Courage is easy to praise once it’s safe. We rewind to the moment Ida B. Wells made it dangerous—when a teacher-turned-writer chose evidence over comfort and forced a country to look at what it preferred to hide. From a first-class train car to the ashes of her newspaper office, we trace how humiliation as policy sparked a lifetime of investigation that documented lynching with names, dates, locations, and motives, and exposed it as a tool to crush Black economic power.
We walk through the Memphis murders of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart, and how their success became the pretext for terror. Then we follow Wells beyond Memphis, where statistics met story and made denial harder at home and abroad. Along the way, we confront the fault lines inside the suffrage movement, where she refused to march at the back and insisted that a right divided by race is no right at all. Her methods—verification, pattern-tracking, naming systems of harm—form the backbone of ethical investigative journalism and a model for anyone committed to truth under pressure.
This is a focused, urgent portrait of a blueprint in action: how to gather facts that outlive fear, how to speak plainly when euphemism protects power, and how to keep the record so the record keeps us honest. We share how Ida B. Wells shapes our work today and why precision, empathy, and accountability still matter when stories get hard. If her courage stirs something in you, help us carry it forward: subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and leave a review with the one lesson you’ll hold onto.
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Extinguished With David McClam & LaDonna Humphrey
Musical Album
The Witch Hunt Of Lanny Hughes
Cover Art and Logo created by Diana of Other Worldly
Sound Mixing and editing by David McClam
Intro script by Sophie Wild From Fiverr & David McClam
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