"They say": Ida B. Wells and the reconstruction of race

In 'They Say,' James West Davidson recounts the first thirty years in the passionate life of Ida B.

Wells--as well as the story of the great struggle over the meaning of race in post-emancipation America.

Davidson captures the breathtaking and often chaotic changes that swept the South as Wells grew up in Holly Springs, Mississippi: the spread of education among free blacks, the rise of political activism, and the bitter struggles for equality in the face of entrenched social custom.