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, Co-editor, Michelle Obama’s Impact on African American Women and Girls, 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
