Book Description
Pioneering African American journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) is widely remembered for her courageous antilynching crusade in the 1890s; the full range of her struggles against injustice is not as well known. With this book, Patricia Schechter restores Wells-Barnett to her central, if embattled, place in the early reform movements for civil rights, women's suffrage, and Progressivism in the United States and abroad. Schechter's comprehensive treatment makes vivid the scope of Wells-Barnett's contributions and examines why the political philosophy and leadership of this extraordinary activist eventually became marginalized.
Though forced into the shadow of black male leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington and misunderstood and then ignored by white women reformers such as Frances E. Willard and Jane Addams, Wells-Barnett nevertheless successfully enacted a religiously inspired, female-centered, and intensely political vision of social betterment and empowerment for African American communities throughout her adult years. By analyzing her ideas and activism in fresh sharpness and detail, Schechter exposes the promise and limits of social change by and for black women during an especially violent yet hopeful era in U.S. history.
Customer Reviews:
One Brave Black Woman's Struggle to be Heard.......2007-09-21
The end of the Civil War in 1865 marked a new beginning for freed slaves but merely having won their freedom did not guarantee their acceptance as equals by white society. In fact, southern whites almost immediately began a campaign to resubjugate blacks using every means at their disposal including lynching. While whites held out lynchings to be punishment for rapes of white women, they were in reality acts of terror by white mobs in the effort to reestablish white majority rule. Of those few who spoke out against these predations, one of the most effective was Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Patricia A. Schechter shows how Wells-Barnett, born a slave, became one of the best-known authorities on black lynchings and then a well-known activist and social reformer despite being a black woman with little financial support. And in doing so, she shows how Wells-Barnett worked within the restrictions of race and gender. While not a biography, Schechter includes sufficient details of Wells-Barnett's life to help understand her activist role in fighting lynching, working to help disadvantaged blacks, and win voting rights for women.
Wells-Barnett's journey to Memphis after her parents died was an effort to keep her siblings with her as a family. She worked as a teacher to provide an income but she used her ingenuity to bring in extra monies such as by organizing a dramatic club and putting on shows. But as she was intelligent, well-read, and hard-working she quickly understood that writing and public life were the best avenues for her, as a black woman, to better herself and further her goal of social change. She developed a sarcastic, mocking sense of humor which she employed in her ofttimes scathing and provocative articles and pamphlets which helped draw attention to controversial subjects. She bolstered her points of view by supplying statistics such as in her paper, Southern Horrors, showing that less than 30% of lynchings of black men involved the charge of rape vice the almost 100% claimed by whites.
As she was unmarried, she took great pains to ensure that her personal reputation was unsullied. She could not rely on male relatives to defend her honor so in addition to using her own rhetorical and writing skills, she sought the help of male friends. Having no husband to speak for her in a society which diminished the worth of an unmarried, black woman made her life difficult. As a black person, she demonstrated her concern with her physical safety as she sometimes carried a pistol and advocated armed resistance to defend against white predations. As part owner of a newspaper, she did not self censor her articles. In one she wrote just before she fled Memphis for New York, she asserted that black men who were lynched did not assault white women but rather were participating in liaisons. For this, her paper's office was attacked.
She became an effective and charismatic public speaker in the U.S. and then in England as she purposefully eschewed an emotionalist and demonstrative type of presentation but rather adopted a restrained and dignified manner. Her informal training as an actress helped her in her speaking engagements, and her ability to speak through tears added a dramatic touch to some speeches. She always had to remain cognizant of the fact that she was stepping away from the traditional role of a married black woman into a role of a black spokesman so had to ensure that she maintained her dignity and composure.
