Everyone knows the story of Rosa Parks. In 1955, she refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala., to a white passenger, an act of defiance that became a symbol for the modern civil rights movement.<\/p>\n
But few people know the parallel story of Ida B. Wells. In 1884, on a railroad car near Memphis, Tenn., she was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger. Wells refused, and it took three men to remove her.<\/p>\n
What happened in that railroad car became part of \u201cIda B. Wells: A Passion For Justice,\u201d a 53-minute documentary released in 1989. Fragments of it were shown recently at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.<\/p>\n
The showing was part of a little-known but long-running Radcliffe film series, \u201cMovie Night at the Schlesinger Library,\u201d<\/a> a quiet tradition that rarely fills the 30 chairs in the Radcliffe<\/a> College Room. In its present iteration, the monthly program started in 2000 and \u2014 with a two-year break for library renovations \u2014has run ever since.<\/p>\n Showing one long film was once the norm, said Schlesinger audiovisual cataloger Melissa Dollman, but this year\u2019s series has screened short films related to the library\u2019s collections. Showing with \u201cIda B. Wells\u201d was \u201cJeannette Rankin: The Woman Who Voted No,\u201d a 30-minute PBS documentary on the sole member of Congress who voted against entering both World War I and World War II.<\/p>\n Rankin was a lifelong pacifist and peace activist. Her last antiwar effort targeted the Vietnam War. The film showed an antiwar rally. \u201cThey can stop the war,\u201d Rankin said simply, by \u201cnot supporting it.\u201d Then came a shot of her being helped into a police wagon.<\/p>\n The movie series offers advantages. It\u2019s an intimate venue, with the chairs arrayed in rows of five. It offers unusual fare. One of the next films, playing March 3, is \u201cWe Dig Coal: A Portrait of Three Women.\u201d And each set of films comes with expert commentary.<\/p>\n Holding forth on Wells (1862-1931) and Rankin (1880-1973) were Schlesinger manuscript catalogers Marilyn Morgan and Emilyn Brown, both members of the film committee that makes selections for movie night.<\/p>\n Brown outlined Wells\u2019 remarkable life: born the year before emancipation, a teacher by age 14, and a Memphis journalist in her 20s who campaigned against lynching and racial violence. Harried out of the South, Wells settled in Chicago, where she married and continued a restless campaign for racial and gender justice.<\/p>\n Wells, a founder of the NAACP<\/a>, was a friend of leading feminist and rights leader Susan B. Anthony. (Anthony was disappointed when Wells decided to marry and raise a family.)<\/p>\n Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress. On her first day in office (April 2, 1917), the Montana Republican voted against America\u2019s entry into World War I. Though joined in her opposition by 49 males, the move temporarily cut Rankin\u2019s political career short and branded her \u2014 in the words of a contemporary \u2014 \u201cweak and sentimental.\u201d<\/p>\n Rankin\u2019s pacifism grew between the wars. By 1940 she had been elected again, this time on an antiwar platform. When Rankin voted against America\u2019s entry into war in December 1941, this time she cast the lone dissenting vote. It was an act that for years after brought her hatred.<\/p>\n Both Rankin and Wells, despite their accomplishments, rich lives, and one-time fame, are little known now. \u201cA lot of people get written out,\u201d said Morgan, who has a doctorate in history.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have figures who have become obscure,\u201d said Brown of Wells and Rankin. And yet, she added, \u201cThey have laid the foundations we stand on.\u201d<\/p>\n The next movie night will take place March 3 at 6 p.m. at 10 Garden St., Radcliffe Yard. The featured films are \u201cWe Dig Coal\u201d (1981) and \u201cWe\u2019re Here to Stay: Women in the Trades\u201d (1986). For more information, call 617.495.8647. For a list of films playing this season<\/a><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Everyone knows the story of Rosa Parks. In 1955, she refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala., to a white passenger, an act of defiance that became a symbol for the modern civil rights movement. But few people know the parallel story of Ida B. Wells. In 1884, on a railroad car […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-363102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}