Ida B. Wells

Meet journalist and activist Ida B. Wells in this second vibrant middle grade biography in the Rise. Risk. Remember. Incredible Stories series spotlighting Black women who left their mark on history from acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Candace Buford.

Born into slavery, Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) grew up watching her family fight for Black rights during the Reconstruction Era. After receiving her education, Ida worked as an educator before moving to Memphis where she began writing about white mob violence, investigating lynchings and reporting her findings in local newspapers. Ida helped found the NAACP and was a renowned leader in the civil rights movement, but she was also a young woman desperately trying to hold her family together after tragedy with dignity and resolve.

Ida fought to give voice to the people suffering from injustice, racism, and violence. She spoke out against lynchings internationally and refused to cater to the white women leading the suffrage movement. Throughout her life, she devoted her words and deeds to activism.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University. Her first book, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City, was published by Yale University Press in 2008. Her second book, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge was a 2017 finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and a winner of the 2018 Frederick Douglass Book Award. She is also the author of She Came to Slay, an illustrated tribute to Harriet Tubman, and Susie King Taylor and is the co-executive producer of the HBO series The Gilded Age.

Candace Buford has always been drawn to stories with strong and complex people of color. She graduated from Duke University with a degree in German literature and holds a law degree from Penn State Law, as well as a business degree from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Kneel and Good as Gold. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @CandaceBuford.