Pulitzers honor Ida B. Wells, an early pioneer of investigative journalism and civil rights icon
Barbara Allen
In granting a posthumous citation to Ida B. Wells, the Pulitzer Prizes honors one of America’s earliest and most intrepid investigative reporters.
Ida B. Wells was born a slave in Mississippi in 1862. She became and a writer and publisher who crusaded against lynching and for civil rights in the deep South after the Civil War. It was death-defying work for a black woman, who spent months journeying through the Southern states, investigating the lynchings of black men through records research and in-person interviews — a process that laid the groundwork for modern investigative techniques.
At 30, and as the co-owner and editor for The Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, Wells took on that most famous work, attempting to investigate the trope that lynchings usually followed the rape of white women by black men. She discovered, of course, that this was patently false: “Nobody in this section of the country believes the threadbare old lie that Negro men rape white women,” Wells wrote. Instead, she wrote, the horrible violence — and threat of that violence — were simply a means for white citizens to terrorize and oppress African Americans. Her writing was published across the United States and abroad, and included the pamphlets-turned-books “Southern Horrors” and “The Red Record.”
She continued her career as a journalist and advocate for civil rights, even after her life was threatened and she was forced to flee Memphis, her newspaper offices plundered and her presses destroyed. She is considered one of the founders of the NAACP and her later advocacy included organizing boycotts, the suffrage movement and anti-segregation activism.
She died in Chicago in 1931 of kidney disease. She was 68.
Most recently, The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, established in 2016, is “a news trade organization dedicated to increasing and retaining reporters and editors of color in the field of investigative reporting.” It was founded by journalists Ron Nixon, Topher Sanders and Nikole Hannah-Jones, who also was named a Pulitzer winner today.
The citation comes with a bequest of $50,000, said Dana Canedy, Pulitzer administrator, with details to come.
Ulrik Haagerup
Constructive News Institute
“This is a breakthrough: For the first time future journalism students are being tested in constructive storytelling. At Danish @cfjsdu applicants had to reflect on CoJo as part of the test to enter our profession. Thanks.”
The worst could be yet to come. ‘According to a leaked internal Trump administration report that predicts 3,000 coronavirus deaths a day by June 1.
Why it matters: That’s nearly double the status quo. The report published by the N.Y. Times shows the possibility of 200,000 new cases a day by the end of May. In April, new daily cases hovered around 30,000. [The model was created by Johns Hopkins professor Justin Lessler.] @axios
[Kropotkin criticizes the State for destroying mutual aid institutions.]
‘Social Darwinists began to argue that evolutionary theory should inform politics, too. The whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of them, and make room for better.’
Reading this piece by a brilliant writer while knowing who is part of this current administration and knowing who are most COVID vulnerable this social Darwinism frame seems to aligned with the decisions being made during this pandemic. -dayle
“Social Darwinists” began to argue that evolutionary theory should inform politics, too. Like the billionaire Andrew Carnegie, who swore his wealth was a product of natural law: “We accept and welcome (…) great inequality,” he pronounced.
The philosopher Herbert Spencer sold hundreds of thousands of books in which he characterised life as an eternal battle. Regarding people living in poverty, he wrote: “The whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of them, and make room for better.”
Economic and biological theories began to converge. Where biologists said existence revolved around survival and reproduction, economists believed that we exist to consume and produce.
Humankind has risen to great heights by fighting each other and crushing its weak…what’s we need is a complete overhaul of assumptions about human nature…implications for how we design our democracies, schools and workplaces…the biggest questions we can ask. What is it to be human? How should we organise ourselves? And, can we trust one another?
A MAN WITH A DANGEROUS IDEA: TRUST EACH OTHER
RUTGER BREGMAN
But what if it’s not survival of the fittest, but survival of the kindest, most cooperative?
In 19th-century Russia there lived a man who believed that mutual aid, cooperation, and friendship were how humankind truly thrives.
Today, Progress correspondent Rutger Bregman tells the extraordinary story of Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin and the important lesson we can take from him.
Journalist and radio host Kai Ryssdal: “History matters.” @kairyssdal
Ah, here’s a bleak new study from the NY Fed: In the wake of the 1918-1920 influenza, German cities that got hit harder saw: A) Lower spending on education in the post-crisis period B) More support for the Nazi party
We’re Being Too Optimistic About What Post-Pandemic America Will Look Like
The coronavirus has revealed so many of our institutions to be vulnerable or broken. But that doesn’t mean they will change.
Harry Cheadle
In March, when Politico surveyed “more than 30 smart, macro thinkers” on what will likely change when the pandemic is over, the predictions were heartening, for the most part. They included: a decrease in toxic partisanship, a renewed trust in experts and science, greater government involvement in pharmaceutical production and transformations to elections that could include widespread voting by mail and electronic voting. VICE’s tech desk did a similar exercise, pointing out that the coronavirus has exposed a lot of weaknesses and problems in the U.S. that could be alleviated by progressive policies ranging from universal health care to abolishing ICE. The online magazine Yale Environment 360 wrote that Bill Gates and other optimists have speculated that “the sudden transformation of our lives by COVID-19 will teach us about the virtues of mutual aid, and that it will shock policymakers into being more precautionary in the face of future risks,” most notably the existential danger of climate change.
There’s no denying that this kind of positive thinking about the future is attractive, and has undoubtedly served as a coping mechanism. And some coronavirus predictions seem much more likely than others (for instance, that those who can do their jobs from home may not return to offices for months). But there are already signs that in many ways, the world will snap back to normal at the first available opportunity. The notion that COVID-19 will shock us into being more responsible about climate change or will lead us to reform our institutions underrates the sheer force of inertia that made us so vulnerable to the virus in the first place.
Sure, coronavirus should be a wake-up call, on so many fronts. But leaders, particularly in the U.S., are likely to just hit the snooze button.
If the coronavirus pandemic follows the path of the 1918 flu and the 2008 economic crisis, the world’s political energies will largely be devoted to restoring what we had, rather than using the opportunity to change things for the better. Whenever this strange, long moment in history ends, we might be surprised by how much things resemble our old world order. And that will be a disaster.
“I have the foreboding sent that we will emerge from this and find ourselves in a world trying to recreate the status quo ante.Even if this is the case, I can’t let that be my now person response.”
-Cameron Wright, a twenty-two-year-old senior at Yale
Upworthy
A child’s future bedtime story portrays a post-COVID world that learned from its mistakes.
‘Thirty Shore-based musicians, including the late Clarence Clemons’ son Jarod, have recorded a socially distanced, group version of Bruce Springsteen’s upbeat anthem “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” as a benefit for the Asbury Park Music Foundation, which provides music education program for under-served youths.
Springsteen released “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” on his 2002 album The Rising and has continued to perform it frequently at his concerts since then, often as an audience participation number.’
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