Ida B. Wells is an African American civil rights activist, journalist, and feminist. She is an American hero. Watch a short video about her work to ensure access to the polls.
Wells was born a slave in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She was the eldest daughter of James and Lizzie Wells. Her parents were active in the Republican Party during Reconstruction. Mr. Wells was involved with the Freemen's Aid Society and helped found Rust College. Rust is a historically black liberal arts college. Affiliated with the United Methodist Church, she is one of 10 historically black colleges and universities founded before 1869 and still operating today.
Wells attended Rust University for his early education, but was forced to drop out. When Mr. Wells was 16 years old, his parents and one of his siblings died in a yellow fever epidemic. She convinced her local school administrator that she was 18 years old and took her a job as a teacher to take care of her siblings.
In 1882, Wells moved with his sisters to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with an aunt. Her brothers found work as carpenter apprentices, and Ms. Wells continued her education for a time at Fisk University in Nashville. In May 1884, while riding a train from Memphis to Nashville, Wells reached a turning point. Although she had purchased a first class ticket, the train attendant forced her to move to a car reserved for African Americans. Although Ms. Wells refused on principle, she was forcibly removed from the train. As she was being removed, she bit one of her crew members. Mr. Wells sued the railroad and won a $500 settlement in circuit court. This decision was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
After this incident, Wells began writing about issues of race and politics in the South. Wells used the name “Iola” to have numerous articles published in black newspapers and periodicals. She later became the owner of two newspaper companies. free speech in memphis and headlights and freedom of speech. In addition to working as a journalist and publisher, Wells also worked as a teacher in Memphis' segregated public schools. She was a vocal critic of the city's segregated school conditions, and her criticism led to her being fired from her job in 1891.
In 1892, Wells turned his attention to anti-lynching after a friend and two of his business associates were murdered. Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart started a grocery store, but customers were leaving the white-owned stores in their neighborhood. White store owners and their supporters repeatedly clashed with Mr. Moss, Mr. McDowell, and Mr. Stewart. One night, they had to defend a store from an attack and ended up shooting and killing several white men. They were arrested and put in jail. Unfortunately, they had no chance to defend themselves. A lynch mob took them from their cells and murdered them. Wells wrote articles condemning lynchings and traveled the South risking his life to gather information about other lynchings. One of her editorials pushed some white people in the city over the edge. A mob attacked her newspaper office and destroyed all the equipment. Wells was in New York at the time of the incident, which likely saved her life. She remained in the North after her life was threatened and wrote a detailed report on lynching in the United States. New York era. This was a newspaper run by former slave T. Thomas Fortune.
She brought the anti-lynching movement to the White House in 1898 and asked President McKinley for reforms.
In 1895, Wells married Ferdinand Burnett and they had four children. Although Ms. Wells was married, she was one of the first American women to keep her maiden name.
In 1896, Wells founded several civil rights organizations, including the National Association of Colored Women. Wells took action after a brutal attack on the African American community in Springfield, Illinois in 1908. In 1909, she attended a meeting of what would become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Ms. Wells said she is considered a founder of the NAACP, but she left her relationship with the NAACP in its early days because she felt the organization lacked a commitment to build on her actions. I broke off the relationship.
Wells actively fought for women's suffrage, especially for black women. On January 30, 1913, Wells founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago. The club organized women in the city to elect candidates who could best serve the black community. As president of the club, Wells, along with dozens of other club members, was invited to march in the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, DC. Organizers, fearing offending white southern suffragists, asked women of color to march at the back of the parade. Wells refused and stood on the sidelines of the parade until Chicago's white women's troops passed, at which point she joined the march. The remaining troops of the Suffrage Club marched at the tail end of the parade. The work done by Wells and the Alpha Suffrage Club played a key role in the victory for women's suffrage in Illinois with the passage of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Act on June 25, 1913.
Wells died in Chicago on March 25, 1931 of kidney disease. She leaves behind a legacy of her social and political activism.
In 2020, Ida B. Wells won the Pulitzer Prize for her “outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the lynching era.”
Ida B. Wells is associated with the Ida B. Wells Barnett House. The building is located at 3624 S. Martin Luther King Dr. in Chicago. As it is a private residence, it is not open to the public. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on May 30, 1974.