I've been trying to come up with sentences worthy of summing up how it felt to be awarded @PulitzerPrizes the same day as Ida B. Wells for a project I led on the legacy of slavery for the @nytimes, a newspaper that in 1894 called Wells a "slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress."
Everything I try to type out feels inadequate. I WOULD NOT BE without her. She never got the recognition she deserved when she was living, sometimes even from her own people. Black women who dared challenge the white narrative were mercilessly castigated.
90 years after her death, I know the same instinct to downplay lynching, to attack her credibility because it was easier than owning up the truth, is at play here. But I have long been a student of hers and Ida taught me well.
In other words, she fortified me for this.
In other words, she fortified me for this.
Throughout all the attacks on the #1619Project, it was black women more than any other group who had my back. Black women have been, as @marthasjones_ calls us, The Vanguard. Prof. Jones is chief among them. Ida B. Wells's commitment made a way for us. I promise to do the same.
