“The Plain Naked Truth”: Unearthing the Roots and Routes of American Social Contractarianism Through the Works of Ida B. Wells

• In Event: Black Studies in the Contemporary Moment

Abstract

The continued battle over teaching our histories has made it clear that Afro-Futurity is
intricately linked to societal understanding of our shared past. As such, the scholarship of the
longue durée of our struggles for human rights has to include an engagement with earlier
transitional periods in history. In the context of Black America, mainstream platforms have
compared the 21st century at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement to the Civil Rights
Movement. I am interested in a lesser engaged, though no less essential point of conjecture in
American history; Reconstruction and its aftermath. This “second founding”, as Eric Foner
would say, debatably began the first major cultural war over the soul of the nation where
unprecedented possibilities of adherence to a more perfect union was on the brink of
actualization. On the grassroots level, the limits of freedom were tested by formerly enslaved
Black Americans now citizens in every way imaginable from taking over plantations, to walking
the streets freely without answering to anyone, to seeking reconnection with loved ones sold
away, to setting up independent religious and educational institutions. All the while, ill-subdued
violence by Redeemers made a mockery of the newly added Amendments; particularly the 14th
Amendment prohibiting deprivation of life and liberty. Confederate’s acquiesced to Union
victory in fact yet in form jurisprudence necessitated a reversion back to the “good ol’ days” as
they sought to “Make America Great Again” for white nationalists. Bipartisan governmental
fragmentation allowed for the juxtaposed formation of the Freedmen's Bureau and the
reinstatement of former Confederate soldiers into positions of power as local, state, and federal
officials. Broken promises, racial prejudice, and corruption made way for the reconstruction of
white supremacy to reign supreme as Black Americans became the target of what Carol
Anderson terms “white rage” most violently expressed through lynchings.
These lynchings went largely unnoticed as an epidemic because journalists reported on
them as episodic necessities to ward off black criminality; this is what we would colloquial term
today fake news. Citizens and government agents became particeps criminis as no consequence
befell lynchers in almost all cases. It was not until Ida B. Wells’s crusade against lynching that
national and international attention was paid to this paradoxically legal and extra-legal form of
violence. Wells’s ethnographic reporting revealed what she deemed the “plain naked truth”.
Through her investigations, Wells concluded that lynchings were an example of governmental
pluralism whereby the crafting and execution of rules of order are not justly applied to everyone.
The relevance of such framing in this historic moment is that it comes after the adoption of the
Reconstruction Amendments by which government officials presented as rectifying the wrongs
of explicitly racist language in the Constitution. The Constitution, according to Y .N. Kly, was
the written portion of the American social contract in which protection, security, and liberty
were the tradeoff for renewed allegiance to the Union. The original contract consisted of an
agreement between white men for the protection of the State in exchange for the absolute rights
of American citizenship including the right to expropriate Indigenous lands and exploit the labor
of Black people. If not held in bondage, keeping them in a subordinate position served the same
aims. Herein are the building blocks of American Democracy as gestured towards by Wells.
Theorizing the works of Wells allows for the excavation of the concepts of social
contractarianism as her works go beyond the Enlightenment philosophical camps of Hobbes,
Locke, and Rousseau. Wells developed her ideas on the ground devoid of theoretical abstraction.
She told the truth the way she saw it and understood it, exposing the great American failure to
live up to the explicit principles the Nation purported including those on justice, liberty, and
security whilst unapologetically reveling in the implicit principles of governance that are
intricately tied to the disregard of the life and livelihood of Black people. This according to Wells
was upheld by unwritten laws that stipulated Black people had no rights for which White people
had to respect; as White people controlled all the powers of government, set the rules for
governance, and demarcated who was included in the governing body as citizens. These truths
were obfuscated by a misconception about the nature of American governance in relation to
justice.
In my proposed presentation, I will discuss what seems to be an understanding and a
convergence between the government and white citizens about the need to discipline black
people and black bodies during the “second founding”. I will make the case that even after the
14th amendment, white people still considered the US Constitutions and its amendment as
furthering a social project on behalf of whites. Which I argue is based on the action or inaction
of the judicial and executive agencies as public order and safety for white people presided over
any claims to equal protection of the law for black people. These beliefs and their
implementations resulted in jurisprudence that white people upheld and black people did not. Ida
B. Wells did not. I plan to make the case that the writings of Wells around lynching also contend
with arguments or fractions of arguments against the set jurisprudence and its implied relations
between white people and black people, government and the governed, and the rule of law and
equal protection of the law. These contentions offer useful insight into the continued battle for
Black lives and livelihood against political surveillance and violence.

Author

• Mariah Thompson, Cornell University