Ida: A Sword Among Lions by Paula J. Giddings
#17: Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching by Paula J. Giddings.
Be warned, at a fairly dense 800 pages (including notes, bibliography, and index) this is not a quick or easy read. It is, however, an incredibly rewarding read. Giddings has written an exhaustive biography not just about a person, but about the time in which she lived.
I knew nothing about Ida B. Wells when I began this book, and I knew virtually nothing about the civil rights movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, so rest assured that this book is fine for the beginner. But it's amazingly in depth and meticulously researched.
What strikes me the most is not how much things have changed, but how much they haven't. One hundred years ago, you have insistence that militancy and anger aren't going to change anything, that it will only make the dominant group resent the oppressed group. In this case, it plays out with blacks being told that while lymching was of course a tragic thing, it was caused by black law breaking (specifically the rape of white women), and what blacks needed to do to stop it was to better themselves. The idea was that rights would be naturally conferred once blacks were worthy of them. Wells came along and blew this right out of the water, attacking the myth of the black male rapist who existed only to prey on white women. She was among the first to argue that lynching was not a response to rape, but an expression of racial hatred.
The life of Ida B. Wells is an inspiration to activists everywhere. Wells knew that compliant behavior is not an agent of change.* And I found that Giddings did an excellent job in bringing her story to life.
*adapted from a line in the book: "...she had exhorted that compliant behavior on the part of blacks was not an agent of change."
Be warned, at a fairly dense 800 pages (including notes, bibliography, and index) this is not a quick or easy read. It is, however, an incredibly rewarding read. Giddings has written an exhaustive biography not just about a person, but about the time in which she lived.
I knew nothing about Ida B. Wells when I began this book, and I knew virtually nothing about the civil rights movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, so rest assured that this book is fine for the beginner. But it's amazingly in depth and meticulously researched.
What strikes me the most is not how much things have changed, but how much they haven't. One hundred years ago, you have insistence that militancy and anger aren't going to change anything, that it will only make the dominant group resent the oppressed group. In this case, it plays out with blacks being told that while lymching was of course a tragic thing, it was caused by black law breaking (specifically the rape of white women), and what blacks needed to do to stop it was to better themselves. The idea was that rights would be naturally conferred once blacks were worthy of them. Wells came along and blew this right out of the water, attacking the myth of the black male rapist who existed only to prey on white women. She was among the first to argue that lynching was not a response to rape, but an expression of racial hatred.
The life of Ida B. Wells is an inspiration to activists everywhere. Wells knew that compliant behavior is not an agent of change.* And I found that Giddings did an excellent job in bringing her story to life.
*adapted from a line in the book: "...she had exhorted that compliant behavior on the part of blacks was not an agent of change."