The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader

Seventy-one years before Rosa Parks was arrested for her courageous act of resistance, police dragged a young black journalist named Ida B. Wells off a train for refusing to give up her seat. The experience shaped Wells's career as a journalist and spurred her to become a fierce civil rights advocate. When hate crimes touched her life personally, she began what was to become her life's work: an anti-lynching crusade that captured attention across the United States and abroad. A pioneer in the civil rights movement, Wells exposed the horrors of lynching and brought to light the myths used to justify it.

Covering the scope of Well's remarkable career, The Light of Truthcontains her early writings, her anti-lynching exposes, articles from her travels abroad, and her later journalism.