"The broadest and most comprehensive collection of writings available by an early civil and women's rights pioneer . Seventy-one years before Rosa Parks's courageous act of resistance, police dragged a young Black journalist named Ida B. Wells off a train for refusing to give up her seat. The experience shaped Wells's career, and--when hate crimes touched her life personally--she mounted what was to become her life's work: an anti-lynching crusade that captured international attention. This volume covers the entire scope of Wells's remarkable career, collecting her early writings, articles exposing the horrors of lynching, essays from her travels abroad, and her later journalism. The Light of Truth is both an invaluable resource for study and a testament to Wells' long career as a civil rights activist"--

"Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) is now a Chicago icon and a shining example of fearless grit and truth-telling. Born into slavery, she lost both parents at the age of sixteen and supported five siblings by teaching school. As perhaps the first investigative journalist, she crusaded against lynching and for women's suffrage. She worked with Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony; she co-founded the NAACP and started the Alpha Suffrage Club here in Chicago; she is the first African American woman to have a street named after her in Chicago. This autobiography, edited by Ida B.'s daughter, Afreda Duster, was first published 1970 in a series edited by John Hope Franklin. Alfreda's daughter, Michelle Duster, who has spent years championing her grandmother's memory, has provided a new afterword. We are bringing out the second edition to mark the centennial (June, 2020) of Illinois ratifying the 19th amendment, giving women the vote. Wells was active in the suffrage movement. The new edition has been re-designed and includes four new halftones and a new foreword by Eve Ewing"--