logo
episode-header-image
May 2022
9m 1s

Civil Rights activist Ida B Wells

Bbc World Service
About this episode

In March 2022 a law was passed in the United States making lynching a federal crime - nearly 120 years after the first attempts to introduce legislation. The pioneering African-American journalist Ida B Wells first campaigned for the change in the 1890s after realising the horror of lynching taking place across the country. Laura Jones has been speaking to her great-granddaughter Michelle Duster.

PHOTO: Ida B Wells in 1920 (Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)

Up next
Aug 22
Geneva Conventions
In 1859, Swiss businessman Henry Dunant witnessed the Battle of Solferino, in Italy. He couldn’t believe the lack of aid for the wounded soldiers and came up with two ideas – a voluntary aid organisation and an international treaty to protect those injured in wartime. They went o ... Show More
10m 2s
Aug 21
The rise and fall of BlackBerry
In the early 2000s, BlackBerry was the phone that ruled the world. But within a decade, it collapsed, overtaken by the touch screen revolution.Sam Gruet speaks to former co-CEO Jim Balsillie about BlackBerry’s meteoric rise, its battle against Apple, and the moment he knew it was ... Show More
9m 50s
Aug 20
The book that changed Norway’s view of immigrants
In 2010, a book came out in Norway that transformed the way people looked at paperless immigrants. The author, a 25-year-old Russian woman, fled North Ossetia as a child with her parents. They were never granted asylum, yet she managed to earn a university degree and eventually h ... Show More
10m 13s
Recommended Episodes
Aug 2014
Baroness Oona King on Ida B Wells
Matthew Parris leads a discussion on Ida B. Wells the African American civil rights and women's rights activist who was a political trailblazer. She is the great life chosen by Baroness Oona King. Throughout her life, Wells was militant in her demands for equality and justice for ... Show More
27m 55s
Sep 2022
SYMHC Classics: Elizabeth Jennings Graham
The subject of this 2018 episode is sometimes called a 19th-century Rosa Parks. When Elizabeth boarded a Manhattan streetcar in 1854, a chain of events began which became an important to the civil rights of New York's Black citizens.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informa ... Show More
26m 39s
Oct 2021
Rosa Parks
By the time she died in 2005, Rosa Parks was known around the world as an icon of activism. Her act of defiance one ordinary Thursday afternoon in Montgomery, Alabama catapulted her to the forefront of the battle for racial equality in America. But what was her story before that ... Show More
1h 1m
Mar 2022
Women’s March on Pretoria, 1956
This 1956 march was a protest against pass laws that were part of South Africa’s system of apartheid – and specifically the requirement that women carry passes. The protest was simultaneously part of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and the movement for women’s rights ... Show More
33m 34s
Apr 2024
The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre: Slavery After the Civil War
During the spring of 1921, eleven bodies were found in in rural Georgia. These men were victims of horrific murders, and also of a more widespread crime - peonage. Whilst enslavement had legally ended with the surrender at Appomattox and the 13th Amendment, black people across th ... Show More
25m 42s
Aug 2020
Margaret Ekpo - Nigeria's feminist pioneer
Margaret Ekpo helped establish Nigerian independence and became one of the country's first female MPs. We hear from her grandson and speak to a Nigerian feminist about why Nigeria has so few women in government today. Plus the US Supreme Court decision that threatens the voting r ... Show More
50m 22s
May 2024
The Tulsa Race Massacre
May 31, 1921. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a Black teenager is accused of assaulting a white woman, setting off the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history. This episode originally aired in 2023. Support the show! Join Into History for ad-free lis ... Show More
15m 31s
Apr 2024
Thirty years since the first free elections in South Africa
It’s been thirty years since the first fully democratic elections in South Africa, which saw the African National Congress take power in 1994.But two years before that historic moment, white South Africans had to vote in a referendum that would decide whether or not to usher in a ... Show More
51m 2s
Nov 2020
S1 Ep3: Elma Sands: The Manhattan Well Murder
When a 22-year-old woman living with relatives in a boarding house disappeared on Dec. 22, 1799, her loved ones didn't immediately worry. But when she still hadn't returned days later, all eyes turned to her lover -- whom she'd supposedly been set to marry the last time she was s ... Show More
45m 25s
Jan 2021
Mon. 1/18 - When the FBI Spied on Martin Luther King Jr.
Several of the women who influenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and left their own marks on the civil rights movement. A new documentary tracking the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent Black activists, using documentation recently released by the Nati ... Show More
18m 47s