As the premiere volume in the new series 'New Narratives in American History', (edited by Davidson and historian Michael Stoff), Jim Davidson proposes a narrative of the first thirty years in the life of activist Ida B. Wells as a means of charting the shifting definitions of race during the final decades of nineteenth-century America. "How did Ida Wells become the woman who challenged the silence of America on lynching? James Davidson shows us by re-creating the world of African Americans during the turbulent decades after the Civil War. A touching, compelling portrait of an important life in crucial times."--H.W. Brands, University of Texas at Austin, author of Andrew Jackson and The Money Men