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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
Erica Armstrong Dunbar is a historian and professor of African American studies at Emory University. Her first book was A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City. Her second book, Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction and a winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Award. She is also the author of She Came to Slay, an illustrated tribute to Harriet Tubman; coauthor of Susie King Taylor, Ida B. Wells, and Harriet Jacobs; and the co-executive producer of the HBO series The Gilded Age.
More by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Candace Buford
Candace Buford has been an avid reader since childhood—always looking for stories with strong and complex POCs. She graduated from Duke University with a degree in German Literature, which exposed her to the delightfully creepy side of storytelling by writers like Kafka and Brecht. Raised in Houston, she now lives in the PNW. She shares her life with a rocket scientist and a Plott Hound, who both ensure there is never a dull day. Kneel is her debut.
More by Candace Buford
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