"They Say": Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race

by James West Davidson

Overview

In 'They Say,' James West Davidson recounts the first thirty years in the passionate life of Ida B. Wells—as well as the story of the great struggle over the meaning of race in post-emancipation America. Davidson captures the breathtaking and often chaotic changes that swept the South as Wells grew up in Holly Springs, Mississippi: the spread of education among free blacks, the rise of political activism, and the bitter struggles for equality in the face of entrenched social custom.

When Wells came of age she moved to bustling Memphis, where her quest for personal fulfillment was thwarted as whites increasingly used race as a barrier to separate blacks from mainstream America. Davidson traces the crosscurrents of these cultural conflicts through Wells's forceful personality, intertwining her struggle to define herself with her early courageous, and often audacious, behavior. When a conductor threw her off a train for refusing to sit in the segregated car, she sued the railroad—and won. When she protested conditions in segregated Memphis schools, she was fired—and took up journalism. And in 1892, when an explosive lynching rocked Memphis, Wells embarked fully on the career for which she is now remembered, as outspoken anti-lynching writer and lecturer.

Period photographs from postcards, newspapers, and Wells's own diary further engage readers in this dynamic story. Richly researched and deftly written, the book offers a gripping portrait of the young Ida B. Wells, who directly encountered and influenced the evolving significance of race in America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195160215
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/21/2008
Series:	New Narratives in American History
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	258
Product dimensions:	4.60(w) x 6.60(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

James West Davidson is a historian and writer. He is coauthor of After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, Nation of Nations: A History of the American Republic, and Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Prologue: "Does This Look Natchel?"
One: Into a Changing World
Two: A Moral Education
Three: Unladylike Lady
Four: Edged Tools
Five: Ambition to Edit
Six: They Say
Seven: Do Something
Eight: Exiled
Afterword
Selected Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Adult/High School
Despite the title, this is not a biography of journalist, teacher, and speaker. However, researchers looking for valuable insight into the changing definitions of race in post-Emancipation America will find a wealth of information here. Davidson immediately draws readers in by including a postcard photograph in which African Americans are posing on a bridge above the dangling bodies of a lynched mother and son. Using the first 30 years of Wells's life as a backdrop, the author chronicles the evolving standards that governed race relations in the southern United States during Reconstruction. Many of the detailed accounts of lynchings, forced exiles, and other dehumanizing acts against African Americans are presented through first-person statements, thereby eliciting a deeper sense of injustice from readers. Other events, such as the discrimination blacks experienced on train cars, are revealed through Wells's diary and other writings. While the scope of this work is limited, the depth will provide students with valuable primary sources related to race relations during this period. The book may require some hand selling, but teens looking for in-depth accounts of the changing racial climate during Reconstruction will not be disappointed.
—Lynn RashidCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

"Lynching is the greatest disgrace in our history, and Ida Wells-Barnett was its most courageous assailant. James West Davidson has written an eloquent account of the growth of Wells-Barnett's self-defined persona as a black woman, journalist, and fearless crusader. Refusing to accept an identity shaped by others—'they say'—she boldly told the world that 'I say' who I am and what I stand for."—James McPherson, author of The Battle Cry of Freedom and The Mighty Scourge

"Davidson's narrative looking at the violent, tormented history of the post-Reconstruction South through the prism of the interior life of Ida B. Wells, one of America's undisputed heroes, is a refreshing way to open wider the door on the complexities of race, racism and identity that, regrettably, still haunt and challenge us today. We need highly readable scholarship like this, infused by the example of the redoubtable Wells to help give the lie to that the old adage that says 'we learn from history that we do not learn from history.' As an African-American woman and a journalist, I am grateful and inspired to have this testimony to a woman on whose shoulders I stand and whose legacy inspires me to stay committed to journalism that is informed by the righteous struggle of all peoples to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin."—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Journalist

"How did Ida Wells become the woman who challenged the silence of America on lynching? James Davidson shows us by re-creating the world of African Americans during the turbulent decades after the Civil War. A touching, compelling portrait of an important life in crucial times."—H.W. Brands, Dickson, Allen, Anderson Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, author of Andrew Jackson and The Money Men

From the Publisher