#Abraham Moss Community School

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Lakes International Comic Art Festival and partners continue work to promote comics as a valuable literacy tool

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is continuing to develop its strategy to champion comics part in promoting literacy, buoyed by its own research and others

[larryfanficwriter98]

Chapter One.

Fake Fiancé/Husband Wanted!

Yes, I know the request looks weird, but I can explain. I work a high demanding job so I can't have custody of my child unless I marry someone with regular hours and a regular nanny on call. I have the nanny, but she is a uni student and can't be here at odd hours. After gaining custody and getting a job with normal hours I am willing to pay you or we can talk about divorce settlements. Preferably someone with a stable job and a liking towards kids. If you have a child, they are welcome to live here too obviously and I will treat them like my own for the foreseeable future. Serious inquiries only, please contact me via email I have made specifically for this.

Thank you.   Louis didn't know why he was on craigslist at three in the morning after drinking himself to death's door knowing Freddie was safe with Zayn for the night. He knew that when he was drunk, he tended to do stupid things and think stupid things. He had been on this post for almost an hour staring at it knowing damn well how stupid and dangerous replying was. That didn't stop him from clicking on the email and typing out a reply. 

To Stranger,

My name is Louis Tomlinson I am a single father of a four-year-old boy. I work as a dramatic arts teacher at Abraham Moss Community. Not the best paying job, but nowhere in your post did you have a minimum annual income requirement. Despite the horrible pay I do love my job and I work at this school for free childcare at the nursery across the street my son goes to. I would like to know a bit more information about you wanting custody before I agree to such a thing. You hear so many stories about fathers taking kids to be spiteful, so I want to be sure that is not the reason.

Louis

****   It was two days later when Louis got a reply from the mysterious guy. He waited until his lunch break before he read it.  

Louis,

You are the first normal person who has shown interest in anything that wasn't money related. For that reason, I really hope we hit it off. I love my daughter so much; she is my absolute world and I video call her every day. It's not me that is the bad parent and I say this as nicely as I can, but her mother is a very absent and selfish parent, and it shows. It's funny you work where you do, my daughter is in Year 1 there.

I gave her mother the money for private school, but she spent it on a new wardrobe for herself and didn't even spent a dime on out daughter. So, she goes to Abraham. I have receipts and check copies, and everything is to prove that I am the 'fit' parent. I have tried to avoid court, but I haven't been able to have my daughter for more than a few hours in over a year. Now her mother is talking about movie to America if her boyfriend gets the promotion at the end of the twelve-month training which just began a month ago. I have a hearing in a few weeks for visiting rights so hopefully if you are still willing after hearing how much drama this will involve, we can talk about everything in person before then.

Your son Freddie, what's his custody like? He is welcome here anytime and if he lives with you full time that's amazing. Obviously, kids make this a bit more delicate, but all the more reason to see if we can try to be something more along the way? We'll discuss this more another time of course, but reply as soon as you are able to and maybe we can get coffee?

 Your (maybe) future husband.

  Louis smiled softly reading about how much the guy loved his daughter. He seemed to want the best for her, and her mother seemed to just want money. He heard about those people and he could honestly say he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe people put themselves first over their own child. Louis had three-year-old winter boots with the soles so worn out that the snow seeped into his socks, but his son always needed new boots every winter and he'd be damned if his son were in pain over too tight shoes because Louis bought a pair of boots for himself. Louis pressed the reply button and wrote a quick response.  

My future husband,

She sounds like the devil. I'd be happy to help you if you don't/haven't found anyone better. I have the same lunch hour every Monday through Friday from 11-12 and there's a small coffee shop around the corner I can make it to for the hour. Then my best my mate has Freddie a weekend a month and then me mum has Freddie for another weekend. Usually it goes me mum, myself, best mate, and myself again. So, to make this believable we have two weekends to have "been together". Freddie is mine solely, I'm a carrier so I had him, and his other father ran out a few months after he was born. Ran off with a younger boy without a child and without a scar on his stomach. Let me know when you're available for that coffee.

Louis

  ***********   Harry emailed only three people Louis, Matthew, and Brian. Matthew and Brian didn't have kids, but they said they liked them. Matthew kept asking about his monthly income which he kept avoiding and Brian asked how big he was and if sex was involved. Harry wouldn't say no to sex of course, but to ask someone's size. He ended up blocking him when he got a dick pic. Matthew then asked how much the wedding would total up to and if they were wearing designer suits, so he ended up blocking him as well. Louis was interested in his reason of doing this and he had a child so knew how real this had to be for kids. He knew what it meant to be a full-time parent and put the kid first. So, he was so far the best candidate and he never even asked about his job or finances. So, after checking his schedule he emailed him and told him he'd be able to meet Thursday during his lunch at the café he knew Louis was talking about.   He got off a rare 38-hour shift Thursday at ten, so it gave him time to make it to the school for a quick minute to see Maddison. He walked into the building still in his pink scrubs and lab coat on as well, but that was because he hadn't taken it off so use to having it on all the time. He headed up to the front desk smiling at Amy.   "Hey Amy, is Maddison available for just a minute? I know she's in art right now."   "She is, however, she's over at the other side in Mr. Tomlinson's room. He's her favorite teacher and she goes there every art class and sometimes when her mother is late for pickup, he stays with her. I can take you to his room."   "Louis Tomlinson?" Harry questioned not believing it for a second   "Well, she calls him Mister Tommy."   "Oh that's- no kidding yeah she told me about him. He gives her candy whenever she gets a good score on her writing or reading." Harry said grinning   "That's him. He seems to be everyone's favorite. I'll take you to him-"   "No, it's okay. Can you just tell her I stopped by? I don't want to disturb her."   "Are you sure?"   "Yeah, it's fine. Thank you, Amy." Harry left the building and headed to his Murano. He waited in the parking lot for a little while as he went through their emails over the past few days. Harry had told Louis his name and that he worked as a doctor. He wanted to get into neonatal care, he already had the training and everything he needed there just hadn't been an opening yet, but the hospital was expanding their Neonatal Ward and Harry had already talked to his higher ups about working there. When he finally got to the cafe, he was only a few minutes later because he got lost in his own head in the parking lot. Harry got out of the car and headed inside up to the front desk. Louis' Gmail account had a picture of himself so when he looked around the cafe it was easy to spot Louis sitting at a booth as he looked down at his phone. Harry grabbed his cup and headed to the booth nervously then set the mug down and slid into the other side. Louis looked up from his phone and smiled.   "Hey." Harry said   "Hi. Sorry I was texting one of the nursery staffs about Freddie. He had a rough night last night so he's having a bad day today."   "Is he okay? Bad dream or something?" Harry asked concerned   "He has a problem of staying asleep, we live in the apartment complex and our upstairs neighbors stay up all night yelling at their game system."   "Melatonin. My mom swears by it when I was a toddler. I had to give mine some when she refused a nap even though she was exhausted a few years ago." Harry told him   "They have melatonin for kids?"   "Yeah, definitely get some for him if he wakes up at odd hours of the night. Also, you know my daughter."   "I do? I know a few Year 1, but not a lot. Who is she?" Louis asked   "Maddison Styles." Louis eyes widen and he grinned   "Yeah, I was just with her. She comes to see me every Tuesday and Thursday during her art class. She has a hard time concentrating in the room, so I took her to mine. I have a free period anyway, so I don't mind."   "Yeah, she's too much like me. Her and I have a sensory overwhelm with too much noise. We also have dyslexia, terrible dyslexia, mine is controlled most of the time now, but she's not doing so good with her reading or writing because she doesn't get at home help."   "Yeah, I figured that out when she wrote her name as Mabbison or Wappison more than a few times." Louis said grinning making Harry laugh nodding   "I had to get five different papers for her birth signing because I was so emotional when I was spelling her name, I messed it up. My mom had to take me to a quiet room and call me down before letting me write again. If was horrible. My patients look at my writing and I can see their confusion build as they try to decipher my spelling." Louis laughed covering his mouth with his hand, "anyway um I know this was meant to be a casual meeting to make sure we're not pedophiles or murders or whatever, but I did bring some copies of things just in case you want to see it. I'm not trying to make her out to be a horrible person, these are just some of the things I had copies of at home."   "Oh, now that I know you're Madison's dad and having met her mother I agree with you. She's a horrible person. I hate her. Today for example Maddison came to school in a dress without a jacket and without leggings. She was freezing, the school wasn't letting kids inside yet, so I let her in the side door to my classroom and gave her some of Freddie's sweatpants I keep in my car. Poor thing is in 3t sweatpants that stop at her shins."   "I have black leggings and a jacket in my car if you can give them to her. I always keep a small totes of season clothes for her just in case anything happens. Usually, the school calls me and tells me if something like this happens and usually, I'm at work so I have to ask someone to bring them for her. A few days ago, her teacher called me and told me Maddie came to school in dirty clothes and when I got there Maddie was in the nurses’ station crying. Apparently, her mother hadn't washed her clothes and that was all she had there. I called her as soon as I left the school and told her is, she didn't wash my daughter's clothes by the end of the day I'd report her to child services. Needless to say, that hasn't happened again, but September hasn’t even ended yet so who knows."   "Yeah, I can take them to her. I don't see how a parent can do such a thing. I always wash Freddie's clothes first then I do his bed sheets then I do the towel then I do my clothes and bedsheets last."   "Yeah, I wash her stuff at my house every two weeks so if I get her out of the blue, she has clean clothes and sheets."   "How long has it been since you last had her?"   "Her mother dropped her off at the hospital when I was working a few weeks ago but she came back right as my shift ended. Maddie was so upset because she thought she'd be able to stay the night. The last time I've had her over night was 16 months ago and I had for her two days because her mother and boyfriend were at a resort for the weekend."   "I couldn't imagine that." Louis said shaking his head, "Freddie is my world. I couldn't be separated from him. I barely manage a weekend away."   "So, does he call you Papa? I know that's the more traditional term for carriers."   "Yeah, most of the time. If he's upset, he'll call me mommy or mama. I am one of the lucky ones able to nurse, at least with Freddie. I heard some can't for their second child or third child. I think with every child the chances get lower. He called me mommy or mama until he was two and a half, so I think it brings him comfort. I don't mind either way."   "That's sweet. I wish I were a carrier. My sister and I had to play mommies and aunties instead of mommies and daddies because I always wanted to be the mommy. I'd shove the baby doll under my shirt and go through labor with my stepdad and everything. My mom held the seat rag to my forehead. We went all out, I demanded it. We were all convinced I was a carrier, then when I was seventeen, I  got tested and I wasn't. I was devastated. I cried so much; I remember convincing myself I was straight for years after that. That's how I got Maddison." Louis laughed unable to help himself   "You're joking."   "No. Not one bit. I thought if I wasn't a carrier there was no point in being gay, so I went straight."   "I was the complete opposite." Louis said, "I was always the daddy, I'm the oldest of five sisters and my mom finally gave me a brother a year ago. Two sets of twins. I demanded to be daddy because I didn't think I was a carrier. I thought I was straight until probably sixteen."   "Really?"   "Yeah, I just never really thought about it, I guess. My first boyfriend was when I was seventeen and we dated until he left after Freddie. I had him when I was twenty on March twenty-first and graduated early. He's turning five next year."   "You had him in school and finished your studies early?"   "Yeah, it was really hard, the first year was terrible, but I got my degree and took the first job I was offered that had the best benefits for us as a family."   "That's amazing. We had Maddison when I was in my foundation programme. I was twenty-four. She was born on May twentieth, so she'll be six two months after Freddie turns five. I started working at twenty-six. Hannah and I split then because I had to work so many night shifts, so she started cheating while I slept during the day. She took Maddie and left. We've been fighting since."   "So, you're thirty?"   "Almost thirty. Still in my twenties for four more months."   "Can't relate. Still got a few years." Louis said smirking making Harry throw a walled-up napkin at him. "Well, you look good for thirty." Louis teased   "Twenty-nine."   "Same thing." Louis said grinning as he watched Harry shake his head grinning as he stared off to the side before their eyes met. Louis knew that even if nothing came from this marriage besides Harry gaining his daughter, it wouldn't be a horrible marriage of convenience. Which made him feel better and he could tell Harry was relieved as well, both glad this wouldn't be a disaster.

 “I’m sure you have a lot of questions for me.” Harry said, “Especially considering how this came to be. I mean I know you see Maddie with her mom, so you understand some of it, but if you want to ask more feel free to do so.”

 “Besides the obvious reasons why go to craigslist?” Louis asked

 “Last resort? It had to be someone my friends didn’t know so I couldn’t ask anyone at the hospital. I tried dating, but it never went past a few texts. Having a daughter that I want full custody of sort of makes men run away. They don’t understand why I can’t just get a weekend a month and be happy with it. I’ve tried explaining the situation, but they don’t get it. Then it’s also my odd hours of my schedule. I’m a doctor at the hospital so I’m off and on and on call a lot. Makes it hard. My schedule is pretty tame, but it’s a pain to get use to and stuff like that.” Harry explained

 “Yeah, I get that. With Freddie…he’s my priority and obviously before I fully agree to anything, he has to like you too, but that can wait a bit. Make sure you’re not a weird murderer or something.”

 “Fair enough.” Harry said chuckling, “So I guess um…why did you offer to help? I know with a son this makes it more delicate, I mean obviously I’m hoping once we settle in, we can try for something real, but why offer?”

