Ida Bell Wells Drive

 

 Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 

(July 16, 1864 – March 25, 1931)

 

Representation in other media

In 1995, the play In Pursuit of Justice: A One-Woman Play About Ida B. Wells, written by Wendy Jones and starring Janice Jenkins, was produced.

 It is drawn from historical incidents and speeches from Wells' autobiography, and features fictional letters to a friend. It won four awards from the AUDELCO (Audience Development Committee Inc.), an organization that honors black theatre.^[105]
 
In 1999, a staged reading of the play Iola's Letter, written by Michon Boston, was performed at Howard University in Washington, DC, under the direction of Vera J. Katz, including then-student Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther) among the cast.

 The play is inspired by the real-life events that compelled a 29-year-old Ida B. Wells to launch an anti-lynching crusade from Memphis in 1892 using her newspaper, Free Speech.

 Iola's Letter is published in the anthology Strange Fruit:  Plays on Lynching by American Women, edited by Judith L. Stephens and Kathy A. Perkins (Indiana University Press, 1998).