Truth or Consequences
Our 30th broadside was initially intended to mark the centennial of women’s suffrage in the United States with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. As 2020 unfolded, it has also come to represent the twin crises of the COVID-19 global pandemic and worldwide protests in response to police brutality and extrajudicial murders perpetrated against Black citizens. These crises have highlighted and exacerbated the systemic racial inequality already present in American society, and the responsibility of white women to use our rights and privileges to protect Black lives.
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
— Ida B. Wells
A journalist, civil rights activist, suffragist, and community organizer,Wells is widely known today as the mother of intersectional feminism — referring to a term coined in 1989 by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe how race, gender, and class often overlap to complicate issues of inequality. Wells devoted her entire life’s work to this intersection, fighting for women’s rights and racial justice along multiple fronts. Her quote is printed here in purple, the traditional color of the women’s suffrage movement — yet our broadside is only printed in red and blue. The text emerges where the two colors overlap to create purple: without this intersection of colors, the words are unreadable.
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Year created
2020
At issue
Voting rights, systemic racism, and fighting for intersectional equality for people of every gender, race, background, culture, and class.
Edition size
193 prints
Significance of edition number
Ida B. Wells founded the pioneering Women’s Era Club for Black women in Chicago in 1893.
Donation
A portion of the proceeds were donated, via Action Grants from the Dead Feminists Fund, to the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit focused on increasing the ranks, retention, and profile of reporters and editors of color in the field of journalism and investigative reporting.