I read this with my daughter because we knew a few basics about Wells (e.g. she was a journalist and an activist for women's suffrage) but wanted to learn more. Admittedly, at 6yo, my kid is a little young to learn about lynching (which Wells wrote about extensively in order to document the atrocities), but she really latched on to the idea that Wells was fighting for the rights of Black people *way before* the Civil Rights Movement. Ida B. Wells was active from the 1890s until her death in 1931, so she lived through the broken promise of Reconstruction and the pain of Jim Crow. She saw women get the right to vote, but she didn't see the end of legal segregation.

I also appreciated that this book called attention to how some white women suffragists were openly racist. They did not want the women's suffrage movement to include Black women like Wells. This opened up a conversation about intersectional feminism (though that phrase doesn't appear in the book). ( )

Ida B. Wells was a an amazing person, and this is a solid little biography about her. ( )