Anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and temperance activist Frances Willard had an epic media battle a century before such public feuds were cool.
The two had much in common. Proponents of female suffrage, public health and child education, they shared goals, friends and the conviction that women should play a role in the public sphere. Yet Wells and Willard were unable to form a productive partnership. Instead, they seriously vexed each other. In the mid-1890s, when they both traveled to England on speaking tours, their disagreements morphed into a cross-Atlantic public media battle.
