Library Journal
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Giddings (Afro-American studies, Smith Coll.; When and Where I Enter) has written a massive study of this noted black activist's lifelong crusade against lynching. Prodigious research took Giddings to more than 30 archives; 100 pages of notes and bibliography attest to the depth of her scholarship. The result serves as a definitive biography of Wells. Giddings argues that her subject was a leading feminist as well as a crusader for civil rights. She explores Wells's optimism in the face of numerous setbacks, including ostracism from her home city of Memphis. The author concludes that Wells's unflinching focus on opposition to lynching ultimately was adopted by the NAACP as a central tenet, which helped lead to the NAACP's success as a civil rights organization. Much more complete than previous studies of Wells, e.g., by James West Davidson, Ida is well written and painstakingly detailed. Highly recommended for all academic and major public libraries.-A.O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

*Starred Review* An iconic figure in American history, Wells was not always celebrated by her contemporaries for her groundbreaking activism because of her assertive politics and difficult personality. She is best known for her crusade against lynching documenting the injustice often tied to false accusations of black men sexually assaulting white women. Wells understood and chronicled the connection between racism and sexuality as blacks and women asserted themselves in American culture. Giddings offers a look at how Wells' own self-assertion affected her relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and the broader American public as she evolved as a woman and an activist. Wells, born to slaves in Mississippi, was at the forefront of progressivism in advocacy journalism, feminism, and racial justice from her longtime base in Memphis. Exiled from the South in 1892, she launched her antilynching campaign worldwide before marrying and settling in Chicago, where she threw herself into local politics. With meticulous research, including Wells' own diary, Giddings brings to life one of the most fascinating women in American history, giving readers a real feel for the texture and context of Wells' life.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2008 Booklist

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Massive biography of an important yet little-known figure in American civil-rights history. Giddings (In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement, 1988, etc.) attempts to rescue from obscurity anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells (1862–1931). Born into slavery in Mississippi, Wells grew up during the brief post–Civil War period of political and social ascension in which blacks, particularly black women, challenged policies that segregated the races in public places and kept African-Americans out of the voting booth. In the1880s, a series of gruesome lynchings, described by the author in graphic, horrifying detail, ended the illusion that the South had progressed much and propelled Wells to action. In editorials, speeches and pamphlets distributed throughout the United States (and eventually England), she maintained that only equal rights would end lynching—and, even more controversially, that black Americans deserved civil rights simply because they were human. That position put her at odds with less radical members of the antiracist movement, including many women's suffrage groups and nationally prominent figures like Booker T. Washington, who held that blacks must move beyond ignorance and poverty and embrace bourgeois values before they could earn the rights enjoyed by white Americans. Throughout her life, Wells existed on the outskirts of African-American activism, alienating potential allies and estranging erstwhile friends such as Frederick Douglass. Although she is a fascinating woman, this book suffers from her biographer's lack of selectivity. Giddings spares no detail or scrap of salvaged paper, however obscure or immaterial. Asides about conflicts within the black women's club movement go on for chapters, and Wells's early love life, including lengthy quotes from her suitors' letters, gets far more space than it merits. Despite such overreporting, the author fails to explain how this remarkable figure disappeared from history, a glaring oversight in a text that takes pains to explore its subject's long and colorful life from every angle. Exhaustive—indeed, sometimes exhausting—but with a key piece missing. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.