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The Formidable Ida B. Wells
Happy Women's History Month!
This year, we’re collaborating with the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) on a special, behind-the-scenes project we think you’ll love.
Earlier this month, SUFFS — the acclaimed musical about the brilliant, passionate, and funny American women who fought tirelessly for the right to vote — took Nashville by storm.
Now, we’re taking Library readers and TPAC fans alike deeper, with a four-part series that explores elements from the show that are also found in NPL’s Votes for Women Room.
First Up: Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
The involvement of journalist and civil rights pioneer Ida B. Wells in the push for women’s suffrage brought the rights not just of women, but also of people of color, to the forefront of the movement.
On March 2, 1913, the night before thousands of people from all over the world were to march in Washington, D.C. to demand the right to vote for women, organizers of the march told Wells she would have to march with Black demonstrators in a segregated section near the rear of the parade.
The request, which came after participants from some southern states registered their discomfort with a fully integrated march, would have separated her from the delegation of Illinois activists she’d been working alongside for years in the push for equal rights—not only for women, but for all Americans.
Pushback Pays Off
For Wells, a Mississippi native who began her career as a journalist in Memphis, the request that she march in a segregated section wasn’t unfamiliar—but she wasn’t having it.
She pushed back bitterly, in tears by some accounts, pleading to keep her place in the company of the state delegation from Illinois. When the marchers gathered the next day, Wells walked with her allies from Illinois.
In standing her ground, she added one more chapter to her legacy as an important voice in the long, arduous struggle to make democracy a reality for all Americans.
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More On the Way
Keep an eye out for more in this four-part series Next up: Susan B. Anthony. Sign up, and we’ll deliver to your inbox!
While you wait:
Come Explore
Visit the Votes for Women Room at the Main Library in downtown Nashville (which reopens on March 30) to learn more about the formidable Ida B. Wells.
And don’t miss Women’s History Month at Nashville Public Library, where we are elevating women’s stories and voices and offering free community programming across Davidson County.
