Ida A Sword Among Lions : Ida B. Wells And The Campaign Against Lynching

The best biography always brings its subject to life and simultaneously immerses the reader into the period in which that subject lived. Paula J. Giddings succeeds brilliantly in describing the era in which Ida B. Wells lived and struggled. Gidding's scholarship is prodigious and her mastery of her voluminous sources is nothing less than a tour de force in explaining the social and political conditions that prevailed during the decades following the Civil War.

Ida Wells's story is fascinating, illuminating, and often inspiring. She came of age, matured, and found her "calling" in tandem with the rise of Jim Crow. She worked relentlessly for equality on multiple fronts but it was her decades long focus on the evil phenomenon of lynching that kept her in the forefront of African-American civil rights activism.

The fact that generations of Americans barely acknowledge the extent of the brutality visited upon tens of thousands of African-Americans during the century following emancipation is lamentable, illogical, and ultimately a hindrance in understanding unresolved American racism at the start of the 21st century. Reading this powerful biography may help to remedy the above.

We listen to the stories of people who lived through the Great Depression and World War II. We properly consider those stories to be extraordinarily important. The American history of minority suffering and the pursuit of equality just as important. This is a biography that needs to be read.

HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION

“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.”

“History at its best—clear, intelligent, moving. Paula Giddings has written a book as priceless as its subject.”

“The best interpretation of black women and race and sex that we have.”

“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.”

A sweeping and timely biographical narrative about Ida B. Wells...a paragon of American history.

“A groundbreaking biography gives this warrior her due.”

“A hearty thumbs-up for this powerful retelling of her life.”

Distributor: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date: 03-11-2008
Pages: 816
Measurements: 9in X 6in X 1.82891in X 40.56oz