Ida: A Sword Among Lions
Pulitzer Prize Board citation to Ida B. Wells, as an early pioneer of investigative journalism and civil rights icon
From a thinker who Maya Angelou has praised for shining "a brilliant light on the lives of women left in the shadow of history," comes the definitive biography of Ida B. Wells--crusading journalist and pioneer in the fight for women's suffrage and against segregation and lynchings
Ida B. Wells was born into slavery and raised in the Victorian age yet emerged--through her fierce political battles and progressive thinking--as the first "modern" black women in the nation's history.
Wells began her activist career when she tried to segregate a first-class railway car in Memphis. After being thrown bodily off the car, she wrote about the incident for black Baptist newspapers, thus beginning her career as a journalist. But her most abiding fight would be the one against lynching, a crime in which she saw all the themes she held most dear coalesce: sexuality, race, and the law.
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Paula J. Giddings is the Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor in Afro-American Studies at Smith College and the author of When and Where I Enter and In Search of Sisterhood.
"A groundbreaking biography gives this warrior her due." -- O magazine
A sweeping and timely biographical narrative about Ida B. Wells...a paragon of American history. -- Ebony
"A hearty thumbs-up for this powerful retelling of her life." -- Essence
"Paula J. Giddings IDA: A SWORD AMONG LIONS (Amistad) is a worthy biography of the vibrant crusader who led the nation's first campaign against lynching." -- Vogue
"Ida B. Wells was an inspired journalist, an uncompromising civil libertarian, and a woman far ahead of her patriarchal times--a 'difficult' woman. Paula Giddings's monumental achievement restores this extraordinary contrarian to her place as one of the grand pace-setters of American social justice and female empowerment." -- David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-Winning biographer of W.E.B. DuBois
"History at its best--clear, intelligent, moving. Paula Giddings has written a book as priceless as its subject." -- Toni Morrison
"The best interpretation of black women and race and sex that we have." -- Women's Review of Books on When and Where I Enter
