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Jane Addams In They Say

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Ida B. Wells' Memphis was a period and place filled with racial divisions and conflict. During her time in Memphis, lynchings became more and more prevalent, and she began to fight back. As described in James West Davidson's novel, 'They Say': Ida B. Wells & the Reconstruction of Race, being a black American during the late 1800s was a period of fear, control, and disrespect. In Davidson's novel, he explains the trials that black Americans experienced in the South during the first thirty years after the American Civil War and emancipation. One of the major struggles during this time was balancing being a freedman yet dealing with racial inequalities. One of the more startling ideas is that black Americans were not truly free to be themselves; this is seen with the title of the novel "They Say", as well as the multiple references to that phrase throughout the novel which refers to the idea that whatever they, white individuals, say will be taken as truth (Davidson). The theme prevails throughout the novel when Davidson addresses the differences between the truth, and what white individuals said was the truth. The …show more content…

Her advocacy for suffrage as well as for the rights for those in need was different for the time. Furthermore, Addams believed that it was necessary for women to be working because a young girl "is besotted with innocent little ambitions and does not understand this apparent waste of herself… if no work is provided for her" (Addams, 5). Addams' work to help others was much different than Ida B. Wells' work in the sense that Addams was able to protest and do the work because of her white privilege. The United States that Wells lived in was one that punished black individuals for speaking out, rather than one that accepted change. Ida B. Wells' Memphis was a place of hardship and trials that were separate, but not

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