells obtained a teaching position at a black school, and began taking classes at Fisk University in Nashville during summers. Wells also began writing for the Negro Press Association. She became editor of the weekly Evening Star and then of Living Way, writing under the name Iola. Her articles were reprinted in other black newspapers around the country (Johnson Lewis). Furthermore, after incurring a racial incident on behalf of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company (described later), she began to write vigorously against the racial injustices by becoming a reporter and part owner of the Memphis Free Speech.
“One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.” - Ida B. Wells
In May 1892, in response to an article on a local lynching, a mob ransacked her offices and threatened her life if she did not leave town (Johnson Lewis). Moving to Chicago, Wells continued to write about Southern lynchings. While investigating, she would go directly to the site of a killing, sometimes despite extreme danger. In 1893, Ida B. Wells went to Great Britain, returning again the next year. There, she spoke about lynching in America, found significant support for anti-lynching efforts, and saw the organization of the British Anti-Lynching Society (Johnson Lewis). In 1895, she published The Red Record, the first documented tatistical report on lynching. Upon her return to Chicago, she met and married lawyer and civil rights advocate Ferdinand Barnett. They eventually had children, whom she frequently took on the lecture circuit with her (Dr. Gillis). In addition to her journalistic abilities, she was a founding member of the National Afro-American Council, serving as its secretary, and was chairman of its Anti-Lynching Bureau. And, in addition to W.E.B. DuBois, Wells was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.).
USING THE BLACK PRESS AGAINST RACIAL INJUSTICE
Taken as a whole, both Bluford and Wells-Barnett are examples of women who carried on a larger cause beyond their own personal lives.
Conceptually, both women carried their fights against racial injustice in the spirit of the original vision of the black press.
In 1827, the black press was created with the release of John B. Russwurm and Samuel E. Cornish’s Freedom’s Journal. The goal of Freedom’s Journal was to further the plight of African Americans by offsetting misrepresentations, encouraging children to strive for education and self reliance, intensifying character development through thrift and resourcefulness, and to steer readers toward the maximum realization of their civil rights (Armistead and Wilson). In this manner, the black press was essentially established as a crusader against the institution of slavery and to give African Americans a public voice of discourse against their very oppressors. As written by Armistead Pride, the new publication proposed to be a teacher, a prod, a unifier, and a defender and to pursue a reformist program with the ultimate design for the universal improvement of all people.
Bluford and Wells-Barnett were two emergent figures of the black press by refusing to just arbitrarily write about the social and economical constraints of African Americans, but becoming soldiers in the war waged against the conditions that held the race back. Furthermore, they also evaded centuries old gender conventions. In particular, female editors and journalists of the 19th century have been ignored by almost all who have written on Black journalists before the 1970’s (Wolesely). It is only now that most female journalists like Wells-Barnett and Bluford are being acknowledged for their history-making achievements.
Additionally, Patricia Hill Collins explores a dimension of Black women's activism as a struggle for institutional transformation - those efforts to change discriminatory policies and procedures of social establishments (Hill Collins). In order to analyze the activism of Bluford and Wells-Barnett, one would have to understand that these two women’s fights operated on different levels of the matrix of domination (Hill Collins). According to Collins, Black women’s levels of activism were based on experience and resistance to oppression on three levels: 1) the level of personal background; 2) the group or community level of the cultural context created by race, class, and gender, and 3) the systemic level of social institutions (Hill Collins). Both Bluford and Wells-Barnett fit into the realms of this concept as they both dared to challenge the metaphorical institution of racism as well as the physical institutions that used these inequitable practices.
