Ida B. Wells, The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader (Penguin Classics, 2014).
Why I Assigned This
I had long used Ida B. Wells’s “The Red Record” to illustrate the horrors of lynching in the Jim Crow South, and my students always responded well to her writing style. Wells uses crisp and direct language, so when I was trying to decide what to use in my first semester teaching this course at VMI, this was a natural choice.
This edited collection of Wells’s writings provided students with a deeper insight into her development as a heroine of the anti-lynching crusade. I also liked that it traced her career and life from the early 1880s through the late 1920s. This was a pivotal period in African American history, and one that I chose to emphasize in my classes. It aligned well with my focus on the intersectionality of race, class, and gender. I knew from previous excerpts that it would elicit great discussion.
How Students Responded
My students enjoyed the book overall, but they did find some of the documents repetitive. This was particularly true because Wells tended to use very similar evidence throughout many articles. This makes sense, and we discussed why this was the case. However, by the fourth week of discussing the same topics, their interest in discussion dwindled.
This is not to say that they did not like Wells’s writing. The initial discussions were particularly fruitful, and they gained a first-hand perspective on the horrors of lynching in a really visceral way. They also found her connections to prominent Black leaders like Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois fascinating.
The Assignment
I had students write an essay between 1,000 and 1,500 words, only using the book, based on the following questions:
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How did Wells utilize gender and race in criticizing the practice of disenfranchisement and lynching?
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What actions does she advocate in protest of the treatment of Black Americans? How do you see these ideas still reflected in the modern United States?
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Why do you think she chose to focus her activism predominantly on the practice of lynching?
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Why is it imperative to continue to study this practice and her writings? What did you take away from the reading of this book? (This should appear in your conclusion and needs to be no more than a couple of sentences.)
The Verdict
I really like Ida B. Wells, and I still use her writings to illustrate the role lynching played in the rise of Jim Crow. Wells does the best job of clearly showing how the restriction of voting rights, segregation, and lynching all form part of the coherent whole of white supremacy in the South. However, I would not assign this book again. My students’ criticism of the repetitiveness was fair, and I do not think they gained any more from reading similar accounts multiple times. I will continue to use things like “The Red Record,” but I would not assign the entire book again.
The assignment asked students to consider too many questions. I should have focused on one or two instead. My students wrote excellent responses, and it was clear that despite their complaints about repetition, they truly understood the power of Wells’s writing. It is also worth noting that I have now abandoned this essay format, as it is too easy for AI to generate a compelling answer to each of these questions.