Ida B. Wells
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'Black People Are America's True Founding Fathers': The Root Presents: It's Lit! Launches With 1619 Project Creator Nikole Hannah-Jones
“I just want people to know the date 1619,” is what New York Times investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones told her editor when pitching the journalistic opus we now know as The 1619 Project. Launched in August 2019, the landmark issue compiled some of the greatest writers and thought leaders of our time to commemorate the…
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An Ida B. Wells Biography, Written by Her Great-Grandaughter, Will Be Released in 2021
Michelle Duster, author, educator, and the great-granddaughter of pioneering journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, announced that she will be publishing a biography about her great-grandmother’s extraordinary life and career. Ida B. the Queen is slated to be released in February 2021, according to One Signal Publishers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. “After working…
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Nikole Hannah-Jones Tells the Story of Investigative Journalist Ida B. Wells
New York Times Magazine staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones considers Ida B. Wells her spiritual grandmother. “She is really the template on which I’ve tried to base my own journalistic career,” she tells The Root. The 2017 MacArthur Genius Grant fellow acknowledges that Wells was one of the original data reporters. Through her work, Ida B.…
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The Ida B. Wells Monument in Chicago Is 1 Major Step Closer to Becoming a Reality
Thanks to a recent push on social media, the organizers of a monument to trailblazing journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells have raised enough money—$300,000—to build the memorial. The push was fueled in part by the anniversary of Wells’ birth this week, and fundraisers hosted by author and educator Mariama Kaba and New…
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Flipping the Narrative: Movement to Publicly Honor Black Journalists and Newspapers Grows
This weekend, two trailblazing black newspapers were honored in New Orleans’ French Quarter with a new bronze plaque that heralds their achievements and their contributions to America’s black press and, by extension, black life. L’Union and la Tribune de la Nouvelle-Orleans (the New Orleans Tribune) circulated among a vast national readership during the Civil War…
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The New York Times Finally Recognizes the Legacies of These World-Changing Black Women
On Women’s Day, the New York Times published an interactive collection called “Overlooked,” a series of obituaries written for notable figures who are long gone but for myriad reasons were not recognized by the Times when they died. In it, the Times acknowledges that over the years, it has repeatedly neglected to recognize notable women…
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Living With History: The Descendants of Ida B. Wells Believe Everyone Has the Potential for Greatness
Editor’s note: For Black History Month, The Root is speaking to the relatives of our most cherished African-American heroes in a series called Living With History. To open the series, we interviewed a descendant of Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. Today we feature Michelle and Daniel Duster, the great-grandchildren of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, renowned…