For example, Wells-Barnett’s lifelong fight against the disenfranchisement and brutality of African Americans began in 1884. It was this year that she made the decision to challenge the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company and the Tennessee Jim Crow laws. She had purchased a first-class ticket, and was seated in the ladies car when the conductor ordered her to sit in the Jim Crow (i.e. black) section, which did not offer first-class accommodations. She refused and when the conductor tried to remove her she “fastened her teeth on the back of his hand” (Wormser). She was ejected from the train, and later sued the railroad. She won her case in a lower court and was awarded $500 (Hine and Thompson). However, the decision was reversed in an appeals court. Even though her case was overturned, she already had her sights on transforming the status quo. She had already initiated a challenge against the Supreme Court’s nullification of the 1875 Civil Rights Bill (Hine and Thompson).
In a similar fashion, but almost 64 years later, Bluford challenged the University of Missouri - Columbia (M.U.) for her admittance into the graduate studies journalism program. Bluford made the decision to contest the University’s discriminatory practices after law student Lloyd Gaines, from St. Louis, Mo, had contested, and won his case to enter the M.U. school of law, before the U.S. Supreme Court. But, in 1939, right before he was to enter into the M.U. School of Law he disappeared. Years later she would still be baffled by the case stating that, “For years, I tracked down one lead after another, but I found nothing. The story was always the same: ‘Gaines Still Missing.’ It was a strange, strange case, and to this day I have no idea what happened to that man” (Popper).
Lincoln University’s Anthony Hall circa 1947. Photo courtesy of Lincoln University’s website. https://bluetigercommons.lincolnu.edu/buildings/2/
Nevertheless, the fight for justice would not be delayed for long, as Bluford decided to continue the cause. With the help of the N.A.A.C.P., Bluford tried 11 times to subvert the system. However, as a result of her challenging the 1890 “separate but equal doctrine,” a separate journalism program was established at Missouri’s only Black institution of higher education, Lincoln University. This program was established in 1942 as a new and separate journalism program, with one teacher assigned to it (Jeter). It is important to note that there were only 3 students enrolled at a cost of $50,000. In the meantime, Bluford would later claim that M.U. decided to shut down their journalism program for a brief period of time claiming that it was because of WWII, but she suspected that it had more to do with the fear of future integration (Adams).
It is through these two specific instances that one is able to see the activism and the leavening of race matters on each of these women’s shoulders. They were two women not afraid to put their own lives on the line for the equality of all African American men and women.
“The black press grew out of protest movements against slavery and racial discrimination . . . black people have always viewed the black press as their voice.” - Lucile H. Bluford
Bluford continued to be a civil rights activist in the community, with articles in the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. With her pen as weapon of choice, Bluford continuously sought justice in the harm and oppression of African Americans. For example, in 1942, she headed to Sikeston, Missouri, after a black man had been lynched. Her questions focused on how this brutal act could occur. In an oral history she participated in, Bluford describes what she found in Sikeston:
The lynching could have been prevented by law enforcement officials, because they seemed to know ahead of time . . . (They were) telling black folks, “Get off the streets because there’s going to be a demonstration here pretty soon.” . . . They could have taken the prisoner to another town or country (Johnson).
This passage clearly shows the feistiness and strength of Bluford. She was not afraid to stand up to anyone. In her career that spanned seven decades, she not only helped with the future integration of the University of Missouri, but also Kansas City’s downtown department stores and restaurants. Whenever there was a problem or concern facing the African American community in Kansas City, Missouri, or across the nation, Bluford would be there asking the tough questions (Burnes). Kansas City’s first African American mayor Emanuel Cleaver added, “At one time, we had no African American council members or representatives. The only thing we had was Miss Bluford” (Penn).
Lucile Bluford attending the opening of Bluford Branch of the Kansas City Public Library system in 1988. Photo courtesy of the Missouri Valley Special Collections.
In addition to their physical activism, both Bluford and Wells-Barnettt used their news editorials, speeches and writings to challenge America’s dehumanization of people of color. According to Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins they would be classified as, “other mothers” to the community at large, meaning that they were central figures that all could count on in their time of need.
