Ida: A Sword Among Lions

Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching

Heralded as a landmark achievement upon publication, Ida: A Sword Among Lions is a sweeping narrative about a country and a crusader embroiled in the struggle against lynching — a practice that imperiled not only the lives of black men and women, but also a nation based on law and riven by race. At the center of the national drama is Ida B. Wells (1862-1931). Born to slaves in Mississippi, Wells began her activist career by refusing to leave a first-class ladies' car on a Memphis railway, and rose to lead the nation's first campaign against lynching.

Wells independent perspective and percussive personality gained her praise as a hero — as well as aspersions on her character and threats of death. Exiled from the South by 1892, Wells subsequently took her campaign across the country and throughout the British Isles before she married and settled in Chicago. There she continued her activism as a journalist, suffragist, and independent candidate in the rough-and-tumble world of the Windy City's politics. With meticulous research and vivid rendering of her subject, Paula J. Giddings brings to life the irrepressible personality of Ida B. Wells and gives the visionary reformer her due.