After she married in 1895, she continued her efforts in her new home of Chicago albeit her literary efforts after 1900 never equaled earlier ones. And male dominance of black civil right efforts intensified after WWI marginalizing her influence in antilynching efforts nationwide. Black men's and women's roles became different in the first two decades of the 19th century: "there emerged at the elite level a gender division of labor, which assigned political and intellectual leadership to men awhile entrusting to women a parallel role of prayer, education, and fundraising in female networks" (168). Her radicalism and uncompromising attitude further marginalized her as many male black leaders sought compromise and conciliation with whites versus confrontation while others urged blacks merely to uplift themselves. She "voted with her feet" when a church or organization pursued paths with which she disagreed. Also, while she helped found the NAACP, she withdrew her support as her activism was not appreciated as part of its progressive agenda. Wells-Barnett was marginalized as a militant leader and reverted to local or state venues for most of her work. She became very active in Chicago social and welfare groups to help poorer blacks emulating renewed black women's roles as wife and mother. Her participation in black women's suffrage was especially noteworthy even while her own political campaign failed. Her almost religious fervor to recruit all blacks to vote was one of her primary ways to fight white racism and terror. Clearly, Wells-Barnett did not willingly accept second class status to whites or to black men but her ofttimes confrontational approach, and uncompromising and provocative attitude, made her unpopular to some black men and organizations thereby diminishing her effectiveness.
Schechter presents a thorough study of this important early civil rights figure emphasizing how Wells-Barnett's race and gender influenced and constrained her efforts. Written for an academic audience knowledgeable about black activism during this era, she succeeds in dissecting Wells-Barnett's successes and failures relating them to her color and gender. Schechter could perhaps have been more successful had she presented additional biographical details to better understand Wells-Barnett motivations and as a person not just as a black activist. But anyone interested in how black women responded to both white racism and gender discrimination during this time will find much value in this book.
Book Description
This book offers an important contribution to the recovery and articulation of African-American womanist experience. Ida Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) was an activist, social reformer, and churchwoman. Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope recovers her life and historical context and examines the extent to which her perspective can be a resource for a contemporary womanist Christian social ethic. Beginning with a brief biographical sketch of Wells-Barnett, Emilie Townes examines the religious and social world in which she worked as well as her many speeches and publciations. Townes focuses especially on Wells-Barnett's participation in the anti-lynching campaigns of the late nineteenth century. She argues that Wells-Barnett's life and work can provide important lessons in leadership and social activism for contemporary Black churchwomen. nature of leadership for Black women,
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Ida Wells-Barnett, Pb (Gateway Civil Rights)
Suzanne Freedman
Manufacturer: Millbrook Press
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- Two Amazing Women that you will never forget
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Getting the Real Story: Nellie Bly and Ida B. Wells (Women Who Dared)
Sue Davidson
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The Daring Nellie Bly: America's Star Reporter
ASIN: 1878067168 |
Customer Reviews:
Two Amazing Women that you will never forget.......1998-12-02
Ida B. Wells and Nellie Bly were amzing women. Nelie Bly never stopped by what people toldher and had a very strong attitude. Even if you are a boy and you think this book is only for girls, YOUR WRONG. It is for everybody to enjoy.
Book Description
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was one of the foremost crusaders against black oppression. This engaging memoir tells of her private life as mother of a growing family as well as her public activities as teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight against attitudes and laws oppressing blacks.
"No student of black history should overlook Crusade for Justice."—William M. Tuttle, Jr., Journal of American History
"Besides being the story of an incredibly courageous and outspoken black woman in the face of innumerable odds, the book is a valuable contribution to the social history of the United States and to the literature of the women's movement as well."—Elizabeth Kolmer, American Quarterly
"[Wells was] a sophisticated fighter whose prose was as though as her intellect."—Walter Goodman, New York Times
"An illuminating narrative of a zealous, race-conscious, civic- and church-minded black woman reformer, whose life story is a significant chapter in the history of Negro-White relations."—Thelma D. Perry, Negro History Bulletin
Alfreda M. Duster, who died in 1983, was the daughter of Ida B. Wells and Ferdinand L. Barnett, the first black state's attorney in Illinois.
