If Iola Were a Man: The Sexual Politics of Ida B. Wells
![If Iola Were a Man: The Sexual Politics of Ida B. Wells](/sites/default/files/styles/standard_page_header/public/assets/images/black-studies-program/primary_bay.jpg.webp?itok=jqzUkbWa)
A Lecture by Mia Bay
Historian, Rutgers University
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
4:30 p.m.
Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall
Born in 1862 to slave parents, Ida B. Wells was a woman who frequently assumed male roles. She raised six younger siblings by herself becoming a breadwinner at the age of 16. She was the first Black woman owner and editor of a newspaper and saw herself as the heir to Frederick Douglass' Black America. Ida was most famous for her life-long crusade against lynching. Her ideas were shaped by her experiences as a Black woman, which called into question conventional understandings of gender and sexual relations.
Sponsored by Swarthmore's Black Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and the Department of Political Science