Good morning, today we are going to explore the life of Ida B. Wells. This is from the Public Television station in Chicago.
Ida B. Wells’ story starts at the end of the Civil War and highlights growing up years. At 16 years old, she returned to the plantation where her family was. She had found out her parents died and so she decided to take on the challenge of raising her siblings. She got a teaching job and was the breadwinner of the family. Her grandmother helped her out. She would eventually make her way to Chicago where she would become an investigative journalist and a passionate suffragist. Ida and her siblings made their way to Memphis to live with her aunt. Ida enjoyed the city life but would teach in the country. She enjoyed dressing well. She successfully sued a railroad company for forcing her to move to the smoking car. She eventually lost the case and this was before Rosa Parks and the NAACP. All Ida had was herself and her attorney. She was starting to make a name for herself in Memphis. Ida joined up with a group of African American teachers. She demonstrated a continued thirst for learning and worked to sharpen her skills. She scraped together what funds she could gather to continue to learn. The teachers would then ask her to write for their journal. The proposal shocked her but she threw herself into writing. She loved writing and could express herself better through writing. She wrote about education. She documented segregation and the teachers. She had a low opinion of some of the teachers. She did not get in trouble for speaking against her employer. Writing became Ida’s true passion. She bought into a local newspaper and became its editor. The readership tripled with her as the head. She made waves. She then started writing against lynching. One murder changed her life. The man who was murdered was her friend and he had opened up a grocery store. This grocery store competed with a white grocery store owner. Things came to a head over a marble game. A posse was gathered, the grocery owners were arrested and the grocery owners were lynched. Ida began to wonder about lynching. She started speaking out against lynching. She went across the south with a book in hand. She interviewed witnesses and documented their stories. After that, she wrote a blistering editorial. She wrote to inform and shame. Within days, her editorial was reprinted. The Memphis press wanted vengeance against Ida, unaware that the person who wrote it was a woman. The newspaper Ida wrote for was destroyed and she had fled Memphis. Ida arrived in Chicago having lost everything. In Chicago, she was free, to tell the truth. At the Worlds Fair, she pleads for inclusion. Ida used the international stage to expose lynching. She pulled no punches in her work. After the Worlds Fair, she set out to find allies in her anti-lynching campaign. When she returned to Chicago, she met up with Ferdinand Barnett, who would eventually become her husband. He was ten years older than her. He also liked strong women and encouraged Ida in her endeavors. What did Ferdinand do to encourage Ida’s work, continue to watch this documentary to find out? This would be a good episode to show in an American History class and for students working on a project on Ida B. Wells. This documentary is a gem when it comes to exploring the life of Ida B. Wells. Teachers, you are only limited by your imagination to how you use this documentary in the classroom.
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The purpose of this blog is to share information on what can be used in a classroom, private school, or home school setting as well as serve as a portfolio of my personal and professional work. The reviews are my opinions and should be treated as such. I just want to provide a tool for teachers to select documentaries for their classrooms. |