Customer Reviews:
An early voice.......2003-06-01
I read 'Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells' as part of a class in ethical and prophetic witness for seminary. This was, frankly, not the kind of book I was likely to read apart from a class assignment. But I am very glad to have been given the opportunity -- sometimes things we have to do are in fact good for us!
Ida B. Wells was an African-American woman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She was born and grew up in the South, born in Mississippi during the Civil War. It is significant the impact of the legacy of slavery on her life -- she recounts how her parents, who were married as slaves, remarried each other as free persons after the war. Wells was a determined and intelligent woman -- her parents died while she was young, yet old enough to be left with the responsibility of her younger brothers and sisters. At the age of 14 she found herself at the head of a household with five younger children.
She worked hard to make sure that her education did not suffer, and eventually (a rarity for women of any colour in America at the time) went to work for a newspaper.
In an incident that foreshadowed Rosa Parks, she was once removed from a train for sitting in the wrong section, despite her ownership of a valid ticket for the seat. She sued the railroad and won (newspaper headlines read 'Darky Damsel Gets Damages' without concern for the racist tone), but the judgment was overturned on appeal, and she later discovered her lawyers had been paid off by the railroads, and the appellate judges had thought she was just being uppity to pursue the matter.
Such was the state of the African-American community that none came to her assistance as she pursued this fight. This made her more determined to organise and fight.
Several of her newspaper partners and other friends in Memphis were lynched for these efforts, and Wells was threatened herself, and left the South, but did not give up her crusade. Where ever she went, through cities and towns in the North as well as over to Europe (where, she said, she felt like she was treated as a real human being equal with others for the first time) she decried the injustice of laws which dismissed charges or gave light sentences if victims were coloured, and prosecuted more strongly, gave out harsher sentences, or even resorted to lynch mobs if the defendant (who was often not guilty) was coloured.
'She fought a lonely and almost single-handed fight, with the single-mindedness of a crusader, long before men or women of any race entered the arena, and the measure of success she achieved goes far beyond the credit she has been given the history of the country.'
She continued speaking and publishing up to her death in 1931. She was never afraid of making herself unpopular, and often upset the African-American community by being critical of their complacency (especially the upper and middle classes). She became unpopular by standing against the military service during World War I, because of prejudicial and discriminatory practices, and never quite recovered in popular esteem from that.
But Wells had courage and determination that is rare in persons, male or female, of any colour, of any time, to take on such a task as the exposition and combat of lynching in the South during the post-Civil War decades. Talking directly with governors and even a president, Wells made her voice heard, and it was a difficult hearing in a difficult time.
Crusade for Justice by Ida B. Wells.......2003-03-08
This book sin't really anything special although it is interesting.The author describes her life all the way from her childhood where most of her family died, and through her success as a teacher and a newspaper editor who fought for freedom of speech in her articles.I recommend this book for those who are interested in the history after 1800s and how life went on at that time.Overall,it is a good book but I found it boring at times.
Redundant read is not important but the life of Wells is.......2002-07-23
Even though some of the material in this book is redundant, this is an opportunity to read primary source material about the actions and reactions of a woman many of us know little about. Learning about Ida B. Wells in the first person puts you into the times in which she lived. There is no way a biography can give you the same experience. This is a book I would recommend to anyone wanting to understand this period of our history and the personalities--their strengths and limits--that dominated the crusades of those times. I like knowing about Wells' frailties as well as her strengths and the insights that she shared. And I like hearing her viewpoints about other leaders of her time. The three star ratings may say something about the readability of the book, but not about what you gain by staying the course.
Valuable Book, but a Redundant Read.......2001-02-24
The historical merit of Ida Wells' story is profound: here we have a history of African Americans written from the perspective of a fellow A.A. at a time when black history was otherwise sadly neglected. This book provides information about the foundation of A.A. activist groups, such as the NAACP from the perspective of an insider. The events of Wells' life coincide with other great A.A. figures, such as Frederick Douglass. She also provides a candid and heartfelt commentary on the injustices suffered by blacks in her time, most notably episodes of lynching. Truly and inspirational story of a very strong and very motivated woman.
