400 Years Of Racism Book Discussion: The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader

In The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader, Wells's anti-lynching crusade comes alive. Through brilliant social analysis, she exposed lynching as part of a larger framework of subjugation in which white people used violence as a deliberate tactic to combat black economic progress in the southern USA. Wells won international renown for her investigative journalism, leading her on lecture tours around the Northern States and Europe, where she rallied support against lynching.

Wells established herself as an advocate for social justice and human dignity by combining irrefutable evidence with deeply personal emotional appeal.

This volume is edited and introduced by Wells biographer Mia Bay.

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She grew up to be a journalist who fought to expose the injustice of lynching through her writing, lecturing, and political activism.

Mia Bay is Professor of History at Rutgers University and Director of the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity. She lives in New York City.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.