Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells, (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931), later known as Ida Wells-Barnett, was an African American civil rights advocate, and led a strong cause against lynching. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In 1884, she refused to move out of a segregated railroad car in Memphis, Tennessee, and won a lawsuit against the railroad company for forcibly removing her from her seat, although the Supreme Court overturned the decision in 1887. During her participation in womens' suffrage parades, her refusal to stand in the back becuase she was colored resulted in the beginning of her media publicity. In 1889, she became co-owner and editor of an anti-segregationist newspaper based on Beale Street in Memphis. In 1892, however, she was forced to leave Memphis because her editorials in her paper, Free Speech, were seen as too agitating. 1892 was the same year that she published her famous pamphlet, "Southern Horrors: Lynch Laws in All Its Phases". In 1895, she published A Red Record, which documented her campaign against lynching. She was a founding member of the NAACP in 1909. In 1930, she ran for the Illinois state legislature, one of the first black women ever to run for public office. She died in Chicago, Illinois where a public housing complex was later named in her honor. There is also a high school in her name in San Francisco, California.
poop the life of Ida B. Wells called Constant Star by Tazewell Thompson. The play uses five actresses to play her as well as some of the other characters involved in her life. Although it is primarily a play, it includes about 20 negro spiritual songs sung by the actresses. The following is a quote from the director/playwright Tazewell Thompson himself:
- My first introduction to Ida B. Wells was the PBS documentary on her life. Her story gnawed at me. A woman born in slavery, she would grow to become one of the great pioneer activists of the Civil Rights movement. A precursor of Rosa Parks, she was a suffragette, 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. A dynamic, controversial, temperamental, uncompromising race woman, she broke bread and crossed swords with some of the movers and shakers of her time: Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, President McKinley. By any fair assessment, she was a seminal figure in Post-Reconstruction America.
- On her passing in 1931, Ida B. Wells was interred in the Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago. Her formidable contributions to the Civil Rights movement have, until most recently, been under-appreciated. Until now; almost, but not quite, an historical footnote.
- This play with song is my attempt to let her story breathe freely on stage - to give it a symphonic expression - to give her extraordinary persona an audience, something she always craved.
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