To the Editor of the Westminster Gazette:  Sir—­The interview published in your columns today hardly merits a reply, because of the indifference to suffering manifested.  Two ladies are represented sitting under a tree at Reigate, and, after some preliminary remarks on the terrible subject of lynching, Miss Willard laughingly replies by cracking a joke.  And the concluding sentence of the interview shows the object is not to determine how best they may help the Negro who is being hanged, shot and burned, but “to guard Miss Willard’s reputation.”

With me it is not myself nor my reputation, but the life of my people, which is at stake, and I affirm that this is the first time to my knowledge that Miss Willard has said a single word in denunciation of lynching or demand for law.  The year 1890, the one in which the interview appears, had a larger lynching record than any previous year, and the number and territory have increased, to say nothing of the human beings burnt alive.

If so earnest as she would have the English public believe her to be, why was she silent when five minutes were given me to speak last June at Princes’ Hall, and in Holborn Town Hall this May?  I should say it was as President of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of America she is timid, because all these unions in the South emphasize the hatred of the Negro by excluding him.  There is not a single colored woman admitted to the Southern W.C.T.U., but still Miss Willard blames the Negro for the defeat of Prohibition in the South.  Miss Willard quotes from Fraternity, but forgets to add my immediate recognition of her presence on the platform at Holborn Town Hall, when, amidst many other resolutions on temperance and other subjects in which she is interested, time was granted to carry an anti-lynching resolution.  I was so thankful for this crumb of her speechless presence that I hurried off to the editor of Fraternity and added a postscript to my article blazoning forth that fact.

Any statements I have made concerning Miss Willard are confirmed by the Hon. Frederick Douglass (late United States minister to Hayti) in a speech delivered by him in Washington in January of this year, which has since been published in a pamphlet.  The fact is, Miss Willard is no better or worse than the great bulk of white Americans on the Negro questions.  They are all afraid to speak out, and it is only British public opinion which will move them, as I am thankful to see it has already begun to move Miss Willard.  I am, etc.,

  May 21

  IDA B. WELLS

Unable to deny the truth of these assertions, the charge has been made that I have attacked Miss Willard and misrepresented the W.C.T.U.  If to state facts is misrepresentation, then I plead guilty to the charge.

I said then and repeat now, that in all the ten terrible years of shooting, hanging and burning of men, women and children in America, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union never suggested one plan or made one move to prevent those awful crimes.  If this statement is untrue the records of that organization would disprove it before the ink is dry.  It is clearly an issue of fact and in all fairness this charge of misrepresentation should either be substantiated or withdrawn.