To tell the truth freely : the life of Ida B. Wells /

Ida B. Wells was a sociopolitical force throughout her life, which spanned a period of tumultuous racial inequities. Her determination to right wrongs against blacks was legendary. Against the grain of society and expected gender roles, Wells is shown to be a strong-willed, intelligent, and resourceful woman who addressed the enormous problem of lynching in the US. Bay (Rutgers) provides a comprehensive history of Wells from her upbringing as the child of slaves to the journalistic power circles of England, providing in-depth research to track Wells's achievements and hardships. Besides recounting some of Wells's better-known accomplishments, such as her refusal to relinquish her train seat and her role in the development of the NAACP, Bay researched other areas of Wells-Barnett's contributions in the early 20th century, showing her as fearless in her quest to address lynching in the US. Wells's work was a labor of considerable sacrifice as she pursued support at home and abroad. Bay successfully illuminates Ida B. Wells as one of the notable movers and shakers of her time. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. M. W. Pilkinton Mississippi State University

Part of the first post-emancipation generation, Ida B. Wells faced the tumult of a southern society unwilling to let go of the vestiges of slavery, including notions of controlling black men through violence. History professor Bay details how Wells, while raising her younger siblings, embarked on a career in journalism that led to her campaign against lynching. Through her Memphis newspapers, Wells challenged the accusations that victims of lynching were guilty of rape. Using tactics adapted from her mentor, Frederick Douglass, Wells mounted an international campaign to shame the U.S. into taking legal action against lynching. Her move from Memphis to Chicago to the world arena as an activist never earned her the kind of reputation enjoyed by her male contemporaries, including W. E. B. DuBois and the more accommodationist Booker T. Washington, because of her famously prickly personality and her gender. Bay explores the life of an extraordinary woman who challenged racism and sexism and helped to found major activist organizations of her day but who paid a steep price for her personal choices and inability to work within those organizations.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2008 Booklist

Bay (The White Image in the Black Mind) delineates journalist and antilynching crusader Ida B. Wells's life (1862-1931) and her passionate commitment "to a range of causes so extensive that they defy easy summary." When her parents died in 1878, 16-year-old Wells became the head of her family, caring for her five siblings. After a brief stint teaching, she found her two callings-political activism and, more powerfully, journalism, becoming by the late 1880s "one of the most prolific and well-known black female journalists of her day." In 1884, she sued the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad over segregated cars; in 1889, she became part owner and editor of the Memphis Free Speech newspaper. In 1892, catalyzed by the lynching of three black businessmen, she devoted herself to "an anti-lynching campaign that would cost her the Memphis newspaper, threaten her life, and sever her ties to Memphis forever." Bay relies heavily on Wells's published writing, especially her posthumous autobiography, Crusade for Justice, supplemented by secondary sources, making this a useful book for students. The perilous edge that Wells traversed, however, is blunted; she led a life full of drama, but Bay's quotidian account is an utterly unexciting summary. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Ida B. Wells, the civil rights and antilynching crusader all but forgotten for most of the 20th century, has received a great deal of scholarly interest over the past 30 years. Bay (history, Rutgers Univ.; The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925) adds to this scholarship by examining Wells in the context of her social and political milieu as an African American woman in a predominantly white, male-dominated society. The sexism Wells faced within the Civil Rights Movement and the added domestic responsibilities she faced as a woman held her back from claiming her rightful place at the top of the Civil Rights hierarchy. Bay relies heavily on Wells's own autobiography (published as Crusade for Justice in 1970) and a diary that Wells kept in Memphis from 1885 to 1887 (published in book form in 1995), as well as contemporary magazine and newspaper articles. With almost 30 pages of notes, this book is well suited to academic libraries, while its efficient length and accessible style make it good for public libraries as well. Recommended.-Jason Martin, Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Adult/High School-Bay presents a scholarly record of the life of a brilliant political activist and early feminist, from her beginnings as the daughter of newly freed slaves in Mississippi during Reconstruction to her primary candidacy in 1930 for the Illinois Senate. The author recounts Wells's childhood in Holly Springs and the drastic changes that occurred when, at age 16, her parents died and she became the caregiver for two younger sisters. In 1883, forcefully ejected from a train several times for refusing to leave the (first class) ladies car for the (second class) smoking car, Wells sued the railroad, charging assault and discrimination, and won. The ruling was overturned two years later by the Tennessee Supreme Court. Frustrated with Jim Crow, critical of the black leadership, and horrified by lynchings and the accompanying myth of black men's hypersexuality, Wells gave up teaching and turned her energy and talent to journalism. Her association with women's groups and black organizations such as the NAACP were often fraught with controversy, and she was often at odds with black leaders. The author quotes extensively from Wells's autobiography, diaries, and articles, insightfully interpreting and occasionally correcting her facts. Black-and-white photos are included. Students interested in post-Civil War history and women's studies will find a wealth of information in this exhaustively researched biography.-Jackie Gropman, formerly at Fairfax County Public Library System, Fairfax, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Finely honed feminist biography of an impassioned crusader for civil rights in an era of vicious racial discrimination. Ida B. Wells' significant legacy as an activist, engaged journalist and outspoken critic of Southern lynching has been obscured by her confrontational methods, notes Bay (History/Rutgers Univ.; The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 18301925, 2000). A child of Reconstruction, Wells (18621931) experienced firsthand the retraction of protections for freedmen that promptly followed the infamous Compromise of 1877. She took her first public stand at age 21. Commuting by train between her home in Memphis and a schoolteaching job in the countryside, she purchased a first-class ticket that entitled her to sit in the "ladies' car," and refused the conductor's order to move; it took three railroad employees to drag Wells to the second-class carriage. The two lawsuits she filed against the railroad earned her character assassinations from both white and black leaders, but she was beginning to find her voice as an agitator for African-American progress and women's concerns. She became editor and owner of the Memphis newspaper Free Speech, but after an incendiary editorial asserting that the claims of rape used to justify many lynchings were obviously false, threats on her life drove Wells from the South. She lived in New York and then Chicago, where she eventually married. She took up the gauntlet against lynching as the expression of a racist ideology that defensively defined black men as "naturally lawless and predatory." Lecturing publicly about sex and rape at a time when such subjects were taboo, Wells was frequently excoriated, though British audiences were more welcoming and supportive. Befriended by Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois, instrumental in starting such organizations as the NAACP, she remained controversial and could not garner sufficient support to elevate her to national leadership. Bay's intelligent, hard-hitting study puts Wells' achievements in context and will certainly solidify the standing of this brave activist and writer. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.