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"Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) is now a Chicago icon and a shining example of fearless grit and truth-telling. Born into slavery, she lost both parents at the age of sixteen and supported five siblings by teaching school. As perhaps the first investigative journalist, she crusaded against lynching and for women's suffrage. She worked with Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony; she co-founded the NAACP and started the Alpha Suffrage Club here in Chicago; she is the first African American woman to have a street named after her in Chicago. This autobiography, edited by Ida B.'s daughter, Afreda Duster, was first published 1970 in a series edited by John Hope Franklin. Alfreda's daughter, Michelle Duster, who has spent years championing her grandmother's memory, has provided a new afterword. We are bringing out the Second Edition to mark the centennial (June, 2020) of Illinois ratifying the 19th amendment, giving women the vote. Wells was active in the suffrage movement. The new edition has been re-designed and includes four new halftones and a new foreword by Eve Ewing"--
About the author
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was an African American journalist, newspaper editor, and an early leader in the civil rights movement. Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862. The Emancipation Proclamation was passed about six months after her birth.
She was a journalist and publisher--an owner of the
Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, in which appeared the first stories and editorials of her anti-lynching campaign. In retaliation, in 1892, a mob stormed the newspaper's offices and smashed the equipment. Wells had already fled to Chicago and continued writing pamphlets and reports on lynching in America for the
New York Age. She lectured across America and in Europe on the scourge of lynching.
In 1896, Wells formed the National Association of Colored Women. She was also a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. She continued to work for civil rights and African American empowerment, forming a black suffrage organization in Chicago, the Alpha Club. In 1930, she ran, unsuccessfully, for a seat in the Illinois state senate.
In 2020, a special Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Wells for "her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."