 “Any parent who wants to see their child should be able to. I would help anyone who was sincere enough. If you were one of those fathers trying to take their child away from their mother out of pettiness then I’d walk out of this building, but I’ve met Hannah. I’ve seen, I’ve seen the clothes she drops her daughter off in while she’s wearing the newest Gucci purse or whatever. I’ve been talking to school about it since the first day, but there isn’t much we can do. We can record it and file it away incase you ever need it for court, but unless she comes to school with bruises or starving, we don’t have grounds to call child services.”

 “So, Freddie’s other father?”

 “If he ever contacted me, I’d let him see Freddie. I’d talk to Freddie about it first, make him go to the first meeting and if he didn’t want to see him after that? I don’t know. Freddie has asked and I told him the truth, that his other father left a few weeks after he was born. So, it’d be Freddie’s chose after the first meeting and anyone I see would obviously at least respect that. They don’t have to like it or agree with it.”

 “I think people can change if the right person comes along. I hope for Freddie’s sake he contacts you a better man than when he left, but I also hope that if he hasn’t changed that he doesn’t drag Freddie into daddy issues.” Louis cracked a smile and nodded

 “Me too. They’re not fun.”

 “No not really. My biological dad left leaving my mom to feed two kids on one minimum wage paycheck. My stepdad came along and changed our lives basically.”

 “My biological father left when I was born. My stepdad came along and gave me his last name so he’s my dad. Then he and my mom split, and mom is married to Dan now. She just had twin girl and boy two years ago in February.”

 “Awe really? That’s sweet. I’m the youngest out of two kids. I have an older sister.”

 “I’m the oldest of seven kids. Goes me, my sisters Lottie, Fizzy, Phoebe and Daisy are twins then Doris and Ernest are twins and my baby sister and my only baby brother.”

 “That’s a lot of sisters.”

 “Yeah, I’ve had my fair share of handling little girls. I was six when Lottie came around, so I’ve been through it all.”

 “Well then I won’t stop Maddie from painting your nails a pretty pink color when I can’t be her victim in her nail salon. If she’s still into that stuff.” The last part was said sadly as he looked away

 “She is. If she’s done with her art assignment early, then I let her color my nails with markers. It washes off by lunch, but she doesn’t need to know that. She’s great. She is one of my favorite students in that school, whenever we see each other in the halls she absolutely has to shout hi Mr. Tommy each time. My students probably think she’s my niece or something. They call me Mr. T all the time and try to encourage her to do the same however I think she’s too shy to.” Harry was grinning as he played with his napkin listening to him

 “She’s very social. Always has been. There probably isn’t a stranger in the world she wouldn’t talk to. It’s a bad and good thing. I’ve tried to explain it to her, stranger danger and everything and she understands it, but I don’t think she realizes even a little hi can be dangerous in this world these days. Her mother scares me to death, I’ve seen Maddie run right upfront of cars sometimes and I swear my heart stops.”

 “Yeah, I’ve seen her do it too and it’s always the arrival or departure teacher stopping her from getting hit. Hannah will walk her to the crossing way but not to the actual sidewalk so it’s not the easiest thing to watch when I’m on duty. We can’t leave our posts except for emergencies so I have to navigate kids and cars and then watch her and make sure she’s safe. It’s ridiculous sometimes.”

 “Well thank you for doing what you can.”

 “It’s not much, but of course. I’d do it for any kid. Just thinking about Freddie in the same situation I would probably do the same thing you are. So, for now I’ll help, Freddie is what will be the deciding factor.”

 “We’ll talk more and figure it out?”

 “Yeah of course. I should go though I need to get back early today. I forgot today is Pop quiz day, my kids are going to hate me.”

 “Don’t worry about it. Thank you, Louis.” Harry and Louis stood up and walked out together, “My number is in the file I gave you so feel free to text me instead of emailing me if you want to.”

 “Alright. Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

 “Bye.” Harry and Louis were luckily enough to have parked on opposite ends of the car park, so they didn’t have to awkwardly walk beside each other to go to their respected cars. Harry grinned as he looked at the picture of Maddie, he stole off her mother’s Facebook. It was on her fifth birthday party; one he hadn’t been invited to or hadn’t even been told about. She was dressed in a flowy baby blue dress and her hair curled and she was half smiling as she sat on a chair surrounded by a few presents. He touched the picture that was hanging about his rear-view mirror before he sighed sadly and let it fall from his fingers before he started his Murano and headed out of the car park.

[blackkudos]

Ida B. Wells

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931), more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, feminist, Georgist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells lost her parents and a sibling in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic at a young age. She went to work and, with her grandmother, kept the rest of the family intact. She moved with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, finding pay better for teachers.

Later as an activist, Wells documented lynching in the United States in the 1890s, showing that it was often used in the South as a way to control or punish Black people who competed with whites, rather than being based on criminal acts by black people, as was usually claimed by whites. She was active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. Wells was a skilled and persuasive rhetorician and traveled internationally on lecture tours.

Early life and education

Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862, several months before United States President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in Confederate-held territory. Her parents James Wells and Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Warrenton) Wells, were both enslaved by Spires Bolling, an architect. She was one of eight children. The family resided at Bolling's house, now named the Bolling-Gatewood House, where Lizzie Wells was a cook.

Ida's father was a master at carpentry; after the Civil War and emancipation, he was known as a "race man" who worked for the advancement of black people. He was very interested in politics and became a member of the Loyal League. He attended Shaw University in Holly Springs (now Rust College), but he dropped out to help his family. He also attended public speeches and campaigned for local black candidates but never ran for office himself. A religious woman, Elizabeth Wells was very strict with her children. Both of Ida's parents were active in the Republican Party during Reconstruction.

Ida attended Shaw like her father, but she was expelled for rebellious behavior after confronting the college president. While visiting her grandmother in the Mississippi Valley in 1878, Ida, then aged 16, received word that Holly Springs had suffered a yellow fever epidemic. Both of her parents and her infant brother (Stanley) died during that event, leaving her and her five other siblings orphaned. Wells would find a number of men who served as father figures later in her life, particularly Alfred Froman, Theodore W. Lott, and Josiah T. Settle (with whom she boarded in 1886 and 1887).

Early career

Following the funerals of her parents and brother, friends and relatives decided that the six remaining Wells children should be split up and sent to various foster homes. Wells resisted this solution. To keep her younger siblings together as a family, she found work as a teacher in a black elementary school. Her paternal grandmother, Peggy Wells, along with other friends and relatives, stayed with her siblings and cared for them during the week while Wells was away teaching. Without this help, she would have not been able to keep her siblings together. Wells resented that in the segregated school system, white teachers were paid $80 a month and she was paid only $30 a month. This discrimination made her more interested in the politics of race and improving the education of black people.

In 1883, Wells took three of her younger siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with her aunt and to be closer to other family members. She also learned that she could earn higher wages there as a teacher than in Mississippi. Soon after moving, she was hired in Woodstock for the Shelby County school system. During her summer vacations she attended summer sessions at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville. She also attended LeMoyne. She held strong political opinions and provoked many people with her views on women's rights. At 24, she wrote, "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge."

On May 4, 1884, a train conductor with the Memphis and Charleston Railroad ordered Wells to give up her seat in the first-class ladies car and move to the smoking car, which was already crowded with other passengers. The year before, the Supreme Court had ruled against the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 (which had banned racial discrimination in public accommodations). This verdict supported railroad companies that chose to racially segregate their passengers.

Wells refused to give up her seat. The conductor and two men dragged Wells out of the car. When she returned to Memphis, she hired an African-American attorney to sue the railroad. Wells gained publicity in Memphis when she wrote a newspaper article for The Living Way, a black church weekly, about her treatment on the train. When her lawyer was paid off by the railroad, she hired a white attorney. She won her case on December 24, 1884, when the local circuit court granted her a $500 award.

The railroad company appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court's ruling in 1887. It concluded, "We think it is evident that the purpose of the defendant in error was to harass with a view to this suit, and that her persistence was not in good faith to obtain a comfortable seat for the short ride." Wells was ordered to pay court costs. Wells' reaction to the higher court's decision expressed her strong convictions on civil rights and religious faith, as she responded: "I felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things from my suit for my people...O God, is there no...justice in this land for us?"

While teaching elementary school, Wells was offered an editorial position for the Evening Star in Washington, DC. She also wrote weekly articles for The Living Way weekly newspaper under the pen name "Iola," gaining a reputation for writing about the race issue. In 1889, she became co-owner and editor of Free Speech and Headlight, an anti-segregation newspaper that was started by the Reverend Taylor Nightingale and was based at the Beale Street Baptist Church in Memphis. It published articles about racial injustice. In 1891, Wells was dismissed from her teaching post by the Memphis Board of Education due to her articles that criticized conditions in the colored schools of the region. Wells was devastated but undaunted, and concentrated her energy on writing articles for the The Living Way and the Free Speech and Headlight.

In 1889 Thomas Moss, a friend of Wells, opened the Peoples Grocery in the "Curve," a black neighborhood just outside the Memphis city limits. It did well and competed with a white-owned grocery store across the street. While Wells was out of town in Natchez, Mississippi, a white mob invaded her friends' store. During the altercation, three white men were shot and injured. Moss and two other black men, named McDowell and Stewart, were arrested and jailed pending trial. A large white lynch mob stormed the jail and killed the three men.

After the lynching of her friends, Wells wrote in Free Speech and Headlight, urging blacks to leave Memphis altogether:

There is, therefore, only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons.

Wells emphasized the public spectacle of the lynching. More than 6,000 black people did leave Memphis; others organized boycotts of white-owned businesses. After being threatened with violence, she bought a pistol. She later wrote, "They had made me an exile and threatened my life for hinting at the truth."

Investigative journalism

The murder of her friends drove Wells to research and document lynchings and their causes. She began investigative journalism by looking at the charges given for the murders, which officially started her anti-lynching campaign. She spoke on the issue at various black women's clubs, and raised more than $500 to investigate lynchings and publish her results. Wells found that black people were lynched for such social control reasons as failing to pay debts, not appearing to give way to whites, competing with whites economically, and being drunk in public. She found little basis for the frequent claim that black men were lynched because they had sexually abused or attacked white women. This alibi seemed to have partly accounted for white America's collective acceptance or silence on lynching, as well as its acceptance by many in the educated African-American community. Before her friends were lynched and she conducted research, Wells had concluded that "although lynching was…contrary to law and order…it was the terrible crime of rape [that] led to the lynching; [and] that perhaps…the mob was justified in taking his [the rapist's] life".

She published her findings in a pamphlet entitled "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases." She followed this with an editorial that suggested that, unlike the myth that white women were sexually at risk of attacks by black men, most liaisons between black men and white women were consensual. After the editorial was published, Wells left Memphis for a short trip to New England, to cover another story for the newspaper. Her editorial enraged white men in Memphis. Their responses in two leading white newspapers, The Daily Commercial and The Evening Scimitar, were brimming with hatred; "the fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome…calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of southern whites. But we have had enough of it". On May 27, 1892, while she was away in Philadelphia, a white mob destroyed the offices of the Free Speech and Headlight.

Numerous other studies have supported Wells' findings of lynching as a form of community control and analyzed variables that affect lynching. Beck and Tolnay's influential 1990 study found that economics played a major role, with the rate of lynchings higher when marginal whites were under threat because of uncertain economic conditions. They concluded the following:

...[L]ynchings were more frequent in years when the "constant dollar" price of cotton was declining and inflationary pressure was increasing. Relative size of the black population was also positively related to lynching. We conclude that mob violence against southern black people responded to economic conditions affecting the financial fortunes of southern whites—especially marginal white farmers.

According to scholar Oliver C. Cox in his 1945 article "Lynching and the Status Quo," the definition of lynching is "an act of homicidal aggression committed by one people against another through mob action…for the purpose of suppressing…[or] subjugating them further".

In an effort to raise awareness and opposition to lynching, Wells spoke to groups in New York City, where her audiences included many leading African-American women. On October 5, 1892, a testimonial dinner held at Lyric Hall, organized by political activists and clubwomen, Victoria Earle Matthews and Maritcha Remond Lyons, raised significant funds for Wells' anti-lynching campaign. The Women's Loyal Union of New York and Brooklyn was formed to organize black women as an interest group who could act politically.

Because of the threats to her life, Wells left Memphis altogether and moved to Chicago. She continued to wage her anti-lynching campaign and to write columns attacking Southern injustices. Her articles were published in The New York Age newspaper. She continued to investigate lynching incidents and the ostensible causes in the cases.

Together with Frederick Douglass and other black leaders, she organized a black boycott of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, for its failure to collaborate with the black community on exhibits to represent African-American life. Wells, Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Well's future husband Ferdinand Lee Barnett wrote sections of a pamphlet to be distributed there: "Reasons Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition." It detailed the progress of blacks since their arrival in America and also exposed the basis of Southern lynchings. Wells later reported to Albion W. Tourgée that copies of the pamphlet had been distributed to more than 20,000 people at the fair. After the World's Fair in Chicago, Wells decided to stay in the city instead of returning to New York. That year she started work with the Chicago Conservator, the oldest African-American newspaper in the city.

