As part of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum’s celebration of Women’s History Month, listen in for the first annual Ida B. Wells Lecture with Paula Giddings, author of Ida: A Sword Among Lions - Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching.  Ida B Wells was one of the most fearless crusaders for civil rights and women’s rights in United States history.  She was a newspaper editor and publisher, investigative journalist, co-founder of the NAACP, political candidate, mother, wife, and the single most powerful leader in the anti-lynching campaign in America.

Wells came to Chicago in 1892, after her life was endangered in Memphis by a series of threats and ransacking of the newspaper offices where she worked. She had attracted this negative attention through her blistering articles condemning segregation, lynching and her support of women’s suffrage. While in Chicago, she organized a boycott of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago with Frederick Douglas to draw attention to the crimes of lynching. She also worked with Jane Addams to successfully block the establishment of segregated schools in Chicago. In 1930, she ran for the Illinois State Legislature and became one of the first black women to run for public office in the United States. 

The lecture will be the Chicago launch of Paula Giddings’ new book on Ida B Wells entitled Ida: A Sword Among Lions. Ida B Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. Toni Morrison describes the book in the following way:  “History at its best- clear, intelligent, moving.  Paula Giddings has written a book as priceless as its subject.”

Recorded Monday, March 10, 2008 at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.