The Light of Truth (BOOK REVIEW)
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The Light of Truth:
Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader
by Ida B. Wells
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Mia Bay
General Editor: Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Penguin Classics
Paperback, $18.00
624 pages
ISBN: 978-0-14-310682-1
Book
Review by Kam Williams
“Ida
B. Wells was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi
in 1862. After beginning a teaching career to support her orphaned siblings,
she moved to Memphis
to become a journalist…
In
1883, she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a train, an
experience that she chronicled in her first published piece. Though Wells
achieved success as a writer, editor and even co-owner of a newspaper, her
greatest accomplishments came after the lynching of a close friend in 1892
spurred her into a lifelong anti-lynching campaign.
She
published powerful diatribes against lynching, leading to death threats and
forced exile in the North… Wells devoted the rest of her life to civil rights,
publishing widely and delivering impassioned speeches.”
Excerpted
from the Introduction (page i)
Over 70 years before
Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, Ida Wells was similarly
arrested for refusing to surrender her seat on a train to a white person. Wells
survived the ordeal and was eventually inspired to embark on an impressive
career as an eloquent advocate on behalf of African-American civil rights.
Her specific focus
was lynching. After all, the practice went unpunished for over a century during
which not one white person was ever tried, convicted and executed for employing
that brand of vigilante justice against any of the thousands and thousands of
black men, women and children victims. Edited by Mia Bay
and Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Light of Truth is a collection of Ida’s
fiery essays, culled from her early writings.
In a professional and
persuasive journalist tone, Ida recounts case after case in which a rush to
judgment led to a gross miscarriage of justice. For example, in Selma Alabama
a “colored man named Daniel Edwards” was hung from a tree and riddled with
bullets as a “warning to all Negroes that are too intimate with white girls.”
Truth be told, he had secretly dated the daughter of his employer for over a
year until the scandalous relationship produced a biracial child.
Another entry
discusses the details of the 1892 lynching in Quincy, Mississippi of five
African-Americans merely on suspicion of poisoning a Caucasian, despite their
already having been declared innocent by the local coroner. In this instance,
Ida chastises white Christian ministers for failing to give the matter “more
than a passing comment” in the pulpit. She goes on to cite the slayings as
“proof of the moral degradation of the people of Mississippi.” And so forth.
A debt of gratitude
is owed Ida Wells for preserving for posterity a host of illustrative examples of
racist mobs bent on satiating their bloodlust by visiting violence on the bodies
of blacks in vile fashion without any concern about guilt or innocence.
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