Also in 1893, Wells contemplated a libel suit against two black Memphis attorneys. She turned to Tourgée, who had trained and practiced as a lawyer and judge, for possible free legal help. Deeply in debt, Tourgée could not afford to help but asked his friend Ferdinand Barnett for his aid. Born in Alabama, Barnett had become the editor of the Chicago Conservator in 1878. He served as an assistant state attorney for 14 years. Barnett accepted the pro bono job.

Personal life

Wells kept track of her life through diaries; in them, she writes few personal things. Before she was married, Wells said that she would date only those men in whom she had "little romantic interest," because she did not want romance to be the center of the relationship. She wanted it based on her and her partner's mental and personal interaction, rather than physical attraction. Wells acknowledged such flaws as being very quick to criticize and use harsh words toward another. Because she recorded all of her purchases, her diaries revealed that she bought items which she really could not afford.

In 1895, Wells married attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett, a widower with two sons, Ferdinand and Albert. She was one of the first married American women to keep her own last name as well as taking her husband's.

The couple had four more children: Charles, Herman, Ida, and Alfreda. In the chapter of her Crusade For Justice autobiography, called A Divided Duty, Wells described the difficulty she had splitting her time between her family and her work. She continued to work after the birth of her first child, traveling and bringing the infant Charles with her. Although she tried to balance her world, she could not be as active in her work. Susan B. Anthony said she seemed "distracted". After having her second child, Wells stepped out of her touring and public life for a time.

European tours

Wells took two tours to Europe in her campaign for justice, the first in 1893 and the second in 1894. In 1893, Wells went to Great Britain at the invitation of Catherine Impey, a British Quaker. An opponent of imperialism and proponent of racial equality, Impey wanted to ensure that the British public learned about the problem of lynching in the US. Wells rallied a moral crusade among the British. Wells accompanied her speeches with a photograph of a white mob and grinning white children posing near a hanged black man; her talks created a sensation, but some in the audiences remained doubtful of her accounts. Wells intended to raise money and expose the US lynching violence, but received so little funds that she had difficulty covering her travel expenses.

In 1894 before leaving the US for her second visit to Great Britain, Wells called on William Penn Nixon, the editor of Daily Inter-Ocean, a Republican newspaper in Chicago. It was the only major white paper that persistently denounced lynching. After she told Nixon about her planned tour, he asked her to write for the newspaper while in England. She was the first African-American woman to be a paid correspondent for a mainstream white newspaper. (Tourgée had been writing a column for the same paper.)

Her article "In Pembroke Chapel" recounted the mental journey that an English minister had shared with her. C. F. Aked had invited Wells to speak. He told her he had found it difficult to accept the level of violence she recounted in her earlier accounts of lynching. He had traveled to the US for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and while there, read in local papers about the Miller lynching in Bardwell, Kentucky. He realized that Wells' accounts were accurate.

Wells was highly effective in speaking to European audiences, who were shocked to learn about the rate of violence against black people in the U.S. Her two tours in Europe helped gain support for her cause. She called for the formation of groups to formally protest the lynchings. Wells helped catalyze anti-lynching groups in Europe, which tried to press the U.S. government to guarantee the safety of blacks in the South.

Willard controversy

By the late 19th century, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), a predominantly white women's organization, had branches in every state and a membership of more than 200,000. Part of the progressive movement, it attracted some women to political activity who considered the suffrage movement as too radical. Other women were active in both movements. Frances Willard was president of the Temperance Union from 1879 to 1898.

Willard was touring England on behalf of temperance when Wells was conducting her anti-lynching campaign there. As Wells described American lynchings, British liberals were incredulous that white American leaders such as Willard, whom the English press had described as the "Uncrowned Queen of American Democracy," would turn a blind eye to such violence. Wells accused Willard of being silent on the issue of lynchings, and of making racial comments that added to mob violence. Wells referred to an interview of Willard during her tour of the American South, in which she had blamed black behavior for the defeat of temperance legislation. "The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt," she had said, and "the grog shop is its center of power... The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities."

In response, Willard and her supporter Lady Somerset attempted to use their influence to keep Wells' comments at lectures out of the press. Wells said that, despite Willard's having abolitionist forebears and black friends, she would allow black women to join the WCTU's segregated southern branches.

The dispute between Wells and Willard in England intensified the campaign against Wells in the American press. Though The New York Times had reported on Wells' visit to Britain without much commentary, the paper published an opinion piece in August 1894 that suggested that black men were prone to rape and described Wells as a "slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress" who was looking for more "income" than "outcome." Such attacks in the US press swayed many Britons to support Wells' cause. "It is idle for men to say that the conditions which Miss Wells describes do not exist," a British editor wrote. "Whites of America may not think so; British Christianity does and all the scurrility of the American press won't alter the facts."

Wells also dedicated a chapter of A Red Record to juxtapose the different positions that she and Willard held. The chapter was titled “Miss Willard’s Attitude”. It condemned Willard for using rhetoric that Wells thought promoted violence and other crimes against African Americans in America.

Wells' British tour ultimately led to the formation of the British Anti-Lynching Committee, which included prominent members such as the Duke of Argyll, the Archbishop of Canterbury, members of Parliament, and the editors of The Manchester Guardian.

Southern Horrors and The Red Record

In 1892 Wells published a pamphlet titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Having examined many accounts of lynchings due to the alleged "rape of white women," she concluded that Southerners cried rape as an excuse to hide their real reasons for lynchings: black economic progress, which threatened white Southerners with competition, and white ideas of enforcing black second-class status in the society. Black economic progress was a contemporary issue in the South, and in many states whites worked to suppress black progress. In this period at the turn of the century, southern states starting with Mississippi in 1890, passed laws and/or new constitutions to disenfranchise most black people and many poor white people through use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other devices.

Wells-Barnett recommended that black people use arms to defend against lynching:

The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honour in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.

Wells-Barnett published The Red Record (1895), a 100-page pamphlet describing lynching in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. It also covered black peoples' struggles in the South since the Civil War. The Red Record explored the alarmingly high rates of lynching in the United States (which was at a peak from 1880 to 1930). Wells-Barnett said that during Reconstruction, most Americans outside the South did not realize the growing rate of violence against black people in the South. She believed that during slavery, white people had not committed as many attacks because of the economic labour value of slaves. Wells noted that, since slavery time, "ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, [through lynching] without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution."

Frederick Douglass had written an article noting three eras of "Southern barbarism," and the excuses which whites claimed in each period.

Wells-Barnett explored these in detail in her The Red Record.

During slavery time, she noted that whites worked to "repress and stamp out alleged 'race riots.'" or suspected slave rebellions, usually killing black people in far higher proportions than any white casualties. Once the Civil War ended, white people feared black people, who were in the majority in many areas. White people acted to control them and suppress them by violence.

During the Reconstruction Era white people lynched black people as part of mob efforts to suppress black political activity and re-establish white supremacy after the war. They feared "Negro Domination" through voting and taking office. Wells-Barnett urged black people in high-risk areas to move away to protect their families.

She noted that whites frequently claimed that black men had "to be killed to avenge their assaults upon women." She noted that white people assumed that any relationship between a white woman and a black man was a result of rape. But, given power relationships, it was much more common for white men to take sexual advantage of poor black women. She stated: "Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that black men rape white women." Wells connected lynching to sexual violence showing how the myth of the black man’s lust for white women led to murder of African American men.

Wells-Barnett gave 14 pages of statistics related to lynching cases committed from 1892 to 1895; she also included pages of graphic accounts detailing specific lynchings. She notes that her data was taken from articles by white correspondents, white press bureaus, and white newspapers. The Red Record was a huge pamphlet, and had far-reaching influence in the debate about lynching. The Southern Horrors:Lynch Law in All Its’ Phases and The Red Record’s accounts of these lynches grabbed the attention of Northerns who knew little about lynching or accepted the common explanation that black men deserved this fate. Generally southern states and white juries refused to indict any perpetrators for lynching, although they were frequently known and sometimes shown in the photographs being made more frequently of such events.

Despite Wells-Barnett's attempt to garner support among white Americans against lynching, she believed that her campaign could not overturn the economic interests whites had in using lynching as an instrument to maintain Southern order and discourage Black economic ventures. Ultimately, Wells-Barnett concluded that appealing to reason and compassion would not succeed in gaining criminalization of lynching by Southern whites.

Wells-Barnett concluded that perhaps armed resistance was the Nubian's only defense against lynching. Meanwhile, she extended her efforts to gain support of such powerful white nations as Britain to shame and sanction the racist practices of America.

Wells and W. E. B. Du Bois

Wells often encountered and sometimes collaborated with scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Both condemned lynching. They also competed for attention. They differed in accounts for why Wells' name was excluded from the original list of founders of the NAACP. In his autobiography, Du Bois implied that Wells chose not to be included. But, in her autobiography, Wells stated that Du Bois deliberately excluded her from the list.

Later public career

In 1894, Wells helped form a Republican Women's Club in Illinois in response to women being granted the right to vote for a state elective office and the right to hold elective office as Trustee of the University of Illinois. The club organized to support the nomination by the Republican Party of Lucy L. Flower to that position, and Flower was eventually elected.

Wells received much support from other social activists and her fellow club women. Frederick Douglass praised her work: "You have done your people and mine a service...What a revelation of existing conditions your writing has been for me." Wells took her anti-lynching campaign to Europe with the help of many supporters. Trying to organize African-American groups across the United States, in 1896, Wells founded the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs and the National Afro-American Council.

In 1898, Wells was struggling to manage her busy family life and career, but she was still a fierce campaigner in the anti-lynching circle. That year the National Association of Colored Women's club met in Chicago but did not invite Wells to take part. When she confronted Mary Church Terrell, the president of the club, Wells was told that the women of Chicago had said that, if Wells were to take part in the club, they would no longer aid the association. Wells later learned that Terrell's own competitiveness played a part in excluding her.

After settling in Chicago, Wells worked to improve conditions for its rapidly growing African-American population. They were leaving the rural South in the Great Migration to northern industrial cities. Competition for jobs and housing caused a rise in social tensions; at the same time, there was increased immigration from Europe, and earlier ethnic whites, such as the Irish Americans, worked to defend their own power and territory in the city. Black American migrants had to compete for jobs and housing with millions of immigrants from rural eastern and southern Europe.

Wells worked on urban reform in Chicago during the last thirty years of her life. She also raised her family. After her retirement, Wells began writing her autobiography, Crusade for Justice (1928). She never finished it; she died of uremia (kidney failure) in Chicago on March 25, 1931, at the age of 68. She was buried in the Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago. (The cemetery was later integrated by the city.)

Legacy and honors

Since Wells' death and with the rise of the mid-century civil rights activism, interest in her life and legacy has grown.

In 1941, the Public Works Administration (PWA) built a Chicago Housing Authority public housing project in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the south side in Chicago; it was named the Ida B. Wells Homes in her honor. The buildings were demolished in August 2011 due to changing demographics and ideas about such housing.

On February 1, 1990, the United States Postal Service issued a 25-cent postage stamp in her honor.

In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed Wells on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

In her hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi, there is an Ida B.Wells-Barnett Museum in her honor that acts as a cultural center of African American history.

Awards have been established in Wells’s name by the National Association of Black Journalists, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the Coordinating Council for Women in History, the Investigative Fund, the University of Louisville, and the New York County Lawyers Association, among many others. In 2006, the Harvard Kennedy School commissioned a portrait of Wells. The Ida B. Wells Memorial Foundation and the Ida B. Wells Museum has been established to protect, preserve and promote Wells’s legacy.

Representation in other media

In 1995, the play In Pursuit of Justice: A One-Woman Play About Ida B. Wells, written by Wendy Jones and starring Janice Jenkins, was produced. It is drawn from historical incidents and speeches from Ida B. Wells-Barnett's autobiography, and features fictional letters to a friend. It won four awards from the AUDELCO (Audience Development Committee Inc.), an organization that honors black theatre.

Her life is the subject of Constant Star (2006), a musical drama by Tazewell Thompson. It has been widely performed. The play explores her as "a seminal figure in Post-Reconstruction America."

In 2016's Dinesh D'Souza's Hillary's America book and film, Carol Swain, a black law professor at Vanderbilt University, who is a scholar of the Democratic Party's history of "plantation politics," tells Wells' story of fighting lynchings and challenging U.S. President Woodrow Wilson over his administration's racial resegregation of the federal work force.

Influence on black feminist activism

In her book, Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics, Joy James characterized the work of black militant feminists such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett as a kind of "limbo" dance. This analogy is an embodied characterization of political work and brings movement into the realm of the political and the performative. Often, militant political activist work is not positioned in relation to an embodied practice such as dance, but if one looks closely at all of the feats of "bending backward" that activists such as Wells-Barnett had to engage in, there would be no doubt that these women were the political acrobats of their time. Joy James describes her theorization of "limbo" in the following passage:

Limbos are ideal spaces for witnessing and generating movements to address the inadequacies of linear liberation theories that offer little resistance to the complexity of dominance that manifests over time in multiple, intersecting layers and sites. In the limbos of social movements, the past, present, and future coexist and overlap. Time is nonlinear. Space and community are expansive. In their progressive forward movement, contemporary black feminisms often bend backward toward historical protofeminist ancestors like abolitionist Maria W. Stewart, Ida B. Wells, and Ella Baker. In so doing these feminisms routinely retrieve from the sidelines of conventional political memory important ancestral leaders for current considerations and political struggles. Political amnesia, the gray area surrounding political agency, partly stems from the erasure of historical figures—particularly those female ancestors who militantly fought as racial and gender outsiders for democracy, only to be marginalized later from 'respectable' political community.

