Ida: a sword among lions: ida b. wells and the campaign against lynching - paula j. giddings

Pulitzer Prize Board citation to Ida B.

Wells, as an early pioneer of investigative journalism and civil rights icon From a thinker who Maya Angelou has praised for shining a brilliant light on the lives of women left in the shadow of history, comes the definitive biography of Ida B.

Wells--crusading journalist and pioneer in the fight for womens suffrage and against segregation and lynchings Ida B.

Wells was born into slavery and raised in the Victorian age yet emerged--through her fierce political battles and progressive thinking--as the first modern black women in the nations history.

Wells began her activist career when she tried to segregate a first-class railway car in Memphis.

After being thrown bodily off the car, she wrote about the incident for black Baptist newspapers, thus beginning her career as a journalist.

But her most abiding fight would be the one against lynching, a crime in which she saw all the themes she held most dear coalesce: sexuality, race, and the law.