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Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching
Amistad
March 2009
On Sale: March 3, 2009
832 pages ISBN: 0060797363 EAN: 9780060797362 Paperback
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Non-Fiction
Heralded as a landmark achievement upon publication, Ida: A
Sword Among Lions is a sweeping narrative about a country
and a crusader embroiled in the struggle against lynching—a
practice that imperiled not only the lives of black men and
women, but also a nation based on law and riven by race. At the center of the national drama is Ida B. Wells (1862-
1931). Born to slaves in Mississippi, Wells began her
activist career by refusing to leave a first-class ladies'
car on a Memphis railway and rose to lead the nation's
first campaign against lynching. For Wells, the key to the
rise in violence was embedded in attitudes not only about
black men, but also about women and sexuality. Her
independent perspective and percussive personality gained
her encomiums as a hero—as well as aspersions on her
character and threats of death. Exiled from the South by
1892, Wells subsequently took her campaign across the
country and throughout the British Isles before she married
and settled in Chicago. There she continued her activism as
a journalist, suffragist, and independent candidate in the
rough-and-tumble world of the Windy City's politics. With meticulous research and vivid rendering of her
subject, Giddings also provides compelling portraits of
twentieth-century progressive luminaries, blacks and whites
who worked with Wells during some of the most tumultuous
periods in American history. In this groundbreaking work,
Paula J. Giddings brings to life the irrepressible
personality of Ida B. Wells and gives the visionary
reformer her due.
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