Ida B. Wells — journalist and social reformer
- Creator(s):
- Wells, Ida B.
- Title:
- The reason why the colored American is not in the world's Columbian exposition: the Afro-American's contribution to Columbian literature
- Publication/Origin:
- Chicago, Illinois: Ida B. Wells, 1893
- Description:
- Journalist, editor, and co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, Ida B. Wells was a singularly influential African American woman. Her incendiary articles denouncing racism were reprinted in more than two hundred black weeklies. She led an international campaign against lynching, using documentation and photographs that confronted her readers with lynching’s stark horrific reality. In 1913, she founded Chicago’s Alpha Suffrage Club, the first suffrage organization for black women. This pamphlet, published by Wells, protests the exclusion of African Americans from the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and urges a boycott of the Fair’s “Colored People’s Day.” Frederick Douglass contributed the introduction.
- Citation:
- Wells, Ida B., The reason why the colored American is not in the world's Columbian exposition: the Afro-American's contribution to Columbian literature, Chicago, Illinois: Ida B. Wells, 1893, Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. Accessed April 19, 2024, https://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/baskin/item/4213