The causes both took on can also be attributed to the connection between experience and consciousness. For Wells-Barnett it was the death of her three friends, whom were lynched in Mississippi, which initially catapulted her into a lofelong crusade against lynching practices and the brutality that African Americans would fall prey. In the words of Bogues, Wells-Barnett would be enacted in a relationship between “writing, reflection, and action” (Bogues). For example, in a pamphlet detailing the lynchings of men in Georgia, Wells-Barnett wrote the folloring:
The real purpose of these savage demonstrations is to teach the Negro that in the South, he has no rights . . . The Southern Press champions burning men alive, and says, “Consider the facts.” The colored people join issue and also say, “Consider the facts” . . . We submit all to the sober judgment of the Nation, confident that, in this cause, as well as all others, “Truth is mighty and will prevail” (Wells-Barnett).
This passage reflects the aggressiveness and sometimes radical nature of her style. Wells-Barnett put her life at risk for the cause of telling the truth and subverting the oppressive nature of reality of African Americans at that time. She would even challenge the passive nature of so-called race leaders like Booker T. Washington, who wanted African Americans to work hard enough and behave to earn the respect of White America (Hine).
Ida B. Wells’ home in Chicago, Illinois has been registered as a historic landmark. Photo courtesy of the City of Chicago (IL) Chicago Landmarks Webpage.
In closing, Lucile Harris Bluford and Ida B. Wells-Barnett are testaments to the great generations of African American women willing to fight for the entire race. The parallels between the lives of both women are salient. They both fulfilled a divine calling by taking a stand against the outrageous Jim Crow laws and the mental and physical institutions of racism and slavery.
Wells-Barnett once said, “Eternal vigilance should be exercised for the preservation of our rights” (Barnett). Her life . . . and the subsequent life of Lucile Bluford shattered the boundaries for one exercising the rights that should have automatically been given to all human beings. They used their roles as journalists to let the voice, triumphs, and pains of African Americans be heard.
In doing so, they are two of the most important figures to arise out of the American black press.
It has been said that the black press, “gives us the chance to see writers re-forming ideologies, creating and recreating a public sphere and staging and re-staging race itself” (Vogel). This statement exemplifies the work of Wells-Barnett in the 19th century and Bluford in the 20th century respectively.
They were black female advocates that campaigned for truth with the power of the pen.
Sources:
Adams, Racquel. Lucile Bluford, Writing for Rights: The Lucile Bluford Story [videorecording MT. Productions, 1987.
Armistead S. Pride and Clint C. Wilson II, A History of the Black Press (Washington D.C.: Howard Univ. Press, 1997), 13.
Barnett, Rex. Ida B. Wells [videorecording] for History on Video (New York: Carousel Film & Video, 1993.)
Bogues, Anthony. “The Radical Praxis of Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Telling the Truth Freely,” Black Heretics, Black Prophet (New York: Routledge, 2003), 48-49.
Bluford, Lucile H. Unpublished manuscript, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, 3.
“Lucile Bluford Obituary,” Rites: Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, June 19, 2003.
Burnes, Brian. “Journalist Lucile Bluford Dies,” Kansas City (Mo.) Star, 14 June 2003.
Chapman, C. “Lucile Bluford is Barred from Honorary Fraternity,” Kansas City (Mo.) Call, 24 June 1932.
Dr. Gillis, Delia. Class Lecture, Central Missouri State University, 15 February 2006.
Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought, Second Edition (New York: Routledge, 2000), 204.
Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought, First Edition (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990), 221-238.
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Hine, 197.
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Jones, Yvonne. “Lucile Bluford,” Show Me Missouri Women: Selected Biographies. (The Thomas Jefferson University Press), 140.
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Penn, Steve. “Well-Earned Break for Bluford.” Kansas City (Mo.) Star, 17 July 2001.
Popper, Joe. “Hero Walked Away, Left No Trace,” Kansas City (Mo.) Star, 28 Feb. 1998.
Vogel, Todd (Ed.), The Black Press: New Literary and Historical Essays (New Jersey: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2001.), 3.
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