T. Thomas Fortune and Ida B. Wells: Fighting Racism in America

Motherland Media Network

One cannot delve seriously into the centuries of activism and scholarship against racism, Jim Crowism, and the terrorism of lynching without encountering the legacies of Timothy Thomas Fortune and Ida B. Wells Barnett. Black scholars from the 19th century to the present have been inspired by the sociological and economic works of Fortune and Wells. Occidental scholars , however, continue to ignore their writings, their theoretical contributions and their ethical aspirations, preferring instead the insipid declarations of white turn of the century figures, like John Dewey, Josiah Royce, and Jane Addams, figures who are rarely if ever mentioned by their Black counterparts, as the best resources for conceptualizing America’s race problem. Fortune (1856–1928), the longtime editor of the preeminent Black newspaper The New York Age, was not only respected as the dominant economic theorist of his era, but lent council to Booker T. Washington as an adviser, a ghost writer, and the editor of his first autobiography entitled The Story of My Life and Work. He also served as a mentor to a young W.E.B. DuBois, whose first writing position was as an editor for the Age, and continued as such on both Fortune’s New York Globe and the New York Freeman. Wells life was just as prolific as Fortune. The Black Reality Think Tank will discuss their work and legacy as we try and understand the past, dissect the present and build for a meaningful future.