Events

Michelle Duster heard her great-grandmother’s name a lot when she was growing up on the South Side of Chicago. But when people referred to “Ida B. Wells,” they weren’t talking about a person. They weren’t referring to someone born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862, who became one of the most famous and influential American women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were talking about the massive housing project that was named for her.