Description
Book SynopsisKnown most prominently as a daring anti-lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) worked tirelessly throughout her life as a political advocate for the rights of women, minorities, and members of the working class. Despite her significance, until the 1970s Wells-Barnett's life, career, and legacy were relegated to the footnotes of history. Beginning with the posthumously published autobiography edited and released by her daughter Alfreda in 1970, a handful of biographers and historiansmost notably, Patricia Schechter, Paula Giddings, Mia Bay, Gail Bederman, and Jinx Broussardhave begun to place the life of Wells-Barnett within the context of the social, cultural, and political milieu of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This edited volume seeks to extend the discussions that they have cultivated over the last five decades and to provide insight into the communication strategies that the political advocate turned to throughout the course of her life as a social justice c
Trade ReviewThis fine collection of essays sheds new light on Ida B. Wells as an activist, journalist, and leading public intellectual. -- Mia Bay, University of Pennsylvania
Political Pioneer of the Press: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Her Transnational Crusade for Social Justice is an important work that takes the reader on a journey from first discovering that Ida B. Wells-Barnett existed, to being intrigued and almost haunted by the desire to learn about her, to uncovering one thing after another about her life and work. Examining her life from different angles is a very unique and compelling way to tell the story of my great-grandmother’s multi-faceted life, which embodies and chronicles the many changes and challenges that African Americans faced from the end of slavery until the Great Depression. The fact that the methodology she used in a wide variety of her work is being examined and appreciated today shows that her life and legacy will live on. -- Michelle Duster, author, speaker, educator, great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Table of ContentsForeword: Ida & Me: A Call to Performance Chandra D. Snell Clark Introduction Lori Amber Roessner & Jodi L. Rightler-McDaniels Part I: Ida B. Wells & “The Strange Career” of a Political Pioneer of the Press: Communicating a Social Justice Crusade Chapter 1: Training the Pen: Ida B. Wells’ Journalistic Efforts to Combat Emerging Jim-Crow Laws in Transportation Norma Fay Green Chapter 2: “A Hearing in the Press”: Ida B. Wells’ Lecture Tour of 1893-4 Joe Hayden Chapter 3: Communicating an Anti-Lynching Crusade: The Voice, the Writings, and the Power of Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s Public Relations Campaign Jinx Coleman Broussard Chapter 4: “The Modern Joan [of] Arc”: Press Coverage of Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s Campaign for Woman’s Suffrage Lori Amber Roessner Chapter 5: The Life of a Political Agitator: Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s Transition from a National Activist to a Local Reformer Kris DuRocher Part II: Mightier than the Sword: Discourse on the Life & Legacy of Ida B. Wells-Barnett Chapter 6: Constructing Monuments to the Memory of Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Institutionalization of Reputation, Memory Distortion, and Cultural Amnesia Lori Amber Roessner Chapter 7: Ida B. Wells and the Carceral State Patricia A. Schechter Chapter 8: Pioneering Advocacy Journalism: What Today’s Journalists Can Learn from Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s Methodology R.J. Vogt Chapter 9: What Would Ida Do? Considering the Relevancy of Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s Legacy to Journalism Students at an HBCU Chandra D. Snell Clark Afterword: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the “Racist Coverup” Kathy Roberts Forde Appendix Norma Fay Green
