Monday, March 10, 6-8pm
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
Residents' Dining Hall
800 S. Halsted

As part of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum's celebration of
Women's History Month, please join us for the first annual
Ida B. Wells Lecture
with Paula Giddings
author of
Ida: A Sword Among Lions,
Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching

Ida B. Wells was one of the most fearless crusaders for civil rights and women's rights in United States history.  She was a newspaper editor and publisher, investigative journalist, co-founder of the NAACP, political candidate, mother, wife, and the single most powerful leader in the anti-lynching campaign in America. 

Wells came to Chicago in 1892, after her life was endangered in Memphis by a series of threats and ransacking of the newspaper offices where she worked.   She had attracted this negative attention through her blistering articles condemning segregation, lynching and her support of women’s suffrage. While in Chicago, she organized a boycott of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago with Frederick Douglas to draw attention to the crimes of lynching.   She also worked with Jane Addams to successfully block the establishment of segregated schools in Chicago. In 1930, she ran for the Illinois State Legislature and became one of the first black women to run for public office in the United States.  

The lecture will be the Chicago launch of Paula Giddings' new book on Ida B Wells entitled Ida:  A Sword Among Lions, Ida B Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching.     Toni Morrison describes the book in the following way:  "History at its best- clear, intelligent, moving.  Paula Giddings has written a book as priceless as its subject."    

Paula Giddings will also present at
Women & Children First Bookstore (click here for more info)
Tuesday, March 11, 7:30pm

More about Paula Giddings:
Paula Giddings, a writer, historian, and teacher, is best known for her authoritative social and political history of African-American women, When and Where I Enter (1985), and her history of the Black sorority Delta Signa Theta. A former book editor and journalist, Giddings has written extensively on political issues in both the popular press and scholarly journals. She was a United Negro Fund Distinguished Scholar at Spelman College; held the Laurie Chair in Women's Studies at Douglass College/Rutgers University, and taught at Princeton and Duke Universities before becoming Professor of Afro-American Studies at Smith College.