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Local Democrats did their part by distributing a poster that pictured Ferdinand with exaggerated Negroid features: a fly-in-the-buttermilk reminder for those who customarily voted straight Republican tickets.
Ida
Ida: A Sword Among Lions is a sweeping narrative about a country and a crusader embroiled in the struggle against lynching: a practise that endangered not only the lives of black men and women, but also a nation based on law and riven by race, in the tradition of towering biographies that tell us as much about America as they do about their subject.
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), a Mississippi native who began her activist career by refusing to leave a first-class ladies' car on a Memphis railway and ascended to lead the nation's first anti-lynching campaign, is at the heart of the national drama. Wells believes that ideas about black males, as well as women and sexuality, were at the root of the spike in violence. Her unique perspective and resonant personality earned her acclaim as a hero, as well as criticism of her character and death threats.
By 1892, Wells had been exiled from the South, and she had taken her campaign across the country and to the British Isles before marrying and settling in Chicago, where she continued her activism as a journalist, suffragist, and independent candidate in the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago politics.
The irrepressible personality of Ida B. Wells explodes out of the pages of this highly awaited biography by Paula J. Giddings, author of the pioneering book When and Where I Enter, which tracked the activist history of African women in America. Giddings also gives captivating portrayals of twentieth-century progressive luminaries, black and white, with whom Wells worked during some of the most tumultuous eras in American history, using rigorous research and evocative renderings of her topic. Throughout her activism career, Wells was up against not just conservative opponents, but also heroes of the civil rights and women's suffrage organizations who worked to delegitimize her legacy.
Giddings finally gives Ida B. Wells her due in this comprehensive biography, which sets her in the context of her period as well as ours, and in the process, shines light on an area of our history that is frequently left in the dark.
Local Democrats did their part by distributing a poster that pictured Ferdinand with exaggerated Negroid features: a fly-in-the-buttermilk reminder for those who customarily voted straight Republican tickets.
