Overview
"By highlighting the life of a key figure in the NAACP Wedin has given us a welcome addition to the literature of that organization."—Library Journal
"In its densely researched, sensitively interpreted, and crisply written evocation of her subject's career, Professor Wedin's biography opens a wide window onto much of the inner life of the NAACP as it evolves from a virtual one-person show scripted by the incomparable (and sometimes insufferable) Du Bois through the unflappable stewardship of James Weldon Johnson and the manic operational brilliance of Walter White to become, in classic Weberian progression, a well-honed bureaucracy of lawyers, accountants, field secretaries, and lobbyists—and, overwhelmingly, of African Americans . . . a vibrant, valuable chronicle of an eighty-year dedication to economic, racial, and gender justice."—from the Foreword by David Levering Lewis
Editorials
Kirkus Reviews
A somewhat pedantic biography of a remarkable woman—author, journalist, socialist, feminist, and a founder of the NAACP.Despite her dry manner, Wedin (English/Univ. of Wisconsin, Whitewater) has thoroughly researched and recreated a life filled with drama. Ovington was born in 1865 in Brooklyn, New York. Raised in an abolitionist milieu, seized early on by an affinity for the Socialist Party and the working class, she also enjoyed a life of privilege and an education that led to the Annex, a college-level institution for women that was eventually renamed Radcliffe College. Ovington rejected the usual choices—marriage or domesticity with her parents—instead establishing a settlement house in Brooklyn; from there she moved to what was then a Negro neighborhood in Manhattan with plans for another settlement, beginning her dedication to the cause of black rights and opportunities, which engaged her until she died at age 86. For advice, she wrote to activist and author W.E.B. DuBois, beginning a friendship that was to last the rest of their lives. Race riots in Atlanta and Springfield, Ill., galvanized her to join with William English Walling, a southern white man, and Henry Moskowitz, a social worker, in launching the NAACP. She contacted her many black friends and acquaintances, and within five months, in May 1909, the fledging organization drew 1,500 people to its first public meeting. Ovington traveled, wrote, recruited, and organized among both blacks and whites for the next 40 years; she served as NAACP chairwoman for more than a decade. While she believed in educating blacks and whites about each other, she also advocated using the courts, the Congress, and grass-roots organizing to end racism.
Overshadowed by others then and now, Ovington is revealed to be a courageous and politically astute woman, a "torch-bearer," as Wedin calls her, against oppression and discrimination.