Ida: A Sword Among Lions, Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching

Join author Paula Giddings for a reading and discussion of her new book Ida: A Sword Among Lions on March 10 at 6 pm at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum.

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.

Monday, March 10
6-7pm Book Reading and Conversation
7-8 pm Reception
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
Residents' Dining Hall
800 S. Halsted Street

The lecture will be the Chicago launch of Paula Giddings' new book Ida: A Sword Among Lions, Ida B Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching

More about Paula Giddings:

Paula Giddings, a writer, historian, and teacher, is best known for her authoritative social and political history of African-American women, When and Where I Enter (1985), and her history of the Black sorority Delta Signa Theta. A former book editor and journalist, Giddings has written extensively on political issues in both the popular press and scholarly journals. She was a United Negro Fund Distinguished Scholar at Spelman College; held the Laurie Chair in Women's Studies at Douglass College/Rutgers University, and taught at Princeton and Duke Universities before becoming Professor of Afro-American Studies at Smith College.

This program is co-sponsored by the Department of Gender and Women's Studies at UIC, the Department of African American Studies at UIC, and Women and Children First bookstore. Dr. Giddings will also appear at Women and Children First bookstore on March 11th at 7:30 PM.