Ida B. Wells in Memphis: New documentary charts a crusader's origins

In July, a life-sized statue of Ida B. Wells was unveiled near the corner of Fourth and Beale, at the new Ida B. Wells Plaza.

The bronze likeness joined such previous tributes to Wells as a 1990 U.S. postage stamp and a 2020 Pulitzer Prize "special citation," acknowledging what the Pulitzer board described as "her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."

Wells, in other words, has not lacked for posthumous recognition and prestigious encomiums. In recent years, she has become one of the most celebrated figures of the post-Civil War, pre-civil rights movement struggle for racial enlightenment. Her name, like that of her most famous successor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., garners seemingly universal respect.

HONORING IDA B. WELLS:Ida B. Wells statue unveiled in Downtown Memphis

But if Wells, in symbolic statue form, now stands in the Memphis landscape like a sentinel demanding justice, her relationship to the city where she launched her crusades against racism and sexism remains arguably underappreciated, on both a local and national scale.

That could change, if a cadre of Memphis filmmakers have their way.

A project of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis, "Facing Down Storms: Memphis and the Making of Ida B. Wells" will premiere at 7 p.m. April 19 with a fundraising screening at the Orpheum's Halloran Centre at 225 S. Main. Emmy-winning producer Rita Coburn ("The Oprah Winfrey Show," PBS' "American Masters") will host the event.

'Ida B. Wells began her crusade here'

Co-directed by Hooks Institute executive director Daphene R. McFerren and Hooks Institute assistant director Nathaniel C. Ball, the feature-length documentary uses narration, interviews, readings from Wells' diaries, animation (by Tonya Smith), re-enactments (with actors from Hattiloo and Playhouse on the Square in period costumes created by the U of M Department of Theatre & Dance) and other techniques and strategies to tell the story of Ida B. Wells in Memphis. 

Collaborating with McFerren and Ball was professional filmmaker Fabian Matthews of Spotlight Productions, who was enlisted as a producer, editor and director of photography. Matthews said the documentary became "a huge undertaking" as its ambitions expanded to match Wells' significance, which is why he suggested widening its appeal with animation and other approaches.

Ball, a veteran documentarian, said Wells' Memphis story "had never really been told in this way. We wanted to make it visually interesting as well as something people will learn from. It's really become a piece of art."

He said the project began almost seven years ago, although work on the film could take place only in fits and starts, due to the overall demands of the 27-year-old Hooks Institute, which hosts numerous social and educational initiatives as it addresses "contemporary racial, social, economic and other disparities through community engagement and faculty scholarship" (to quote its mission statement).

McFerren said Ida B. Wells "wouldn't exist as we know her but for her experience in Memphis," where she lived about 10 years. (Wells was born into slavery in 1862 in Holly Springs, and she died in 1931 in Chicago.)

For many Black people in the South, "Memphis was the place to come after the Civil War," McFerren said. "Memphis had a vibrant social and cultural scene, and she (Wells) came here with the hope of realizing her personal and professional dreams."

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It was here, in the 1890s, that the educator, journalist and newspaper co-owner began a series of activist investigations into the local lynchings of three Black men that inspired national outrage and reform efforts that continue to reverberate. (The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which makes lynching a federal hate crime, only became law this year, signed by President Joe Biden in a March 29 ceremony attended by relatives of Wells and Till, the youth murdered in Mississippi in 1955.)

Eventually, threats and violence — mobs attacked the office of Wells' newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight — drove Wells to Chicago, where she continued her anti-lynching activism.

"Although she left under circumstances where she wasn't appreciated, Memphis should be proud that Ida B. Wells began her crusade here," McFerren said. "Memphis really has helped to shape the human rights of the world."

MEMPHIS NEWS:Ida B. Wells fled Memphis due to racism. Now she has a street named after her.

Funded through a combination of grants and donations, the 90-minute "Facing Down Storms" should make its way to various film festivals and streaming services after its Memphis premiere.

"Our goal is to get distribution, and hopefully the film can provide some income for the institute," said Ball, citing such popular University of Memphis-associated documentaries from years past as "At the River I Stand," about the Memphis 1968 sanitation strike.

"What Ida B. Wells witnessed was a turning back of the gains provided by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments," which abolished slavery and prohibited some forms of discrimination, McFerren said. "To me, it very much mirrors what is going on now.

"I see us now in a backlash to the period running from Brown vs. the Board of Education through the Barack Obama presidency. In the Ida B. Wells story, there's a warning to the future. There's not a guarantee that the gains of the civil rights era will continue."

'Facing Down Storms: Memphis and the Making of Ida B. Wells'

Reception at 5:30 p.m. April 19; movie premiere at 7 p.m.

Hosted by Rita Coburn.

The Halloran Centre, 225 S. Main.

Tickets start at $150. The event is a fundraiser for the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis.

For tickets and more information, visit memphis.edu/facingdownstorms.