Mrs. Wells

Ellen started it. Not me. Ellen Hebron, the Vicksburg writer who in the 1800s was devoted to the Southern cause. Her honorary membership in the Mississippi Press Association led me to ask if the MPA had so honored Ida B. Wells, who was from Holly Springs and wrote around the same time as Ellen. Two Mississippi writers, one a Confederate married to a man who led a massacre. The other a great anti-lynching crusader and investigative journalist. Each treated differently by the MPA.

The MPA Executive Director told me they had not honored Mrs. Wells, but it was on their radar. He and I stayed in touch for several years as a nomination worked its way forward. Such seems to be my role these days: ask the question, “Are you gonna?” and keep in touch as others do the work to make it so.

My primary role in the process was liaison to the Wells family. (Seems surreal typing those words—who would have ever thought I’d have any connection to Mrs. Wells’ family?) To my delight, Mrs. Wells’ great-grandson David Duster agreed to come down for the ceremony. I anxiously wanted it to be a good visit for him. He was flying in from Chicago for a ceremony that was simply a reception at the Association’s annual meeting. I knew what to expect—practicing law in Mississippi for 20 years, I’d gone to annual meetings. Men in short-sleeved shirts, drinks rattling in plastic cups. Prior to the event, I kept telling David it was a casual affair, which I found hard to believe, and I worried he would, too, and be expecting more.

My nerves followed me to the event. I was a stranger at an association’s annual meeting, not a public event. My presence shouted, “I think this is really important!” which made me feel foolish. Who was I to insert myself in this? And to make a big deal out of it? Then the first inductee in his acceptance speech shared how humbled he was to be inducted at the same time as Mrs. Wells, and I realized I was hardly alone in wanting this. It was not about me, as it never is.

David Duster was a delight, personable and easy going. Both his talk and the induction speech by the editor of The Link did great honor to Mrs. Wells. Members of the MPA were eager to talk with David and hear what he had to say—we had to hijack him to get him to dinner. When I dropped him off at the airport, I told him how much I had enjoyed meeting him and what a wonderful ambassador he was for his great-grandmother.

Only later did I realize Ellen had disappeared. That’s how this works with me. I start out acting in response to a philosophy or some idea of “reparations.” Then the community gathers around. The endeavor begins to live and breathe. It becomes a thing in and of itself. The original “why” of the past ceases to exist as the reality of the present takes over.

Which is exactly as it should be.