While researching Wells-Barnett's life, this "bending backward" or "limbo" dancing that James theorizes manifests through a larger vision to build a black feminist movement that included black men, white women and white men. Wells-Barnett's anti-lynching campaign superseded the suffragists and racial uplift movements of her time due to her ability to call everyone to the proverbial table and ask for their accountability. Although not a feminist writer herself, Wells-Barnett tried to explain that the defense of white woman’s honor allowed Southern white men to get away with murder by projecting their own dark history of sexual violence onto black men. Her call for all races and genders to be accountable for their actions showed African American women that they can speak out and fight for their rights. By portraying the horrors of lynching, she worked to show that racial and gender discrimination are linked, furthering the black feminist cause.

Wikipedia

[nyslovesfilm]

Save the Date: TV Premieres and Film Releases

The schedule of television premieres and film releases continues.  Below is a list of upcoming television shows and films that participated in New York State’s production and post-production tax credit programs with upcoming release/premiere dates.

Divorce - Season 3 – July 1 – HBO A biting comedy series from creator Sharon Horgan about the lows and lower lows of a very long divorce. Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church, Molly Shannon (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production) Midsommar – July 3 – A24 Dani and Christian are a young American couple with a relationship on the brink of falling apart. But after a family tragedy keeps them together, a grieving Dani invites herself to join Christian and his friends on a trip to a once-in-a-lifetime midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village. Starring: Florence Pugh, Will Poulter, Jack Reynor (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Post Production) The Farewell – July 12 – Big Beach Films/A24 In this funny, uplifting tale based on an actual lie, Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai, has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai Nai herself.  Starring: Awkwafina, Tzi Ma, Gil Perez-Abraham (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Post Production) Bottom of the 9th – July 19 – Saban Films A tragic mistake lands 19-year-old baseball phenomenon Bobby Stano in jail before his burgeoning professional baseball career gets off the ground. Now at 39 and fresh out of prison, he works to win back his respect, his family, his lost love, and his dream of having a professional baseball career. Starring: Sofía Vergara, Joe Manganiello, Denis O'Hare (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production) Above The Shadows - July 19 – Gravitas Ventures A young woman who has faded to the point of becoming invisible must find her way back with the help of the one man who can save her. Starring: Megan Fox, Justine Cotsonas, Olivia Thirlby (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production) Skin – July 26 – A24 After a difficult childhood drives him into the grasp of a white supremacist gang, Bryon  escapes to a new life, all the while questioning whether he's capable of undoing—and repenting for—the evil he's done. Starring: Jamie Bell, Danielle Macdonald, Daniel Henshall (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production) Orange Is The New Black - Season 7 – July 26 – Lionsgate / Netflix Piper Chapman is a public relations executive with a career and a fiancé when her past suddenly catches up to her. In her mid-30s she is sentenced to spend time in a minimum-security women's prison in Connecticut for her association with a drug runner 10 years earlier. Starring: Taylor Schilling, Kate Mulgrew, Uzo Aduba (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production)

Share – July 27 – A24 A disturbing video leaked from a local high school throws a Long Island community into chaos and the national spotlight as it tries to unravel the story behind it. Starring: Rhianne Barreto, Poorna Jagannathan, JC MacKenzie (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Post Production) Otherhood – Aug. 2 – Netflix This year, on Mother's Day, feeling marginalized and forgotten, longtime friends Carol, Gillian, and Helen decide to drive to New York to reconnect with their adult sons, and in the process, they realize their sons are not the only ones whose lives need to change. Starring: Felicity Huffman, Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production) Luce – Aug. 2 – Topic Studios / Neon A married couple is forced to reckon with their idealized image of their son, adopted from war-torn Eritrea, after an alarming discovery by a devoted high school teacher threatens his status as an all-star student. Starring: Octavia Spencer, Naomi Watts, Kelvin Harrison, Jr. (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production) Preacher - Season 4 – Aug. 4 – Sony / AMC Fulfilling a promise to his deceased father, one-time outlaw Jesse Custer returns home to West Texas to take over his dad's church. Jesse's mission, however, becomes twisted when his body is overcome by a cryptic force that unleashes within him a highly unconventional power. Starring: Dominic Cooper, Joseph Gilgun, Ruth Negga (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Post Production) After The Wedding – Aug. 9 – Sony Pictures Classics Seeking funds for her orphanage in India, Isabelle travels to New York to meet Theresa, a wealthy benefactor. An invitation to attend a wedding ignites a series of events in which the past collides with the present as mysteries unravel. Starring: Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Billy Crudup (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production) The Kitchen – Aug. 9 – WarnerBros In this gritty, female-driven mob drama, the mobster husbands of three 1978 Hell's Kitchen housewives are sent to prison by the FBI. Left with little but a sharp ax to grind, the ladies take the Irish mafia’s matters into their own hands—proving unexpectedly adept at everything from running the rackets to taking out the competition…literally. Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production) Already Gone – Aug. 16 – Gravitas Ventures A lonely teenager in Coney Island uses his graffiti to escape his abusive stepfather. The teenager is in love with his stepfather’s girlfriend, and they flee together to Colorado after the stepfather tries to pimp her out. Starring: Seann William Scott, Raquel Castro, Shiloh Fernandez (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production) Brittany Runs A Marathon – Aug. 23 – Amazon Studios Brittany Forgler is a 27-year-old hot mess of a New Yorker whose trashy nightclub adventures and early-morning walks of shame make her late for work every day. Suddenly forced to get a grip, Brittany laces up her Converse sneakers and runs one sweaty block. The next day, she runs two. Soon she runs a mile. Brittany finally has direction—but is she on the right path? Starring: Jillian Bell, Lil Rel, Michaela Watkins (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production) Power--Season 6 – Aug. 25 – STARZ It appears James "Ghost" St. Patrick has it all—a drop-dead gorgeous wife, a stunning Manhattan penthouse, and the power and success that come with owning hot new nightclub, Truth. But a closer look reveals a man living a double life. When Ghost isn't tending to his Fortune 500 business, he's catering to clients of another operation: a drug empire that serves only the rich and influential. Starring: Omari Hardwick, Joseph Sikora, Naturi Naughton (Participated in the New York State Film Tax Credit Program – Production)

[mmckenzieport]

By Melissa McKenzie

The July City Council calendars are out, and one thing is still clear: previous months have not been edited to reflect missed meetings. There continues to be no mention of Peter Hillan, Banner Public Affairs, and, given the City’s recent rent battle with the 49ers, no mention of Sam Singer, the City’s contracted public affairs consultant, less one introductory meeting between the communications professional and Mayor Lisa Gillmor back in February. However, there are still plenty of Council Member meetings to note in July.

The Mayor began her month by attending the annual 4th of July picnic at Central Park and followed it with an introductory meeting on July 5 with Emily DeRuy of the San Jose Mercury News.

On July 6, Gillmor recorded a meeting with Cupertino’s Mayor Darcy Paul, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies CEO Dirk Ahlborn and Related lobbyist Jude Barry about “hyperloop opportunities.”  The hyperloop project, first reported earlier this month, will ideally travel from San Jose’s Diridon Station to DeAnza College with the bulk of track barreling down Stevens Creek Boulevard through the Santa Clara/San Jose border.

Barry’s involvement in this project remains unknown. In the past year, he had meetings about transportation with Council Member Teresa O’Neill (Mar. 7 of this year and Sept. 29 and Aug. 18 of last) and Vice Mayor Kathy Watanabe (Apr. 5, but recorded as “transpiration”). But his most recent lobbyist report, dated July 12, lists Related as his only client.

Gillmor also had a meet and greet introduction with Santa Clara University’s Vice President of Finance and Administration Michael Crowley and Assistant Vice President of University Operations Chris Shay on July 12, and on the 17th, met with Watanabe, O’Neill, Assembly Member Kansen Chu and Chu’s field representative Simeone Chien regarding “legislation, state budget and district issues.” Additionally, the Mayor met with resident Vicky Field and Westgate Church’s Local Compassion Pastor Finny Abraham about volunteer opportunities.

The Mayor had a single developer meeting in July. On July 24, she met with John Hyjer, first vice president of investments with Equity Residential regarding 3131 Homestead Road, the site of the Laguna Clara Apartments, where the developer hopes to build a four-story, 585-unit urban-infill project to replace the current 86 unit complex.

Her last two meetings of interest occurred on July 27 when Gillmor had a meeting about City Place with Santa Clara and San Benito Counties Building and Construction Trades Council Executive Director David Bini and Steve Flores, business manager for United Association of Journeymen Local 393  and a second meeting with Rudolph and Sletten’s John Elwood and Lou Mariani and Linda Lecca of Mariani’s Inn and Restaurant. Elwood is listed as being with Mariani’s — not with his employer, a developer.

The Vice Mayor spent the first two weeks of the month attending public events and meetings, as well as the funeral for former Mayor and Council Member Larry Marsalli and she provided an interview about the Chamber of Commerce to David Louie of KGO-TV.

On July 13, Watanabe, along with O’Neill, met with Prometheus’ Executive Vice President and Partner of Development Jon Moss and Development Director Marilyn Ponte regarding 575 Benton Street, a 355 apartment complex that includes eight live-work units, 650 parking spaces, 1,601 square feet of office space, 346 square feet for a pet spa, 1,528 square feet of bike amenity space, three private courtyards and one public courtyard, 19,985 square feet of retail space, 2,364 square feet of potential commercial space and an amenity roof deck with 4,341 square feet of club room and a fitness center.

Five days later, on July 18, Watanabe met with John Hirokawa regarding his candidacy for Santa Clara County Sheriff and two days later had a meeting with Karina Dominguez about her candidacy for Milpitas City Council.

On July 25, Watanabe met with residents Lavell Souza, John Lesnick, Jamie Brick, Hung Le and Kevin Park about the 1530-1540 Pomeroy Ave. project, a proposed development of eight two-story townhomes to replace two single-family homes and miscellaneous small outbuildings. One day later, she met with Hunter Properties’ Director of Development Josh Rupert and Chairman of the Board Edward Storm about the Gateway Crossing project, a mixed-use development of 1,600 apartments, a 182,000-square-foot full-service hotel and 15,000 square feet of ancillary retail, surface and structured parking facilities, public and private streets, neighborhood park and open space at 1205 Coleman Ave.

The Vice Mayor ended her month by meeting with resident Hazel Abalgado about community issues on July 28 and Council District 2 Candidate Nancy Biagiani about her campaign on the same day.

O’Neill’s July began with her monthly resident Q&A on July 1, which she followed with a call a day later with resident Alycia Burgoon about the catchall “city issues.” She, too, recorded a meeting with Rupert and Storm about the Gateway Crossing project on July 11 and attended Marsalli’s funeral on July 13.

Later that day, she attended the 575 Benton Street project meeting with Watanabe before sitting down with Santa Clara Unified School District Board (SCUSD) of Trustees candidate Vickie Fairchild, Santa Clara Unified Parents (SCUP) treasurer Peta Roberts and educator Tiffany Anderson about SCUSD issues and the upcoming board elections this November.

Schools continued to hold a presence on O’Neill’s calendar with the Council Member meeting with former president and board member of the California School Boards Association (CSBA) Josephine Lucey and Santa Cruz County Office of Educators Area 4 Trustee Rose Filicetti on July 16 regarding “public schools issues.”

O’Neill also attended the July 18, 18 and 20 trail on the Ladonna Yumori Katu et. al. v. the City of Santa Clara, or the voting rights lawsuit that resulted in eliminating citywide Council voting for districted council seats and a citywide mayor election process.

On July 24, O’Neill met with Santa Clara Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Nick Kaspar about the Convention-Visitors Bureau and had a conference call with Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA)’s Deputy Director Dennis Radcliffe and Caroline Gonot about the Berryessa Extension.

Finally, O’Neill ended her month with four resident meetings: Nancy Biagini about her candidacy for Council Seat 2, Mayuri Restaurant owner Sam Kumar regarding “city issues,” Raj Chahal about his candidacy for Council Seat 2 and Luis Lecanda regarding board and commission openings.

Council Member Debi Davis kept a light July calendar mostly filled with public events and meetings. However, she did have a meeting with Moss and Ponte on July 16 regarding the 575 Benton Street project, as well as sitting down with residents Rich Bonito and Howard Myers about Mariani’s Inn and Restaurant on July 18 and meeting with lobbyist Cynthia James about Great America on July 26.

In addition to attending Marsalli’s funeral, Council Member Pat Kolstad had a phone call with Ray Hashimoto, principal of HMH Engineering, about an unnamed new development on July 11 and notched a meeting with Rupert and Storm about Gateway Crossing on July 16.

Council Member Patricia Mahan only had public meetings and events listed on her July calendar.

While meetings have not been added to Council Calendars to reflect previous errors and many meetings go unrecorded completely, the Council Calendars give some insight to the vast amount of time Santa Clara’s elected officials spend meeting with lobbyists and developers about pending and proposed projects within the City.  View all Council Member calendars at http://santaclaraca.gov/government/public-calendars-of-certain-city-officials.

Read our coverage of June’s here.

[theginawestheadxox-blog]

KEY BLOG POST- Monday 14th May (Reflection)...

