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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, MARCH 15, 2020
Downtown co-names street
after activist Ida B. Wells
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
Historians and activists gathered
in Downtown Brooklyn on March 7 to
rebrand Gold Street after 19th-century
civil rights icon Ida B. Wells, who took
up residence on the street during her
prolifi c campaign against lynching.
“No stop on her journey was more important
than Brooklyn,” said Dr. Paula
Giddings, who authored Wells’ biography
‘Sword Among Lions: Wells and the
Campaign Against Lynching.’
Civic leaders unveiled the offi cial conaming
of the roadway as “Ida B. Wells
Place” — complete with newly minted
street signs at the corner of Myrtle Avenue,
and an informational plaque detailing
her life in the borough.
Born into slavery just months ahead
of the Emancipation Proclamation,
Wells fl ed Memphis in the 1890s after
threats to her life, and took up residence
in Kings County — where she published
infl uential manifestos on lynching in
the black newspaper New York Age.
Her time on Gold Street was some of
the most formative times of Wells’ activism
career, said Giddlings.
“It was in Brooklyn where a seed
was sown to turn the gathering of
women here to join others across the
nation to form the fi rst black national
organization of women in the country,”
she said.
Wells’ family next to the new street sign at Gold Street and Myrtle Avenue. Photo by Corazon Aguirre
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