If Iola Were a Man: The Sexual Politics of Ida B. Wells

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.