The most unfamiliar scenario I have found within Unit X is the amount of group work that the unit has entailed. My course doesn’t very often require collaboration, so this is something new for me and doing so much of it e.g. “most likely to succeed screening” workshop and “Abraham Moss Primary School” workshop has made me realise that I struggle with it as  it was hard to pin down a time where everybody was free meaning some members of the group knew more than others and we had to do most of the planning over messenger which got quite confusing as some people didn’t see certain messages/ didn’t respond etc. However, despite these group difficulties, it has also made me see that sometimes these complications can be worth it as bouncing ideas off each other was helpful and created a final product that was an accumulation of all our ideas. This was better than any of us could have achieved alone. After reflecting on my primary school placement, I also now appreciate just how much work goes into controlling a class and managing to teach the curriculum whilst also keeping their attention. It’s made me have a new-found awareness of just how committed I need to be if I am to pursue educating going forward.

Within Unit X, Educator the main thing I have found out about myself is the age group that I wish to work with. I went into Unit X thinking that I had an interest in maybe working with primary school children, but have come out the other side of the unit confident that either high school or AS/A level is right for me due to the primary school experience and the various engagements I’ve been to e.g. the PGCE drop in. These things combined made me see that I wouldn’t find primary school fulfilling due to previously mentioned reasons such as me not being able to take pride in the learning there doing as I struggle to identify and appreciate it with a young age group. I also realised just how much I do enjoy making art. It feels strenuous and difficult whilst doing my studio practice but stopping that to do Unit X has made me miss it so much that I know realise it’s something I always want to keep in my life and therefore, I want to undertake a more serious teaching of the subject with an older age group as opposed to it just being a part of what I teach in a Primary school. Engaging with the things that I have during unit X has made me have a wider understanding of the differences between the different kinds of educators as I have had an opportunity to talk to numerous people who have taught from primary through to A level. This has informed the way I see lesson planning and engaging with learners heavily as I now see that the common factor between all of them is ensuring that you always make the learner feel validated and never undermine. I also strongly feel that Unit X will help me in my studio practice too in the sense that realising how much I miss making which encourage me to do it much more passionately and produce much more work and push myself to make the best things I can.

I feel that I committed to most aspects of the unit as education and art’s place within it is something I am very passionate about. I took part in all the initial sessions at Stockport market place (other than the week I was too ill to attend) and have thoroughly engaged with the blogging, ensuring that I took lots of documentative pictures and blogged about the day’s tasks on the night when I got home so it was fresh in my mind and as sincere and helpful to me when reflecting as possible. Writing about things such as the failing workshop and the maker’s palette task helped me to start grasping an understanding of the kind of things I wanted to be as an educator from early in the unit, so this is something I am glad I engaged with. Blogging has also been helpful in helping me decide what I want from this unit and what I want going forward. I also feel that I committed and contributed to both workshop activities I was directly involved in. These being the “most likely to succeed” workshop and the primary school workshop. Both went well, and I contributed plenty of ideas to both, especially the primary school workshop in which I was also the person to organise and provide all the materials as well. Due to this and other aspects of the primary school workshop I feel that in this one especially, I took a leadership role in the collaborative work side of things. This was a learning curve for me as I didn’t realise that I had the confidence in myself to do this and not worry about judgement from others. I’m so proud of myself for this and it’s a skill I will utilise going forward. There were two aspects of the unit I feel I didn’t contribute too well enough. Firstly, the tutorial opportunities with Elle and Clare. I missed a fair few of these chances due to placement but if I had the opportunity to do the Unit again I would ensure that I made time for at least 3 or 4 tutorials before the end of the unit as I feel more of their input would have helped me even more with my reflection and understanding. Secondly, I could have done much more when it came to the Cass Art workshop despite my placement. I couldn’t go and be there on the night as I attended the PGCE drop in and this was more of a priority for me in terms of my personal learning needs, however I wish I’d have made time to go and help set up during the day. Reflecting on how I regret these things has made me realise that in future I need to be taking advantage of all opportunities I must engage as this is the way I will learn the most and gain a wider understanding of educating and what it takes. The more I do in different setting will also serve to further my contextual understanding of educating and the responsibility that comes with it.

I feel that I could have carried out further research in my spare time by doing things like reading ALL the links that Clare and Elle posted to the educator group and trying to find more TED talks about education. This is something I should have been doing throughout the whole course, rather than just at the end of the unit like I did, as it would have taught me more and would have been helpful material to reflect on within my blog. I feel that there should have also been more in-depth research and a higher level of interrogation when it came to planning the two workshops I was involved in. We should have been more organised as groups and spent longer investigating the different options for materials and workshop layout to do something more unique. This way we could have delivered workshops that stuck in people’s minds and maybe encouraged the primary teacher to teach more things with an interdisciplinary aspect of art. If I could go back I would start planning workshops immediately so that I could spend as long as possible amending the idea so that all of it was the best it could be as although both workshops I was involved in were successful, in my opinion they weren’t one of the “WOW” workshops that Clare always talks about. After reflecting on the whole unit I feel that my idea development is quite well rounded and I have come out if the unit knowing what kind of educator I want to be and what key stage I want to do this at, however I feel that if I would have done more experimentation with my workshop planning I would also have a more well rounded idea about how I wished to go about passing on my skills in a memorable way in the future.

I think during Unit X Educator I have done a lot of learning when it comes to knowing how to communicate my ideas clearly and how to get a lot of work done when feeling time pressured e.g. workshop planning. After reflecting on my experience in the primary school and my experiences within the educator class, I also feel that I am now much better at small talk and interacting with people that I don’t know at all which is something I’ve struggled with in the past. I feel that I could improve upon how heavily I interrogate workshop opportunities and how many things I try and achieve in terms of the ambitiousness of the workshop. For example, if I was to have another chance to deliver a workshop I would want to spend longer making sure I had a unique idea that would expose the learners to at least one thing they hadn’t done before. As I previously mentioned, this is something I feel I didn’t achieve and I plan to do further research on ways to make my workshop much more creative. I feel that an aspect of the Educator course that I could develop further in line with my studio practice is the idea of using workshops as a way of researching for my art. In my 10 minute microteach I planned to get people to draw/tell me their perceptions of Brutalist architecture as an aid to understanding my work and reflecting on this has made me realise that would be a really good way to gather research. Since then I have done this over social media sites such as Reddit and have achieved a larger amount of research that is richer in variety than I managed to get throughout the whole course of this year.

Overall, the experiences I have had within this unit and reflecting upon them have shown me how much I value the opportunities to make art and develop my practice that university gives me. I value this greatly and as a result will work harder at it in the future. It has also shown me what path I want to take in the future and given me a clear idea of how I’m going to get there. Unit X had been a really positive learning experience for me and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in educating.

[maryannkaufman]

I realize that even if I was exactly like everyone else...

I am in a rare minority.  I am in the 1 in 3 that has experienced sexual harrassment, molestation and near rape.  When I was three I was molested by a neighbor.  When I was six I was bullied by my teacher and some student exposed himself to me and another classmate in the cloakroom.

I was sexually harrassed verbally by a teacher in 8th grade. 

 Almost raped twice back in the 1980s (one guy was actually unbuttoning my blouse and I was protesting too.)  Stalked in 1983 by a guy who broke into my dorm, floor and threatened to kill me and then commit suicide with a gun at 2 in the morning.  Yes it was reported.  No they would not file any charges because it wasn’t illegal.  One stalker went after the entire five floors of a woman’s dorm and we were all stalked starting in 1979 by a man who kept upping the ante and put a girl in the hospital in 1983 before charges were filed finally against him  It wasn’t the same guy who tried to rape me and then threaten to kill me..  Back before 1984 there were no stalking laws in any state in the US.  Technically, it was fine with the police and campus security to corner my naked roomate in the girls shower in 1980 at my college.  She was lucky.  He didn’t do anything other than that.

I was lucky during that period as a lot of girls experienced gang rape at parties because of all the heavy drinking allowed.  But my luck didn’t hold out.  When I went back to finish my bachelors later in life,  I was raped, but I cannot remember by who in 2005, again is was at a University.  I’m 99.99 percent sure that it was not any of the faculty members nor staff, nor was it one of the graduate students I worked for.  But that is all I can remember.

In 2005 I was tortured by the whoeever the CIA people were at the time for whatever reason, not sure what it was because all I was doing was attending a conference with the rest of my graduate degree class in Washington D.C..  I was shot at back at UIC, they gave me the spent casing they found, but never found out who did it.  The person missed, thank God.  

I got sick and almost died the summer of 2006, but rallied and kept going to school to finish my degree.  I found a job before I graduated in 2008, but I was experiencing horrific migraines five days a week and my daughter who was diagnosed with seizures in 2005 and chiari I malformation, her doctor’s had hours that were during my work day and they had no flex hours, so I resigned my position there after only 7 months.  Since then I have not found another job that lasted more than 24 hours.  

People think I am a quitter.  But if they think that, they are mistaken.  I suffer from PTSD, severe anxiety, a thyroid problem, and self harming behavior.  My youngest daughter beat her epilepsy and it’s gone, and outgrew her chiari I malformation, but the same daughter at the same time as my thyroid problem manefested started to have terrible digestive issues, which she only recently started to overcome.  My oldest son’s teeth fell apart and he became obese and my youngest son ended up with C-diff two years ago and only recently has overcome the terrible damage it caused his colin.  My oldest daughter had a malfunctioning gall bladder and received outpatient surgery and was out the door in less than five hours.  Meanwhile they have recently discovered that she has a problem with her ear too, in which either the bone is very thin between her brain and the hearing canal or is not there.  But her hearing is still ok.  Still I worry about car accidents or falls where she could hit her head.

So what am I doing?  Instead of quitting on people and deciding to heck with them (because other bad things happened on top of this to my kids due to teasing, harrassing, and people spreading untrue rumors), I’m trying to help in research, help in food banks, help at my churches, help at the community college I go to now.  I take classes and will receive either a certificate in GIS or will go for an associate in it if I get the internship that I interviewed for recently.

Am I backing away from urban planning and policy?  Absolutely not.  I have a success in my back yard in which moss is growing on the vertical wall I and another student designed.  The plants are actually bigger and even the African Violet pulled through the drought period and frost.  I don’t know if it will rebloom, but it is interesting to watch.   

Pending the internship, I will also pick up two business courses and two programming courses in computer science and THEN if I cannot get hired I WILL start my own business because I KNOW what I want to produce and it will be good for DuPage which will only strengthen other Chicago suburbs.  

I’m on Transport Chicago as they grow because it is the BEST conference for the money and I see a vision for the organization that’s going to be nothing short of amazing in about 10 years.  In other words, we’re still growing and it will be a real asset to the Chicago region and in fact it already is.

And finally, BUT not least, I’m still on the Federal Sustainability subcommittee and I’m still going to produce for them this year come heck or high water.  I did submit to TRB again which means I will go back to D.C. if I’m chosen to present.  

In short, if you think I’m the type of person that quits on people, on God, on Hope, on Joy, on Love, on Marriage, on my children, my husband and the value of education and this planet, think again.

I am female, like most females, I suffer and have suffered discrimination, harrassment, and sexual molestation.  I now deal with chronic illness in part due to my past experiences.  My children have suffered similar things, well except hopefully the rape part.  But my two daughters have been stalked, recently.  

The women of the world share these things as a deep bond and while we are not the majority, neither are we the minority and these things have NOTHING to do with religion.  NOTHING.  Jesus had respect for women, even prostitutes and treated them like everyone else.  Nowhere does it say that a woman should suffer harrassment, violence, stalking, or rape.  It’s not in Jewish tradition either.  Since Islam is an Abrahamic religion, I’ll bet it’s not ok in their religion either.

So I think it is time to really stop this assault on half of the world’s population and stop the violence.  These are women who are your mothers, sisters, daughters, grandchildren, not some person you don’t know.  In fact, you probably know these people of sexual violence better than you realize.

[newstfionline]

For Manchester, as for Its Libyans, a Test of Faith

By Rory Smith and Ceylan Yeginsu, NY Times, May 25, 2017

MANCHESTER, England--The stretch of Wilmslow Road that runs through the Rusholme neighborhood, south of the city center, is known as the Curry Mile, thanks to the Indian and Pakistani restaurants that have been here for decades.

But that label no longer seems to do the place justice.

Kurdish barbers sit next to stores selling shimmering saris. An Islamic bookstore faces a Jamaican supermarket. The air carries the sweet scent of shisha, emanating from cafes named after Damascus and Dubai. The food is from Tunisia, Vietnam and all points in between. These few blocks contain a whole world.

And part of that world are the 10,000 or so Libyans in Manchester, the largest community outside Libya. Many arrived here to escape Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s regime and have been here for decades, a quiet presence in the city, well woven into Manchester’s fabric.

Now, a British citizen of Libyan descent, Salman Abedi, has inflicted the most grievous pain on the place that raised him. On Monday night, he detonated a bomb full of nails, bolts and ball bearings at the Manchester Arena, killing 22 people and injuring dozens more.

He attacked not just a concert venue. He attacked a city and its sense of self as the proudly cosmopolitan, multicultural capital of northern England.

The Manchester still reeling from Monday night’s terrorist attack is not the decaying postindustrial wasteland of the 1970s. Nor is it the Ecstasy-fueled party city that emerged a decade later, or the gang-ridden gun crime capital of Britain that lodged itself in the popular imagination at the turn of the century.

