Who is Ida B. Wells?

Join us for lunch to discuss a documentary in development about Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), the intrepid journalist, suffragist, and American leader who led the nation’s first antilynching campaign in 1892. As one of the nation’s first investigative reporters, Wells, with rigorous fact finding and riveting clarity, turned demonstrably false narratives of Black criminality into devastating truths of what American Democracy had become.  

Driven from her Memphis home on the threat of death, Wells settled in Chicago where she married Ferdinand Barnett, a lawyer, and continued her work as a leading progressive reformer: founding the Negro Fellowship League settlement house; the Alpha Suffrage Club -- Chicago’s first Black women’s suffrage  organization; and co-founding the NAACP. In 1930, a year before her death, Wells-Barnett became the first Black woman in Illinois to run for a State Senate seat.  

The documentary team includes:
Paula J. Giddings, producer
Clayton Goss, executive producer 
Nikole Hannah-Jones, producer
Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte, producer
Shola Lynch, Director
Jewell Jackson McCabe, executive producer 
Xinyang Sun, administrative assistant