In terms of readability, however, the book gets a little redundant and repetitive after the half-way point. The details of Wells' many meetings and interactions are sometimes hard to follow and...well,repetitive.
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The Princess of the Press: The Story of Ida B. Wells-Barnett (Rainbow Biography)
Angela Shelf Medearis
Manufacturer: Dutton Juvenile
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ASIN: 0525674934 |
Book Description
Beginning readers seeking an accessible biography will be captivated by the story of the remarkable Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862 1931), a teacher, journalist, lecturer, and civil rights leader. In clear, easy-to-read prose, award-winning author Angela Shelf Medearis shows how Wells-Barnett triumphed over adversity throughout her life and became a respected leader. Orphaned at the age of fourteen, with five younger siblings to care for, she taught school to support her family. Later Wells-Barnett became part-owner of an African-American newspaper and led a crusade against lynching, endangering her life. A champion of the cause of suffrage for women, she was an outspoken, unusual woman whose courage to seek the truth and fight for justice made history. Angela Shelf Medearis is the author of thirty-three books, including Dare to Dream: Coretta Scott King and the Civil Rights Movement, which Booklist called "a concise,engaging biography for young readers."
Book Description
Though the end of the Civil War brought legal emancipation to Blacks, their social oppression continued long afterward. The most virulent form of this ongoing persecution was the practice of lynching. During the 1880s and 1890s, more than one hundred African Americans per year were lynched, and in 1892 alone the toll of murdered men and women reached a peak of 161.
In that awful year, Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), the editor of a small newspaper for Blacks in Memphis, Tennessee, raised one lone voice of protest, charging that White businessmen had instigated three local lynchings against their Black competitors. In retaliation, her editorial office was ransacked and she was forced to flee the South and move to New York City.
So began a crusade against lynching that became the focus of Wells-Barnett's long, active, and very courageous life. In New York she published "Southern Horrors," her first pamphlet on the subject. Later, after moving to Chicago and marrying lawyer Ferdinand Barnett, she brought out the pamphlets "A Red Record" and "Mob Rule in New Orleans." Anticipating possible accusations of distortion, she was careful to present factually accurate evidence and she deliberately relied on Southern White sources as well as statistics gathered by the "Chicago Tribune."
All three of these documents are here collected. Wells-Barnett's work remains important to this day not only as a cry of protest against injustice but also as valuable historical documentation of terrible crimes that must never be forgotten.
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Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Powerhouse With a Pen (Trailblazer Biography)
Catherine A. Welch
Manufacturer: Carolrhoda Books
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ASIN: 1575053527 |
Book Description
The acclaimed civil rights leader Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) is brought vividly to life in this accessible and well-researched biography. Wells was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and she helped black women win the right to vote. But what she is most remembered for is the success of her lifelong crusade against the practice of lynching--called by some "our nation's crime"--in the American South. She fought her battle by writing and publishing countless newspaper articles and by speaking around the world. Her outspokenness put her in grave danger many times over, but she would not be silenced, and today she is credited with ending lynching in the United States. Her story is one of courage and determination in the face of intolerance and injustice. AFTERWORD, BIBLIOGRAPHY, INDEX.
Customer Reviews:
An early voice.......2005-10-24
Ida B. Wells needs to be better known among the American public. This book introduces her to middle and high school students, and it is very well done. She is one of the early voices in Civil Rights.
Ida B. Wells was an African-American woman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She was born and grew up in the South, born in Mississippi during the Civil War. It is significant the impact of the legacy of slavery on her life -- she recounts how her parents, who were married as slaves, remarried each other as free persons after the war. Wells was a determined and intelligent woman -- her parents died while she was young, yet old enough to be left with the responsibility of her younger brothers and sisters. At the age of 14 she found herself at the head of a household with five younger children.
