Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 Book

Many people don't know about the dynamism of Ida B. Wells who fought tirelessly to ensure that anti-lynching laws were passed. And Ida was not afraid to get a little gangsta if she needed to. When historians speak of the modern Civil Rights era in the U.S. they primarily speak of the late '50s and '60s; Ida B. Wells walks in the tradition of early crusaders for equal rights, establishing many of the techniques that were used in the modern Civil Rights Movement, with even (if you can imagine) less protection. On many an occassion she had to leave for safety quickly, and lost many friends, some of them quite close.

Not only was Wells a fighter, she was a strategician - simply brillant. She is one of the first thinkers to clearly think lynching with a form of sexual violence and the broader connection to the sexual violence, degradation, and exploitativeness of slavery and the overall treatment of Black people (and all people of color) in the U.S.