Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Hardcover)

by Paula J. Giddings (Author)
Key Phrases: human torch, unfriendly takeovers, general federation, Sword Cflmong, African Americans, Holly Springs (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A groundbreaking biography gives this warrior her due." -- O magazine

"A hearty thumbs-up for this powerful retelling of her life." -- Essence

"History at its best—clear, intelligent, moving. Paula Giddings has written a book as priceless as its subject." -- Toni Morrison

"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." -- David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-Winning biographer of W.E.B. DuBois

"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." -- Vogue

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

Review
"A groundbreaking biography gives this warrior her due." (O magazine )

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

"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." (David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-Winning biographer of W.E.B. DuBois )

"History at its best-clear, intelligent, moving. Paula Giddings has written a book as priceless as its subject." (Toni Morrison )

"The best interpretation of black women and race and sex that we have." (Women's Review of Books on When and Where I Enter )

"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." (Vogue )

"A hearty thumbs-up for this powerful retelling of her life." (Essence )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 816 pages
• Publisher: Amistad (March 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060519215
• ISBN-13: 978-0060519216
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #298,932 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The horror of lynchings, March 14, 2008

By	Robert C. Ross (New Jersey) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In 1893, the "Chicago Inter-Ocean", a mainstream metro newspaper, commissioned 30 year old Ida Wells to investigate a crime. A black man, accused of murdering two white girls, had been mutilated, burned to death and left hanging from a telegraph pole. Wells made the trip, assumed the identity of the dead man's widow, tracked down eyewitnesses and published her findings in detail.

The Introduction describes the history of lynching and serves as a backdrop to Wells's crusade against lynching:

"The origin of the term "lynching," according to James E. Cutler, author of "Lynch-Law" (1905)[a full copy can be found on Google Books], the first scholarly text on the subject, is attributed to Charles Lynch, a Virginia justice of the peace (and brother of the founder of Lynchburg). Lynch established informal, extra-legal citizen juries during the Revolutionary War years when official courts were few and traveling to them through British-occupied territories was perilous. The common sentence for those found guilty--mostly horse thieves and Tories--was thirty nine lashes with a whip. By the 1830s, when southern abolitionism reached its height, lynching was associated more with those who threatened the slave order. Following the Civil War, the practice became more murderous with the bloody struggle for power among northern federalists, Confederates, and newly enfranchised black men.

"However, it wasn't until 1886, when increasing numbers of rural blacks migrated to southern cities, that the number of African Americans lynched exceeded that of whites: a trend that continued even as blacks became increasingly disenfranchised; had largely eschewed their political aspirations in favor of building institutions, acquiring wealth, and eliminating ignorance; and ex- Confederates had regained control of their state governments. Both Wells and Cutler cited what were surely conservative estimates by the Chicago Tribune, which reported that 728 persons were lynched between 1882 and 1891, the majority of them African American men. The statistics further showed that less than a third had been accused of rape, much less guilty of it."

In 1893 Wells was established as a black journalist, co-editor and part-owner of the "Memphis Free Speech". A white mob seized the three black men and killed them in a railroad yard duplicating wounds suffered by three white deputies. Wells urged her black readers: "Save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts." Memphis blacks took her advice and departed by the thousands to the West, and those who stayed behind boycotted streetcars and quit their jobs. Business owners panicked and commerce "came to a standstill," Wells would recall with some satisfaction.

Wells used the "Free Speech" to respond to an editorial supporting lynching. The South was menaced by the "horrible and bestial propensities" of black men, whose seething ambition was to catch a white woman alone. Lynching, the paper argued, was a defensive act by noble whites protecting chaste women from depraved blacks. Wells replied that, according to her own investigations, some lynchings involved black men who were guilty of nothing more than having had consensual sex with a white woman. If lynchings were sometimes proof of a white woman's desire for a black man, Wells argued, then the future lynching of blacks by white men would lead others to draw conclusions "which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women."

Despite the firestorm created by her editorial, Wells continued her fight. She gave 102 lectures in Britain to bring international pressure on the U.S. She helped to introduce anti-lynching legislation in six states. Eventually, Wells married a successful Chicago attorney, had four children, wrote in defense of prisoners on death row, opened a reading room and social center in Chicago, ran for public office, and was part of a contingent that met with President Woodrow Wilson in 1913 to protest civil-service segregation.

Ida Wells Clubs opened in cities across the country, and benefactors sent money to her causes. But the women's suffrage movement generally avoided Wells because its leaders didn't want to alienate Southern women. Black ministers asked her to mute the sexual themes in her writing about lynching and women's rights, and W.E.B. Du Bois took credit for excluding her from NAACP leadership positions. Government agents investigated her for treason after passage of the Espionage Act of 1917.

This is a carefully researched biography, describing a real American heroine, and her efforts to stop a terrible crime. I found that it added a very useful dimension to Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.

Robert C. Ross 2008

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life of Courage, July 5, 2008

By	Robert T Canipe (USA) - See all my reviews

Giddings' biography presents the life of a woman whose courage and intelligence transcends the time in which she lived. Wells story resonates with the troublesome duality of being black and intelligent during a time that most of society saw African Americans as less-than-human. Moreover, Giddings' research builds step-by-step to grow an illustration of Wells resplendent in its examples of unintended consequences. Each violent action by the racists unintentionally shines light on Wells poetic writings that casts each action in its stony hatred for all humanity not only black humanity. Consequently, Giddings' prose flows through each active time of Wells' career as a journalist and writer of civil rights chapbooks almost as though she were channeling Wells herself since Wells story builds from one hair-raising escape from one bigoted southern town to the next. Pick it up.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT HISTORY!!!!, June 19, 2008

By	Barbara J. Ross (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I wanted to read about this wonderful woman I've heard so much about. I also wanted to read about her since she lived during the same time as my great grandparents . I've been studying the family history and I get a great since of what their lives were like. A must read for anyone wanting to know the history of that day. Lots of things happening then apply to our current history. Written in excellent style and great understanding.