Political Pioneer of the Press: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Her Transnational Crusade for Social Justice

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Known most prominently as a daring anti-lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) worked tirelessly throughout her life as a political advocate for the rights of women, minorities, and members of the working class. Despite her significance, until the 1970s Wells-Barnetts life, career, and legacy were relegated to the footnotes of history. Beginning with the posthumously published autobiography edited and released by her daughter Alfreda in 1970, a handful of biographers and historiansmost notably, Patricia Schechter, Paula Giddings, Mia Bay, Gail Bederman, and Jinx Broussardhave begun to place the life of Wells-Barnett within the context of the social, cultural, and political milieu of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This edited volume seeks to extend the discussions that they have cultivated over the last five decades and to provide insight into the communication strategies that the political advocate turned to throughout the course of her life as a social justice crusader. In particular, scholars such as Schechter, Broussard, and many more will weigh in on the full range of communication techniquesfrom lecture circuits and public relations campaigns to investigative and advocacy journalismthat Wells-Barnett employed to combat racism and sexism and to promote social equity; her dual career as a journalist and political agitator; her advocacy efforts on an international, national, and local level; her own failed political ambitions; her role as a bridge and interloper in key social movements of the nineteenth and twentieth century; her legacy in American culture; and her potential to serve as a prism through which to educate others on how to address lingering forms of oppression in the twenty-first century.

Reviews

This fine collection of essays sheds new light on Ida B. Wells as an activist, journalist, and leading public intellectual. -- Mia Bay, University of Pennsylvania
Political Pioneer of the Press: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Her Transnational Crusade for Social Justice is an important work that takes the reader on a journey from first discovering that Ida B. Wells-Barnett existed, to being intrigued and almost haunted by the desire to learn about her, to uncovering one thing after another about her life and work. Examining her life from different angles is a very unique and compelling way to tell the story of my great-grandmothers multi-faceted life, which embodies and chronicles the many changes and challenges that African Americans faced from the end of slavery until the Great Depression. The fact that the methodology she used in a wide variety of her work is being examined and appreciated today shows that her life and legacy will live on. -- Michelle Duster, author, speaker, educator, great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Author Bio

Lori Amber Roessner is associate professor at the University of Tennessees School of Journalism & Electronic Media. Jodi Rightler-McDaniels is the senior general studies department chair and associate professor of communication at South College in Knoxville.