To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells

TO KEEP THE WATERS TROUBLED: THE LIFE OF IDA B. WELLS BY LINDA O. MCMURRY

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. 400 PP. $30.

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), anti-lynching journalist and lifelong agitator, was already an icon of black and women's history before Linda 0. McMurry, a North Carolina State University historian, undertook this biography. She adds a great deal of understanding and context to the already remarkable story: Wells was the daughter of a Mississippi slave family who left home and trained herself to be a polemical journalist. In her Memphis newspaper, the Free Speech, she argued that lynching was aimed at enforcing white supremacy; even more explosively, she observed that the "rapes" that led to these atrocities were often consensual relationships between white women and black men. Forced to abandon her newspaper, she built an international reputation as a lecturer and writer, not only on racism but on women's rights. After she settled in Chicago, she married a black lawyer, Ferdinand Barnett. She traveled less as they raised a family, but remained highly visible and vocal. McMurry has used letters and diaries that reveal the enormous dangers and opposition, North and South, that Wells faced in a time that has been called the nadir of American race relations. She also probes Wells's character and faults - her bad temper and insistence on dominating every organization that she joined. Less prominent in her final years, she was still worthy of the tribute the Chicago Defender paid to "the passing of a great woman."

Copyright Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism May/Jun 1999
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