"I SEE MY WORK AS FORCING US TO CONFRONT OUR HYPOCRISY,
FORCING US TO CONFRONT THE TRUTH THAT WE WOULD RATHER IGNORE."
~ Nicole Hannah-Jones
EXPOSING THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH: IDA B. WELLS
LEGACY
Direct
Pathway for Future Generations
“Her tenacity as a crusader for justice has been her hallmark. She was relentless in her talking about how the terrorism of lynching and how it was about politics and economics and not about the cruelties of just black men”
- Jacqueline Jones Royster, author of Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, in a personal interview
Journalism was one of her many devices for change.
"Chicago, as we have said many a time before, points the way to the political salvation of the race." - Ida B. Wells
Children at the Chicago Urban League Headquarters, University of Illinois at Chicago
Oscar DePriest became Chicago's first black alderman,in part thanks to Wells' work organizing black voters. (The Broad Ax)
Wells’s journalistic and lobbyist endeavors paved a future for generations of Blacks, many were inspired such as investigative journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones.
“Ida B. Wells did not allow herself to be marginalized or silenced. Even though she faced threats, lost property, and endured criticism, she felt what she had to say was important enough to say it. She refused to be silent. She refused to make herself small. She stood up. Spoke out. And she made a difference for all of us.”
- Michelle Duster, Ida B. Wells’s Granddaughter
Forgotten: A Newfound Resurgence
Despite her contributions, Wells was forgotten for decades. Only recently has she begun to resurface and gain the recognition deserved.
Ida B. Wells Dr in Chicago. (John Greenfield, 2019)
"A society for investigative reporting bears her name; the New York Times – which once branded her “a slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress” – just published a belated obituary, and there are moves to name a street after her in New York and build a monument in Chicago." - David Smith, 2018.
Members of the Ida B. Wells Monument committee – including Wells’ great-grandchildren Dan and Michelle Duster – recently gathered at Richard Hunt’s studio to view the final design for the monument.
We envision a monumental artwork honoring the life, work and words of Ida B. Wells, to be located in Bronzeville, the Chicago neighborhood where she once lived, worked and raised her family. - Ida B. Wells Monument Comittee
In 1983, The National Association of Black Journalists created the Ida B. Wells Award.
Sheila Brooks to Receive the NABJ Ida B. Wells Award (NABJ, 2019)
The annual honor is given to an individual who has made outstanding efforts to make newsrooms and news coverage more accurately reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. It is named in honor of Ida B. Wells, the distinguished journalist, fearless reporter and feminist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. - Kanya Stewart, NABJ Director of Communications