Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement [Hardcover]

Dennis Brindell Fradin (Author), Judith Bloom Fradin (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

The acclaimed civil rights leader Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) is brought vividly to life in this accessible and well-researched biography. Wells was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and she helped black women win the right to vote. But what she is most remembered for is the success of her lifelong crusade against the practice of lynching--called by some "our nation's crime"--in the American South. She fought her battle by writing and publishing countless newspaper articles and by speaking around the world. Her outspokenness put her in grave danger many times over, but she would not be silenced, and today she is credited with ending lynching in the United States. Her story is one of courage and determination in the face of intolerance and injustice. AFTERWORD, BIBLIOGRAPHY, INDEX.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5 Up-This stellar biography of one of history's most inspiring women offers an excellent overview of Wells's life and contributions. Born a slave, she went on to become a schoolteacher, probation officer, journalist, and activist who fought for the right of black women to vote, helped to create the NAACP, and almost single-handedly halted the horrific practice of lynching. The account of her relationships with famous personalities like Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman provides an accurate sense of her importance during her lifetime. The Fradins make poignant comparisons between their subject's life and those of figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, while showing how Wells paved the way for the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Black-and-white photographs and reproductions enhance the clear, well-written text and give readers a feel for the times in which Wells lived and the obstacles she had to overcome. A bibliography, picture credits, and index are included, but there are no direct source attributions for the many quotations and anecdotes sprinkled liberally throughout. Steve Klots's Ida Wells-Barnett (Chelsea, 1994; o.p.) is similar, but is for a slightly younger audience. The Fradins' compelling book is one that most libraries will want.
Leah J. Sparks, Bowie Public Library, MD
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Gr. 6^-up. Near the end of her life, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was smuggled into a prison to meet with 12 sharecroppers who had been consigned to death row for trying to organize; instead of offering comfort, she tartly told them to stop singing spirituals and start hoping for freedom right here on Earth. In the Fradins' view, that was Wells all over: an outspoken journalist who never softened or compromised and who lashed at blacks and whites with equal fervor at any sign of accommodation to racial inequity. The former slave taught school, ran newspapers, founded or helped found several organizations, including the NAACP, and, 29 years before Rosa Parks was even born, sued a railroad for being forcibly removed from a "whites only" seat. She is chiefly remembered, however, for her long crusade against lynching, sparked by the violent death of a Memphis acquaintance. After reading the Fradins' brutal, explicit accounts of several lynchings and race riots, and seeing the horrifying photos that alternate with formal portraits of Wells' family and prominent associates, it will be easy to understand her rage. After she was ultimately driven by her radicalism to the fringes of organized African American reform, her reputation was long eclipsed, but her confrontational style clearly prefigured that of the black power movement and its militant descendants. Of the several recent biographies of this colorful reformer for young readers, this is by far the most moving and complete. Bibliography. John Peters

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Clarion Books (January 17, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395898986
• ISBN-13: 978-0395898987
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,066,115 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True American Hero, October 22, 2002

By 

Nichelle Nelson "rejoice_first_lady" (Cedar Park, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement (Hardcover)

It is a travesty that the name of Ida B. Wells-Barnett is not more widely known in the most common lists of American heroes. This great woman, though little in stature, was a giant in the fight for justice and racial equality in this country. This book was a very thorough look at the life of an early champion of the civil rights movement in America. After my chilren an I read about her being physically thrown off a railcar, sueing the railroad company and actually winning her lawsuit, we could not put the book down. Although many of the discriptions and photographs were gruesome, they offered a realistic and brutally honest look at the horrors of lynching. I would recommend this book for sixth grade and up.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Absolutely Outstanding Biography of an Amazing Woman, May 8, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement (Hardcover)

If you are not familiar with Ida B. Wells and her work, by allmeans become so immediately. I will be recommending this book toeveryone I know, and I am a children's and young adult librarian. Ida B. Wells is one of the greatest Americans of all time, and most of us have never heard of her. What she did to better the lives of African-Americans and, especially, to stop lynching, is moving, stirring, and heartbreaking. I never knew that people were burned at the stake in the USA, but they certainly were--and the crowds who came to see them die were happy to have so much fun watching "the nigger burn". A great book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An early voice, October 23, 2005

By 

FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement (Hardcover)

Ida B. Wells needs to be better known among the American public. This book introduces her to middle and high school students, and it is very well done. She is one of the early voices in Civil Rights.

Ida B. Wells was an African-American woman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She was born and grew up in the South, born in Mississippi during the Civil War. It is significant the impact of the legacy of slavery on her life -- she recounts how her parents, who were married as slaves, remarried each other as free persons after the war. Wells was a determined and intelligent woman -- her parents died while she was young, yet old enough to be left with the responsibility of her younger brothers and sisters. At the age of 14 she found herself at the head of a household with five younger children.

She worked hard to make sure that her education did not suffer, and eventually (a rarity for women of any colour in America at the time) went to work for a newspaper.

In an incident that foreshadowed Rosa Parks, she was once removed from a train for sitting in the wrong section, despite her ownership of a valid ticket for the seat. She sued the railroad and won (newspaper headlines read 'Darky Damsel Gets Damages' without concern for the racist tone), but the judgment was overturned on appeal, and she later discovered her lawyers had been paid off by the railroads, and the appellate judges had thought she was just being uppity to pursue the matter.

Such was the state of the African-American community that none came to her assistance as she pursued this fight. This made her more determined to organise and fight.

Several of her newspaper partners and other friends in Memphis were lynched for these efforts, and Wells was threatened herself, and left the South, but did not give up her crusade. Where ever she went, through cities and towns in the North as well as over to Europe (where, she said, she felt like she was treated as a real human being equal with others for the first time) she decried the injustice of laws which dismissed charges or gave light sentences if victims were coloured, and prosecuted more strongly, gave out harsher sentences, or even resorted to lynch mobs if the defendant (who was often not guilty) was coloured.

'She fought a lonely and almost single-handed fight, with the single-mindedness of a crusader, long before men or women of any race entered the arena, and the measure of success she achieved goes far beyond the credit she has been given the history of the country.'

She continued speaking and publishing up to her death in 1931. She was never afraid of making herself unpopular, and often upset the African-American community by being critical of their complacency (especially the upper and middle classes). She became unpopular by standing against the military service during World War I, because of prejudicial and discriminatory practices, and never quite recovered in popular esteem from that.

But Wells had courage and determination that is rare in persons, male or female, of any colour, of any time, to take on such a task as the exposition and combat of lynching in the South during the post-Civil War decades. Talking directly with governors and even a president, Wells made her voice heard, and it was a difficult hearing in a difficult time.