She worked hard to make sure that her education did not suffer, and eventually (a rarity for women of any colour in America at the time) went to work for a newspaper.
In an incident that foreshadowed Rosa Parks, she was once removed from a train for sitting in the wrong section, despite her ownership of a valid ticket for the seat. She sued the railroad and won (newspaper headlines read 'Darky Damsel Gets Damages' without concern for the racist tone), but the judgment was overturned on appeal, and she later discovered her lawyers had been paid off by the railroads, and the appellate judges had thought she was just being uppity to pursue the matter.
Such was the state of the African-American community that none came to her assistance as she pursued this fight. This made her more determined to organise and fight.
Several of her newspaper partners and other friends in Memphis were lynched for these efforts, and Wells was threatened herself, and left the South, but did not give up her crusade. Where ever she went, through cities and towns in the North as well as over to Europe (where, she said, she felt like she was treated as a real human being equal with others for the first time) she decried the injustice of laws which dismissed charges or gave light sentences if victims were coloured, and prosecuted more strongly, gave out harsher sentences, or even resorted to lynch mobs if the defendant (who was often not guilty) was coloured.
'She fought a lonely and almost single-handed fight, with the single-mindedness of a crusader, long before men or women of any race entered the arena, and the measure of success she achieved goes far beyond the credit she has been given the history of the country.'
She continued speaking and publishing up to her death in 1931. She was never afraid of making herself unpopular, and often upset the African-American community by being critical of their complacency (especially the upper and middle classes). She became unpopular by standing against the military service during World War I, because of prejudicial and discriminatory practices, and never quite recovered in popular esteem from that.
But Wells had courage and determination that is rare in persons, male or female, of any colour, of any time, to take on such a task as the exposition and combat of lynching in the South during the post-Civil War decades. Talking directly with governors and even a president, Wells made her voice heard, and it was a difficult hearing in a difficult time.
True American Hero.......2002-10-22
It is a travesty that the name of Ida B. Wells-Barnett is not more widely known in the most common lists of American heroes. This great woman, though little in stature, was a giant in the fight for justice and racial equality in this country. This book was a very thorough look at the life of an early champion of the civil rights movement in America. After my chilren an I read about her being physically thrown off a railcar, sueing the railroad company and actually winning her lawsuit, we could not put the book down. Although many of the discriptions and photographs were gruesome, they offered a realistic and brutally honest look at the horrors of lynching. I would recommend this book for sixth grade and up.
Eye-opening, vivid, highly recommended!.......2000-05-09
Grades 5 and up will find this an excellent biographicalcoverage of the mother of the civil rights movement, providing 178pages packed with facts and black and white illustrations. Thisexamines the life and times of Ida Wells, considering her early years, her civil rights campaign, and her anti-lynching campaign which succeeded in nearly abolishing the popular practice. An eye-opening account of not only her life, but her times. Highly recommended and vivid.
An Absolutely Outstanding Biography of an Amazing Woman.......2000-05-08
If you are not familiar with Ida B. Wells and her work, by allmeans become so immediately. I will be recommending this book toeveryone I know, and I am a children's and young adult librarian. Ida B. Wells is one of the greatest Americans of all time, and most of us have never heard of her. What she did to better the lives of African-Americans and, especially, to stop lynching, is moving, stirring, and heartbreaking. I never knew that people were burned at the stake in the USA, but they certainly were--and the crowds who came to see them die were happy to have so much fun watching "the nigger burn". A great book.
Customer Reviews:
A "Must Read" in Black History and Women's History.......2002-07-16
Ellen Craft, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell should be familiar names to anyone interested in women's history or black history. Unfortunately, too few are aware of all three women.
The author accompanies brief (40 pages) well-written biographies of each woman with photographs and a timeline of key events in her life. The introduction provides an overview of the significance of each woman, and there is an excellent bibliography.
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Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Negro American Biographies and Autobiographies)
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Southern Horrors and Other Writings; The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900