It is none of those things and all of those things. It is the gleaming glass towers of Spinningfields and the hipster bars of the Northern Quarter, the leafy suburbs of Chorlton and Didsbury, the high-rises of Hulme and the uneasy, red brick streets of Moss Side.

It is a city of 530,000 people--in a metropolitan area of 2.5 million--many of them now wondering whether the city really is the exotic, polyglot, polychrome place they believe it to be. It is smaller than London, of course, and perhaps not as rich or as sophisticated, or as famous, but no less confident or international.

As graffiti on a disused rail depot not far from Piccadilly train station has it, Manchester sees itself as “a haven for heathens, hoodies and hipsters, hijabis and Hebrews, highbrow intellectuals and however-you-sexuals … it’s home to all.”

It is that open-mindedness that first brought Libyans here, in search of their own haven. “People often call it Libya’s second capital,” said Hashem Ben Ghalbon, a Libyan who has lived here since 1976 and who was, for decades, one of the leading figures in the dissident movement based in Manchester after escaping Colonel Qaddafi’s rule.

When he first came, he said, he found “no more than a hundred” of his countrymen.

“If you go to the hospital up the road, there will be Libyan doctors,” said Saif Eddin, who moved to England from Libya 12 years ago and has spent the last decade in Manchester. “If you get a coffee at Costa Coffee or Caffe Nero, the guy serving you will be Libyan. There are lots of Libyans who work at Manchester Airport. If you go to the immigration office, the woman who works there, she’s Libyan.”

He works in a Lebanese restaurant called Beirut on the Curry Mile. There are no Libyan restaurants or bars nearby, nor are there shops or community centers dotted around the city--no physical sign at all, in fact, of a thriving expatriate culture.

“There are a lot of us here, but we don’t live in the same place, like the Jewish community,” said Tariq Olilish, 18, a native Libyan raised in Manchester.

Mr. Ben Ghalbon suggested that could be explained by the circumstances of their arrival. Like him, many who came to Manchester were dissidents fleeing Colonel Qaddafi’s repression.

They came, he said, because it was “cheaper than London, life was not so fast, but it was still cosmopolitan and welcoming,” and it became a hive of anti-Qaddafi activity. Mr. Ben Ghalbon and his brother, Mohamed, founded the Libyan Constitutional Union, an activist group dedicated to Colonel Qaddafi’s removal and the restoration of Libya’s Constitution.

Among the exiles, though, there were countless schisms. Mr. Ben Ghalbon said some were “more religious” than others, and some had differing tribal loyalties. “We were not well integrated among ourselves,” he said.

Even like-minded dissidents were afraid to congregate, unsure who was a fellow traveler and who was a secret agent for Colonel Qaddafi. For “security,” Mr. Ben Ghalbon said, it was better to stay apart, to blend in and to disappear.

Until Monday night, most believed it had worked. “We have been here since the 1960s,” Mr. Eddin said. “When did you ever hear about anything like this?”

Mr. Olilish, sitting outside his home in Longsight, east of Rusholme, says he believes his generation is “well integrated.” “It is not like London,” he said. “Nobody asks you where you’re from. It doesn’t matter when or how you arrived. If you live here, people treat you like a local.”

The people of Manchester, Mancunians--derived from Mancunium, the Latin name for the Roman settlement here--are “a family,” he said.

There is embarrassment among the Libyans here that “one of our own,” as Mr. Olilish put it, carried out the atrocity. Mr. Eddin said he could understand why the city, and the country, might feel as though they had “done someone a favor and been kicked in the face.”

Mr. Olilish described the people of Manchester as kind and tolerant, saying he always felt part of the community and never felt discriminated against.

In the aftermath of the attack, even he fears the dynamics of the city could change. He decided against attending the vigil on Tuesday for the victims because “people are rightly angry and upset, and I did not want to see that.”

Fawaz Haffar, a trustee at the Didsbury Mosque, where Mr. Abedi and his family worshiped, said at a news conference on Wednesday that he had received reports of “terrible anti-Muslim acts, ranging from verbal abuse to acts of criminal damage to mosques.”

That is not the Manchester that either the city or its appalled, grieving Libyan population recognizes. “The people who have come here have always found Manchester welcoming and accepting of foreigners,” Mr. Ben Ghalbon said. “That is the Mancunian way.”

“I don’t think things are ever going to be the same, not after this,” said Hamza Aberid, 15, a Libyan student at the Abraham Moss Community School. “Everyone at school is down; no one is going out. People are scared it’s going to happen somewhere else.”

[csenews]

Tennessee Department of Education Awards More Than $8.5 Million to 212 Grant Recipients for Summer Reading Programs

Tennessee Department of Education Awards More Than $8.5 Million to 212 Grant Recipients for Summer Reading Programs

 NASHVILLE—Education Commissioner Candice McQueen announced today that more than 11,000 students in 107 communities across the state will benefit from the 2017 Read to be Ready Summer Grant program, which funds educational camps that target rising first, second, and third graders who are not on grade level in reading during the critical summer months. In total, the department is awarding more than $8.5 million to 212 grant recipients throughout Tennessee.

 This spring, the department received applications from nearly three-quarters of school districts across Tennessee for summer grant funding. The Tennessee Departments of Education and Human Services, with support from First Lady Crissy Haslam, have partnered to expand the Read to Be Ready Summer Grant program through an investment of $30 million over the next three years.

 “Summer reading loss can have a significant impact on the academic progress made by our students during the school year,” Mrs. Haslam said. “These Read to Be Ready summer programs are an innovative and strategic approach to combating that summer slide and improving reading proficiency across the state.”

 Read to be Ready is a coordinated campaign and approach to increase third grade reading proficiency in Tennessee to 75 percent by 2025 through a variety of initiatives. The campaign seeks to raise awareness about the importance of reading, unite efforts to address low reading achievement, highlight best practices, and build partnerships. The Read to be Ready Summer Grant Program is designed to support students even after the last day of school, and results from the first year indicated for the nearly 600 students who participated, there were increases in their abilities to read fluently and decode words, increased phonemic awareness, and increased confidence and interest in reading.

 “To reach our goals as a state, we know that our struggling readers need support beyond strong, daily classroom instruction for 180 days of the year,” McQueen said. “Read to be Ready summer programs help communities ensure our youngest learners are getting the targeted support they need year-round. Above all, we want students to develop the skills and abilities that will grow their motivation and confidence to become life-long readers and thinkers.”

 To further support Read to be Ready, starting today McQueen and the First Lady are visiting elementary schools across the state as part of the commissioner’s Classroom Chronicles Tour. During these visits, they are hosting teacher roundtables focused on educators’ perspectives and experiences teaching literacy skills in the early grades. This spring, McQueen has been visiting schools that participate in the Read to be Ready Coaching Network, which supports elementary school teachers and helps them to provide strong instruction, and schools that participated in last summer’s reading grant program.

 The full list of 2017 Read to be Ready summer grant recipients and local program directors is attached as well as available on thedepartment’s website. To find out more about the grants, visit the Read to be Ready website. For more information on Read to be Ready and the summer grant program, contact Paige Atchley, Read to be Ready program director, at Paige.Atchley@tn.gov. For media inquiries, contact Sara Gast at (615) 532-6260 or Sara.Gast@tn.gov.

  District served by camp      Program Director             School (1) School (2) School (3)

Achievement School District (Kawika Chun)    Aspire Coleman   Aspire Hanley 1 Aspire Hanley 2

Achievement School District Craig Robinson      Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary

Achievement School District Josh Shelley      Libertas School of Memphis

Alamo City      Jake Nichols                      Alamo City School

Alcoa City Michael Bradburn Alcoa Elementary School

Anderson County Emily Rishel     Norwood Elementary School

Anderson

County Elizabeth Evans Grand Oaks

Elementary School

Athens City Jennifer Walker Ingleside School

Athens City Karessa Cunningham Westside

Elementary School

Bartlett Trudi Royston Bartlett Elementary

School

Bedford County Elizabeth Davis Thomas Magnet

Bledsoe County Kristy Shockley Pikeville Elementary

Mary V.

Wheeler

Elementary

Cecil B.

Rigsby

Elementary

Blount County Suzanne Costner

Rockford

Elementary and

Eagleton

Elementary

Bradford SSD Amy Dunn Bradford

Elementary School

Bradley County Erica Shamblin Charleston

Elementary School

Bristol City Michelle Poole Fairmount

Elementary School

Campbell

County Mike Miller White Oak

Campbell

County Tammie Davis Jellico Elementary

School

Cannon County Kathy Mullins Woodbury

Grammar School

Cheatham

County Tim Adkins East Cheatham

Elementary School

Cheatham

County Tim Adkins Ashland City

Elementary School

Cheatham

County Tim Adkins Pegram Elementary

School

Chester County Kim Scott East Chester

Elementary School

Claiborne

County Tom Hopkins

Tazewell New

Tazewell Primary

School

Clay County Emily Daniels Celina K8

Elementary School

Cleveland City Lisa Earby Donald P. Yates

Primary

Cleveland City Jessica Bigham Mayfield

Elementary

Cocke County Kathy Holt Centerview

Elementary School

Coffee County Robin Watkins New Union

Elementary

Hillsboro

Elementary

Coffee County Robin Watkins Hickerson

Elementary

Cumberland

County Tammy Stewart Pleasant Hill

Elementary School

Frank P.

