Annarose Fitzgerald

Dr. Susan Romano

ENGL 540

10 February 2009

                               Rhetorical Strategies for African American Women Rhetors

I chose to look at the rhetorical strategies in Fannie Barrier Williams’s “The Intellectual Progress of the United States Since the Emancipation Proclamation” and Ida B. Wells’s “Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” both given in 1893.  As prominent rhetors at a time when American society had rendered the concerns of African American women virtually invisible, Wells and Williams both make use of the societal expectations for women and for blacks in their speeches.

Both Williams and Wells employ what Bacon refers to as the “rhetoric of self help” (55). This rhetorical device, while calling upon African Americans to better themselves through education, does not lay blame on them for white prejudice and stereotypes. Williams utilizes this self help rhetoric when she cites examples of African American women seeking to educate themselves both academically and morally after the emancipation. These women, Williams asserts, “have adapted themselves to the work of mentally lifting a whole race of people so eagerly and readily that they afford an apt illustration of the power of self-help” (109). In spite of praising the responsibility they have taken for their post-emancipation futures, however, Williams does not blame them for whites’ refusal to grant them equal access to employment. Her description of the young black woman as “capable yet helpless” after being turned down for a secretarial job allows the young woman to disprove white stereotypes while absolving her of any responsibility for this prejudice (115). This anecdote captures perfectly the way in which self-help rhetoric can demonstrate the competence of African Americans working against barriers while at the same time holding whites and their institutions accountable for keeping these barriers in place.

Likewise, Wells also uses the rhetoric of self-help in her account of the “People’s Grocery” lynching, noting that the men sought the advice of a lawyer after defending themselves against the first attack (83). She then further removes the responsibility of these lynchings from blacks by pointing out the bad moral characters of the people who accused them, such as the woman whom Ed Coy was accused of attacking (92). While Williams places collective blame on white institutions as a whole for the obstacles against black women, Wells gives the individual names, dates, and places that have stood in the way of blacks being treated equally under the law. As Wells is speaking out against the dangers of mob rule made apparent in these lynchings, specifying these names and events authenticates these horrors and drives home the point that these fears are currently being realized. Williams, however, is ultimately trying to unite the interests of African American women with those of white society, and generalizing the blame helps to diffuse it somewhat amongst her white audience. Anonymous, those listening can feel allied to her cause and position themselves as against the more ignorant and prejudiced masses of whites. In both cases, however, the rhetoric of self-help allows the speaker to separate the need for equal opportunity from stereotypes of blacks as needy.

A radical difference between these two rhetors is the way they position themselves in the context of the white women’s culture and the Cult of True Womanhood, using what Bacon cites as Gary Woodward’s term “adaptory rhetoric.” In this framework, rhetors stress shared beliefs with their audience (209). Williams stresses the natural inclination of black women toward Christianity and moral virtue, even when they lack sufficient means of educating themselves about these things. Furthermore, by constantly referring to African American women as “our women” while attributing to them the virtues of ideal white women, she allows the audience to think of “our” in a broader sense, encompassing black and white women. Since her purpose is to move her audience to grant black women equal access to opportunities for the employment and education that white women can receive, it behooves her to demonstrate that black women, once freed, are essentially “white” in their beliefs and priorities.

            Wells’s cause, however, would be ill served in paying homage to the virtuous and moral character typically ascribed to white women—this virtue is, after all, used to justify the very brutality that Wells speaks out against. She makes sure to note that the woman whom Ed Coy was accused of assaulting “was known to be of bad character” and that Coy had provided for her and “her drunken husband” (92). Her mention of the “leading white lady” who wanted Wells to be lynched for her editorial (90), and of the sheriff’s eighteen-year-old daughter who was found in the room of the lynched man accused of assaulting her (93), also serve to lift the veil of sanctity society places around white women, making her audience see the worthlessness of these brutalities against black men. Williams needs to thank the “saintly women of the white race” and legitimize the True Womanhood ideology in order to request that black women be allowed to partake in it (106), but it is crucial for Wells to reveal the fallacy of True Womanhood, as compared to the actual white women involved in the horrific and unwarranted murders of African Americans.

                                                            Works Cited

Bacon, Jacqueline. The Humblest May Stand Forth: Rhetoric, Empowerment, and Abolition.

            Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 2002.

Logan, Shirley Wilson, ed. With Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century

African American Women. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P, 1995.

Wells, Ida. “Lynch Law in All Its Phases.” 1893. Logan 80-99. 

Williams, Fannie Barrier. “The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women of the United States

            Since the Emancipation Proclamation.” 1893. Logan 106-119.