“Born to slaves in1862, Ida B. Wells became a fearless antilynching crusader, women’s rights advocate, and journalist. Well’s refusal to accept any compromise on racial inequality, cause her to be labeled a “dangerous radical“ in her day, but made her a model for later civil rights activists as well as a powerful witness to the troubled radical politics of her era. In the richly illustrated To Tell The Truth Freely, the historian Mia Bell vividly captures Wells’s legacy in life from her childhood in Mississippi to her early career in the late 19th century Memphis and her later life in progressive era Chicago.
Wells’s fight for radical and gender justice begin in 1883 when she was a young schoolteacher, who traveled to her rural school house by rail. Forcibly ejected from her seat on a train. One day on account of her race Wells immediately sued the railroad. Though she ultimately lost her case on appeal in the Supreme Court of Tennessee, the published account of her legal challenge to Jim Crow changed her life, propelling her into a career as an outspoken journalist and social activist. Also a fierce critic of the racial violence that marked her era, Wells went on to launch a crusade against lynching that took her across the United States and eventually to Britain. Those she helped found the NAACP in 1910 after re-settling in Chicago. She would not remain a member for long. Always militant in her quest for racial justice Wells rejected not only Booker T. Washington’s accommodationism, but also the moderating influence of white reformers within the early NAACP, the life of Ida B. Wells and her enduring achievements are dramatically recovered in Mia Bay’s To Tell The Truth Freely.” - Quote from the inside cover of my copy of To Tell The Truth Freely.

I was really expecting to enjoy this book as I did not know much about Well’s life before starting this book. I did learn some things about her life but I was sadly disappointed by the way the book was written. The chapters seemed to drag on and on without an end in sight. 2.5 out of 5 stars.