Brown

Pine View

Elementary

Davidson County Electa Johns Bellshire Design

Center

Davidson County Meagan Smart Glencliff Elementary

Davidson County Iria Reyes Cole Elementary

Davidson County Jeanne Fain J.E. Moss

Elementary School

Davidson County Tia Tate Old Center

Elementary School

Davidson County Kelly Henderson Napier Elementary

School

Davidson County Kelly Henderson Inglewood

Elementary School

Davidson County Kelly Henderson Whitsitt Elementary

School

Davidson County Kelly Henderson Robert Churchwell

Elementary School

Davidson County Andrea Edwards Glenview

Elementary School

Davidson County Karen Woolridge Caldwell Enhanced

Option School

Decatur County Christee Clenney Parsons Elementary

Dickson County Mandy Roche Dickson Elementary

School

Dyer County Stephanie Johnson Newbern

Elementary School

Dyersburg City Jennifer Pruitt Dyersburg Primary

School

Elizabethton City Julie Hartsook East Side

Elementary

Fayetteville City Bridgette Jones Ralph Askins School

Fentress County Kristi Hall York Elementary

Franklin County Allison Dietz Decherd Elementary

School

Franklin County Barbara King Sewanee

Elementary School

Gibson County

SSD Margaret DeLoach Dyer School

Giles County Tina Smith Pulaski Elementary

School

Richland

Elementary

School

Grainger County Staci Gray

Rutledge

Elementary and

Washburn School

Washburn

School

Greene County Misty Mercer Mosheim

Elementary School

Greene County Julia Lamons Baileyton

Elementary School

Camp Creek

Elementary

School

McDonald

Elementary

School

Greene County Mary Kellner Doak Elementary

Greene County Amanda Carpenter Chuckey Elementary

Grundy County Suzan Richardson Coalmont

Elementary School

Pelham

Elementary

School

Swiss

Memorial

Elementary

School

Hamblen County Tony Dalton Fairview-Marguerite

Elementary

Hamilton County Robin Bambrey Hardy Elementary

Hamilton County Angela Sehstedt Hillcrest Elementary

Hamilton County Eileen Evers Orchard Knob

Elemetnary

Hamilton County Erin Grant Wolftever Creek

Elementary School

Hamilton County Tersheia Hayes Woodmore

Elementary School

Hancock County Jacklyn Bailey Hancock County

Elementary School

Hardin County Marsha Rains Northside

Elementary School

Hawkins County Carrie Smith Surgoinsville

Elementary

Joseph

Rogers

Primary

Mooresburg

Elementary

Hawkins County Crystala Cade Carter’s Valley

Elementary School

Hawkins County Angela Smith McPheeter’s Bend

Elementary School

Haywood

County Krista Parker

Brownsville Boys

and Girls Club for

Haywood

Elementary School

Henderson

County Renee Maynard Westover

Elementary

South

Haven

Elementary

Scotts Hill

Elementary

Henry County Felicia Bates Henry Elementary

School

Henry County Felicia Bates

Dorothy and Noble

Harrelson

Elementary School

Henry County Felicia Bates Lakewood

Elementary School

Hickman County Angie Manor East Hickman

Elementary School

Hollow Rock

-

Bruceton SSD Sandi Walden Central Elementary

School

Humboldt City Kristin Hardin East Elementary

School

Huntingdon SSD Christy Carey Huntingdon Primary

School

Jefferson County Susan Price Dandridge

Elementary School

Jefferson County Ragan Long Piedmont

Elementary School

Jefferson County Ron Overton Talbott Elementary

School

Jefferson County Leigh Daley Jefferson

Elementary School

Jefferson County Paige James Rush Strong School

Johnson County Angie Wills Roan Creek

Elementary

Mountain

City

Elementary

Kingsport City Jaclyn Clendenen Andrew Jackson

Elementary

Kingsport City Amy Doran Abraham Lincoln

Elementary

Knox County Beki Proffitt Lonsdale

Elementary School

Knox County Suzanne Parham Lonsdale

Elementary School

Knox County Haley Kesler

Sarah Moore

Greene Magnet

Academy

Lake County Mandy Norris Lara Kendall

Elementary

Lauderdale

County Jennifer Jordan Ripley Primary

School

Halls

Elementary

School

Lawrence

County Tammy Smith South Lawrence

Elementary School

Lawrence

County Abigail McKamey Ingram Sowell

Lawrence

County Beth Johnson Leoma Elementary

Lebanon SSD Penny Thompson Coles Ferry

Elementary

Lenoir City Wendy Jones Lenoir City

Elementary

Lexington City Julie Meyer Caywood

Elementary School

Lincoln County Jane Fisher Stone Bridge

Academy

Loudon County Staci Gibby Philadelphia

Elementary

Steekee

Elementary

Loudon County Donna Stapleton Loudon County

Elementary School

Madison County LaDonna Braswell Lincoln Elementary

School

Marion County Chrisie McClendon Jasper Elementary

School

Marion County Janet Layne Monteagle

Elementary

Marion County Jennifer Morrison South Pittsburg

Elementary School

Marion County Jennifer Smith Whitwell

Elementary School

Marshall County Rachel Rankin Marshall Elementary

School

Marshall County Carla Caldwell Cornersville

Elementary School

Maury County Olivia Smith Riverside

Elementary School

Maury County Cara Skaggs

McDowell, Highland

Park, Riverside, and

Brown Elementary

Maury County Jessica Vasquez Randolph Howell

Elementary

McKenzie SSD Tonya Brown McKenzie

Elementary School

McMinn County Jackie Martin Mountain View

Elementary School

McMinn County Annette Ray Calhoun Elementary

McMinn County Krista Burns Rogers Creek

Elementary School

McMinn County Penny Davis Englewood

Elementary School

Niota

Elementary

School

Riceville

Elementary

School

McMinn County Christy Elliott E.K. Baker

Elementary

McNairy County Linda George Selmer Elementary

School

Meigs County Amanda Pritchett Meigs Middle

School

Milan SSD Natalie Alexander Milan Elementary

School

Millington Mary Jones Millington

Elementary

Monroe County Missy Carter Rural Vale

Elementary School

Moore County Melissa Eslick Lynchburg

Elementary School

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City Caresa Dodson Hobgood

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Elementary

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Oak Ridge City Amelia Bell Glenwood

Elementary

Oneida SSD Denise May Oneida Elementary

School

Paris SSD Olivia Smith Paris Elementary

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Perry County Trena Graves Linden Elementary Lobelville

School

Pickett County Randy Garrett Pickett County K-8

Polk County Amy McAbee Benton Elementary, South Polk

Elementary

Copper Basin

Elementary

Putnam County Amber Spears Prescott South

Elementary School

Rhea County Brenda Hill Rhea Central

Elementary

Graysville

Elementary

Spring City

Elementary

Richard City Cindy Blevins Richard Hardy

Memorial School

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Elementary School

Rogersville City Missy Testerman Rogersville City

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Rutherford

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Rutherford

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Cornett

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Elementary

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Elementary School

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Comics: The Answer to The UK’s Literacy Crisis?

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Little LICAF celebrates its work with Kugali as Iwájú gets set to launch on Disney+

The team at Little LICAF, part of the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, are celebrating the impending streaming debut of Disney’s animated series, Iwájú, with a look back at their work with some of the team at Kugali

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Kugali Media lend support to Cartoon Art Europe literacy project at Manchester's Abraham Moss Community Primary School

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Graphic Novel Spotlight: "What We Don't Talk About" by Charlot Kristensen

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[blackkudos]

Ida B. Wells

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931), more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, feminist, Georgist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells lost her parents and a sibling in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic at a young age. She went to work and, with her grandmother, kept the rest of the family intact. She moved with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, finding pay better for teachers.

Later as an activist, Wells documented lynching in the United States in the 1890s, showing that it was often used in the South as a way to control or punish Black people who competed with whites, rather than being based on criminal acts by black people, as was usually claimed by whites. She was active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. Wells was a skilled and persuasive rhetorician and traveled internationally on lecture tours.

Early life and education

Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862, several months before United States President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in Confederate-held territory. Her parents James Wells and Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Warrenton) Wells, were both enslaved by Spires Bolling, an architect. She was one of eight children. The family resided at Bolling's house, now named the Bolling-Gatewood House, where Lizzie Wells was a cook.

Ida's father was a master at carpentry; after the Civil War and emancipation, he was known as a "race man" who worked for the advancement of black people. He was very interested in politics and became a member of the Loyal League. He attended Shaw University in Holly Springs (now Rust College), but he dropped out to help his family. He also attended public speeches and campaigned for local black candidates but never ran for office himself. A religious woman, Elizabeth Wells was very strict with her children. Both of Ida's parents were active in the Republican Party during Reconstruction.

Ida attended Shaw like her father, but she was expelled for rebellious behavior after confronting the college president. While visiting her grandmother in the Mississippi Valley in 1878, Ida, then aged 16, received word that Holly Springs had suffered a yellow fever epidemic. Both of her parents and her infant brother (Stanley) died during that event, leaving her and her five other siblings orphaned. Wells would find a number of men who served as father figures later in her life, particularly Alfred Froman, Theodore W. Lott, and Josiah T. Settle (with whom she boarded in 1886 and 1887).

Early career

Following the funerals of her parents and brother, friends and relatives decided that the six remaining Wells children should be split up and sent to various foster homes. Wells resisted this solution. To keep her younger siblings together as a family, she found work as a teacher in a black elementary school. Her paternal grandmother, Peggy Wells, along with other friends and relatives, stayed with her siblings and cared for them during the week while Wells was away teaching. Without this help, she would have not been able to keep her siblings together. Wells resented that in the segregated school system, white teachers were paid $80 a month and she was paid only $30 a month. This discrimination made her more interested in the politics of race and improving the education of black people.

In 1883, Wells took three of her younger siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with her aunt and to be closer to other family members. She also learned that she could earn higher wages there as a teacher than in Mississippi. Soon after moving, she was hired in Woodstock for the Shelby County school system. During her summer vacations she attended summer sessions at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville. She also attended LeMoyne. She held strong political opinions and provoked many people with her views on women's rights. At 24, she wrote, "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge."

On May 4, 1884, a train conductor with the Memphis and Charleston Railroad ordered Wells to give up her seat in the first-class ladies car and move to the smoking car, which was already crowded with other passengers. The year before, the Supreme Court had ruled against the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 (which had banned racial discrimination in public accommodations). This verdict supported railroad companies that chose to racially segregate their passengers.

Wells refused to give up her seat. The conductor and two men dragged Wells out of the car. When she returned to Memphis, she hired an African-American attorney to sue the railroad. Wells gained publicity in Memphis when she wrote a newspaper article for The Living Way, a black church weekly, about her treatment on the train. When her lawyer was paid off by the railroad, she hired a white attorney. She won her case on December 24, 1884, when the local circuit court granted her a $500 award.

The railroad company appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court's ruling in 1887. It concluded, "We think it is evident that the purpose of the defendant in error was to harass with a view to this suit, and that her persistence was not in good faith to obtain a comfortable seat for the short ride." Wells was ordered to pay court costs. Wells' reaction to the higher court's decision expressed her strong convictions on civil rights and religious faith, as she responded: "I felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things from my suit for my people...O God, is there no...justice in this land for us?"

While teaching elementary school, Wells was offered an editorial position for the Evening Star in Washington, DC. She also wrote weekly articles for The Living Way weekly newspaper under the pen name "Iola," gaining a reputation for writing about the race issue. In 1889, she became co-owner and editor of Free Speech and Headlight, an anti-segregation newspaper that was started by the Reverend Taylor Nightingale and was based at the Beale Street Baptist Church in Memphis. It published articles about racial injustice. In 1891, Wells was dismissed from her teaching post by the Memphis Board of Education due to her articles that criticized conditions in the colored schools of the region. Wells was devastated but undaunted, and concentrated her energy on writing articles for the The Living Way and the Free Speech and Headlight.

In 1889 Thomas Moss, a friend of Wells, opened the Peoples Grocery in the "Curve," a black neighborhood just outside the Memphis city limits. It did well and competed with a white-owned grocery store across the street. While Wells was out of town in Natchez, Mississippi, a white mob invaded her friends' store. During the altercation, three white men were shot and injured. Moss and two other black men, named McDowell and Stewart, were arrested and jailed pending trial. A large white lynch mob stormed the jail and killed the three men.

After the lynching of her friends, Wells wrote in Free Speech and Headlight, urging blacks to leave Memphis altogether:

There is, therefore, only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons.

Wells emphasized the public spectacle of the lynching. More than 6,000 black people did leave Memphis; others organized boycotts of white-owned businesses. After being threatened with violence, she bought a pistol. She later wrote, "They had made me an exile and threatened my life for hinting at the truth."

Investigative journalism

The murder of her friends drove Wells to research and document lynchings and their causes. She began investigative journalism by looking at the charges given for the murders, which officially started her anti-lynching campaign. She spoke on the issue at various black women's clubs, and raised more than $500 to investigate lynchings and publish her results. Wells found that black people were lynched for such social control reasons as failing to pay debts, not appearing to give way to whites, competing with whites economically, and being drunk in public. She found little basis for the frequent claim that black men were lynched because they had sexually abused or attacked white women. This alibi seemed to have partly accounted for white America's collective acceptance or silence on lynching, as well as its acceptance by many in the educated African-American community. Before her friends were lynched and she conducted research, Wells had concluded that "although lynching was…contrary to law and order…it was the terrible crime of rape [that] led to the lynching; [and] that perhaps…the mob was justified in taking his [the rapist's] life".

She published her findings in a pamphlet entitled "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases." She followed this with an editorial that suggested that, unlike the myth that white women were sexually at risk of attacks by black men, most liaisons between black men and white women were consensual. After the editorial was published, Wells left Memphis for a short trip to New England, to cover another story for the newspaper. Her editorial enraged white men in Memphis. Their responses in two leading white newspapers, The Daily Commercial and The Evening Scimitar, were brimming with hatred; "the fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome…calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of southern whites. But we have had enough of it". On May 27, 1892, while she was away in Philadelphia, a white mob destroyed the offices of the Free Speech and Headlight.

Numerous other studies have supported Wells' findings of lynching as a form of community control and analyzed variables that affect lynching. Beck and Tolnay's influential 1990 study found that economics played a major role, with the rate of lynchings higher when marginal whites were under threat because of uncertain economic conditions. They concluded the following:

...[L]ynchings were more frequent in years when the "constant dollar" price of cotton was declining and inflationary pressure was increasing. Relative size of the black population was also positively related to lynching. We conclude that mob violence against southern black people responded to economic conditions affecting the financial fortunes of southern whites—especially marginal white farmers.

According to scholar Oliver C. Cox in his 1945 article "Lynching and the Status Quo," the definition of lynching is "an act of homicidal aggression committed by one people against another through mob action…for the purpose of suppressing…[or] subjugating them further".

In an effort to raise awareness and opposition to lynching, Wells spoke to groups in New York City, where her audiences included many leading African-American women. On October 5, 1892, a testimonial dinner held at Lyric Hall, organized by political activists and clubwomen, Victoria Earle Matthews and Maritcha Remond Lyons, raised significant funds for Wells' anti-lynching campaign. The Women's Loyal Union of New York and Brooklyn was formed to organize black women as an interest group who could act politically.

Because of the threats to her life, Wells left Memphis altogether and moved to Chicago. She continued to wage her anti-lynching campaign and to write columns attacking Southern injustices. Her articles were published in The New York Age newspaper. She continued to investigate lynching incidents and the ostensible causes in the cases.

Together with Frederick Douglass and other black leaders, she organized a black boycott of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, for its failure to collaborate with the black community on exhibits to represent African-American life. Wells, Douglass, Irvine Garland Penn, and Well's future husband Ferdinand Lee Barnett wrote sections of a pamphlet to be distributed there: "Reasons Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition." It detailed the progress of blacks since their arrival in America and also exposed the basis of Southern lynchings. Wells later reported to Albion W. Tourgée that copies of the pamphlet had been distributed to more than 20,000 people at the fair. After the World's Fair in Chicago, Wells decided to stay in the city instead of returning to New York. That year she started work with the Chicago Conservator, the oldest African-American newspaper in the city.

Also in 1893, Wells contemplated a libel suit against two black Memphis attorneys. She turned to Tourgée, who had trained and practiced as a lawyer and judge, for possible free legal help. Deeply in debt, Tourgée could not afford to help but asked his friend Ferdinand Barnett for his aid. Born in Alabama, Barnett had become the editor of the Chicago Conservator in 1878. He served as an assistant state attorney for 14 years. Barnett accepted the pro bono job.

Personal life

Wells kept track of her life through diaries; in them, she writes few personal things. Before she was married, Wells said that she would date only those men in whom she had "little romantic interest," because she did not want romance to be the center of the relationship. She wanted it based on her and her partner's mental and personal interaction, rather than physical attraction. Wells acknowledged such flaws as being very quick to criticize and use harsh words toward another. Because she recorded all of her purchases, her diaries revealed that she bought items which she really could not afford.

In 1895, Wells married attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett, a widower with two sons, Ferdinand and Albert. She was one of the first married American women to keep her own last name as well as taking her husband's.

The couple had four more children: Charles, Herman, Ida, and Alfreda. In the chapter of her Crusade For Justice autobiography, called A Divided Duty, Wells described the difficulty she had splitting her time between her family and her work. She continued to work after the birth of her first child, traveling and bringing the infant Charles with her. Although she tried to balance her world, she could not be as active in her work. Susan B. Anthony said she seemed "distracted". After having her second child, Wells stepped out of her touring and public life for a time.

European tours

Wells took two tours to Europe in her campaign for justice, the first in 1893 and the second in 1894. In 1893, Wells went to Great Britain at the invitation of Catherine Impey, a British Quaker. An opponent of imperialism and proponent of racial equality, Impey wanted to ensure that the British public learned about the problem of lynching in the US. Wells rallied a moral crusade among the British. Wells accompanied her speeches with a photograph of a white mob and grinning white children posing near a hanged black man; her talks created a sensation, but some in the audiences remained doubtful of her accounts. Wells intended to raise money and expose the US lynching violence, but received so little funds that she had difficulty covering her travel expenses.

In 1894 before leaving the US for her second visit to Great Britain, Wells called on William Penn Nixon, the editor of Daily Inter-Ocean, a Republican newspaper in Chicago. It was the only major white paper that persistently denounced lynching. After she told Nixon about her planned tour, he asked her to write for the newspaper while in England. She was the first African-American woman to be a paid correspondent for a mainstream white newspaper. (Tourgée had been writing a column for the same paper.)

Her article "In Pembroke Chapel" recounted the mental journey that an English minister had shared with her. C. F. Aked had invited Wells to speak. He told her he had found it difficult to accept the level of violence she recounted in her earlier accounts of lynching. He had traveled to the US for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and while there, read in local papers about the Miller lynching in Bardwell, Kentucky. He realized that Wells' accounts were accurate.

Wells was highly effective in speaking to European audiences, who were shocked to learn about the rate of violence against black people in the U.S. Her two tours in Europe helped gain support for her cause. She called for the formation of groups to formally protest the lynchings. Wells helped catalyze anti-lynching groups in Europe, which tried to press the U.S. government to guarantee the safety of blacks in the South.

Willard controversy

By the late 19th century, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), a predominantly white women's organization, had branches in every state and a membership of more than 200,000. Part of the progressive movement, it attracted some women to political activity who considered the suffrage movement as too radical. Other women were active in both movements. Frances Willard was president of the Temperance Union from 1879 to 1898.

Willard was touring England on behalf of temperance when Wells was conducting her anti-lynching campaign there. As Wells described American lynchings, British liberals were incredulous that white American leaders such as Willard, whom the English press had described as the "Uncrowned Queen of American Democracy," would turn a blind eye to such violence. Wells accused Willard of being silent on the issue of lynchings, and of making racial comments that added to mob violence. Wells referred to an interview of Willard during her tour of the American South, in which she had blamed black behavior for the defeat of temperance legislation. "The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt," she had said, and "the grog shop is its center of power... The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities."

In response, Willard and her supporter Lady Somerset attempted to use their influence to keep Wells' comments at lectures out of the press. Wells said that, despite Willard's having abolitionist forebears and black friends, she would allow black women to join the WCTU's segregated southern branches.

The dispute between Wells and Willard in England intensified the campaign against Wells in the American press. Though The New York Times had reported on Wells' visit to Britain without much commentary, the paper published an opinion piece in August 1894 that suggested that black men were prone to rape and described Wells as a "slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress" who was looking for more "income" than "outcome." Such attacks in the US press swayed many Britons to support Wells' cause. "It is idle for men to say that the conditions which Miss Wells describes do not exist," a British editor wrote. "Whites of America may not think so; British Christianity does and all the scurrility of the American press won't alter the facts."

Wells also dedicated a chapter of A Red Record to juxtapose the different positions that she and Willard held. The chapter was titled “Miss Willard’s Attitude”. It condemned Willard for using rhetoric that Wells thought promoted violence and other crimes against African Americans in America.

Wells' British tour ultimately led to the formation of the British Anti-Lynching Committee, which included prominent members such as the Duke of Argyll, the Archbishop of Canterbury, members of Parliament, and the editors of The Manchester Guardian.

Southern Horrors and The Red Record

In 1892 Wells published a pamphlet titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Having examined many accounts of lynchings due to the alleged "rape of white women," she concluded that Southerners cried rape as an excuse to hide their real reasons for lynchings: black economic progress, which threatened white Southerners with competition, and white ideas of enforcing black second-class status in the society. Black economic progress was a contemporary issue in the South, and in many states whites worked to suppress black progress. In this period at the turn of the century, southern states starting with Mississippi in 1890, passed laws and/or new constitutions to disenfranchise most black people and many poor white people through use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other devices.

Wells-Barnett recommended that black people use arms to defend against lynching:

The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honour in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.

Wells-Barnett published The Red Record (1895), a 100-page pamphlet describing lynching in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. It also covered black peoples' struggles in the South since the Civil War. The Red Record explored the alarmingly high rates of lynching in the United States (which was at a peak from 1880 to 1930). Wells-Barnett said that during Reconstruction, most Americans outside the South did not realize the growing rate of violence against black people in the South. She believed that during slavery, white people had not committed as many attacks because of the economic labour value of slaves. Wells noted that, since slavery time, "ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, [through lynching] without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution."

Frederick Douglass had written an article noting three eras of "Southern barbarism," and the excuses which whites claimed in each period.

Wells-Barnett explored these in detail in her The Red Record.

During slavery time, she noted that whites worked to "repress and stamp out alleged 'race riots.'" or suspected slave rebellions, usually killing black people in far higher proportions than any white casualties. Once the Civil War ended, white people feared black people, who were in the majority in many areas. White people acted to control them and suppress them by violence.

During the Reconstruction Era white people lynched black people as part of mob efforts to suppress black political activity and re-establish white supremacy after the war. They feared "Negro Domination" through voting and taking office. Wells-Barnett urged black people in high-risk areas to move away to protect their families.

She noted that whites frequently claimed that black men had "to be killed to avenge their assaults upon women." She noted that white people assumed that any relationship between a white woman and a black man was a result of rape. But, given power relationships, it was much more common for white men to take sexual advantage of poor black women. She stated: "Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that black men rape white women." Wells connected lynching to sexual violence showing how the myth of the black man’s lust for white women led to murder of African American men.

Wells-Barnett gave 14 pages of statistics related to lynching cases committed from 1892 to 1895; she also included pages of graphic accounts detailing specific lynchings. She notes that her data was taken from articles by white correspondents, white press bureaus, and white newspapers. The Red Record was a huge pamphlet, and had far-reaching influence in the debate about lynching. The Southern Horrors:Lynch Law in All Its’ Phases and The Red Record’s accounts of these lynches grabbed the attention of Northerns who knew little about lynching or accepted the common explanation that black men deserved this fate. Generally southern states and white juries refused to indict any perpetrators for lynching, although they were frequently known and sometimes shown in the photographs being made more frequently of such events.

Despite Wells-Barnett's attempt to garner support among white Americans against lynching, she believed that her campaign could not overturn the economic interests whites had in using lynching as an instrument to maintain Southern order and discourage Black economic ventures. Ultimately, Wells-Barnett concluded that appealing to reason and compassion would not succeed in gaining criminalization of lynching by Southern whites.

Wells-Barnett concluded that perhaps armed resistance was the Nubian's only defense against lynching. Meanwhile, she extended her efforts to gain support of such powerful white nations as Britain to shame and sanction the racist practices of America.

Wells and W. E. B. Du Bois

Wells often encountered and sometimes collaborated with scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Both condemned lynching. They also competed for attention. They differed in accounts for why Wells' name was excluded from the original list of founders of the NAACP. In his autobiography, Du Bois implied that Wells chose not to be included. But, in her autobiography, Wells stated that Du Bois deliberately excluded her from the list.

Later public career

In 1894, Wells helped form a Republican Women's Club in Illinois in response to women being granted the right to vote for a state elective office and the right to hold elective office as Trustee of the University of Illinois. The club organized to support the nomination by the Republican Party of Lucy L. Flower to that position, and Flower was eventually elected.

Wells received much support from other social activists and her fellow club women. Frederick Douglass praised her work: "You have done your people and mine a service...What a revelation of existing conditions your writing has been for me." Wells took her anti-lynching campaign to Europe with the help of many supporters. Trying to organize African-American groups across the United States, in 1896, Wells founded the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs and the National Afro-American Council.

In 1898, Wells was struggling to manage her busy family life and career, but she was still a fierce campaigner in the anti-lynching circle. That year the National Association of Colored Women's club met in Chicago but did not invite Wells to take part. When she confronted Mary Church Terrell, the president of the club, Wells was told that the women of Chicago had said that, if Wells were to take part in the club, they would no longer aid the association. Wells later learned that Terrell's own competitiveness played a part in excluding her.

After settling in Chicago, Wells worked to improve conditions for its rapidly growing African-American population. They were leaving the rural South in the Great Migration to northern industrial cities. Competition for jobs and housing caused a rise in social tensions; at the same time, there was increased immigration from Europe, and earlier ethnic whites, such as the Irish Americans, worked to defend their own power and territory in the city. Black American migrants had to compete for jobs and housing with millions of immigrants from rural eastern and southern Europe.

Wells worked on urban reform in Chicago during the last thirty years of her life. She also raised her family. After her retirement, Wells began writing her autobiography, Crusade for Justice (1928). She never finished it; she died of uremia (kidney failure) in Chicago on March 25, 1931, at the age of 68. She was buried in the Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago. (The cemetery was later integrated by the city.)

Legacy and honors

Since Wells' death and with the rise of the mid-century civil rights activism, interest in her life and legacy has grown.

In 1941, the Public Works Administration (PWA) built a Chicago Housing Authority public housing project in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the south side in Chicago; it was named the Ida B. Wells Homes in her honor. The buildings were demolished in August 2011 due to changing demographics and ideas about such housing.

On February 1, 1990, the United States Postal Service issued a 25-cent postage stamp in her honor.

In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed Wells on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

In her hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi, there is an Ida B.Wells-Barnett Museum in her honor that acts as a cultural center of African American history.

Awards have been established in Wells’s name by the National Association of Black Journalists, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the Coordinating Council for Women in History, the Investigative Fund, the University of Louisville, and the New York County Lawyers Association, among many others. In 2006, the Harvard Kennedy School commissioned a portrait of Wells. The Ida B. Wells Memorial Foundation and the Ida B. Wells Museum has been established to protect, preserve and promote Wells’s legacy.

Representation in other media

In 1995, the play In Pursuit of Justice: A One-Woman Play About Ida B. Wells, written by Wendy Jones and starring Janice Jenkins, was produced. It is drawn from historical incidents and speeches from Ida B. Wells-Barnett's autobiography, and features fictional letters to a friend. It won four awards from the AUDELCO (Audience Development Committee Inc.), an organization that honors black theatre.

Her life is the subject of Constant Star (2006), a musical drama by Tazewell Thompson. It has been widely performed. The play explores her as "a seminal figure in Post-Reconstruction America."

In 2016's Dinesh D'Souza's Hillary's America book and film, Carol Swain, a black law professor at Vanderbilt University, who is a scholar of the Democratic Party's history of "plantation politics," tells Wells' story of fighting lynchings and challenging U.S. President Woodrow Wilson over his administration's racial resegregation of the federal work force.

Influence on black feminist activism

In her book, Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics, Joy James characterized the work of black militant feminists such as Ida B. Wells-Barnett as a kind of "limbo" dance. This analogy is an embodied characterization of political work and brings movement into the realm of the political and the performative. Often, militant political activist work is not positioned in relation to an embodied practice such as dance, but if one looks closely at all of the feats of "bending backward" that activists such as Wells-Barnett had to engage in, there would be no doubt that these women were the political acrobats of their time. Joy James describes her theorization of "limbo" in the following passage:

Limbos are ideal spaces for witnessing and generating movements to address the inadequacies of linear liberation theories that offer little resistance to the complexity of dominance that manifests over time in multiple, intersecting layers and sites. In the limbos of social movements, the past, present, and future coexist and overlap. Time is nonlinear. Space and community are expansive. In their progressive forward movement, contemporary black feminisms often bend backward toward historical protofeminist ancestors like abolitionist Maria W. Stewart, Ida B. Wells, and Ella Baker. In so doing these feminisms routinely retrieve from the sidelines of conventional political memory important ancestral leaders for current considerations and political struggles. Political amnesia, the gray area surrounding political agency, partly stems from the erasure of historical figures—particularly those female ancestors who militantly fought as racial and gender outsiders for democracy, only to be marginalized later from 'respectable' political community.

While researching Wells-Barnett's life, this "bending backward" or "limbo" dancing that James theorizes manifests through a larger vision to build a black feminist movement that included black men, white women and white men. Wells-Barnett's anti-lynching campaign superseded the suffragists and racial uplift movements of her time due to her ability to call everyone to the proverbial table and ask for their accountability. Although not a feminist writer herself, Wells-Barnett tried to explain that the defense of white woman’s honor allowed Southern white men to get away with murder by projecting their own dark history of sexual violence onto black men. Her call for all races and genders to be accountable for their actions showed African American women that they can speak out and fight for their rights. By portraying the horrors of lynching, she worked to show that racial and gender discrimination are linked, furthering the black feminist cause.

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