Ida B Wells was an American journalist, suffragist, sociologist and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement.
Wells was born a slave in Mississipi in 1862. Six months after her birth slaves were decreed free by the Union thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation. Wells faced racial prejudice and discriminatory rules because of her race. Both of Well’s parents and one of her siblings died when she was 16, leaving her responsible for her remaining siblings. Wells managed to convince a nearby school that she was 18 and she became employed as a teacher to support her family. Wells was paid only $30 a month in comparison to white teachers who earned $80, the discrimination fuelled her interest in the politics of race and improving the education of black people.
Wells moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1882 as she could earn more there as a teacher. She attended summer school as Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville and LeMoyne. In 1884 Wells had bought a first class train ticket to Nashville and was seated in the ladies car when she was ordered to the ‘Jim Crow’ (black) section. She refused and bit the conductor when he tried to forcibly remove her. Wells was ejected from the train and sued, she won a $500 settlement but the decision was later overturned.
Wells’ experience led her to write about the issues of race and politics in the South. She wrote under the pseudonym ‘Iola’ and became a co-owner and editor of a local black newspaper called The Free Speech and Headlight. She condemned violence against blacks, disfranchisement, poor schools, and the failure of black people to fight for their rights. She became a full-time journalist after being fired for her teaching job for her views on segregated schools. After Tom Moss, a respected black store owner was lynched with two of his friends after defending his store against white people Wells attacked the event and the evil of lynching in print. She urged the black residents of Memphis to leave town and 6,000 of them did, those that stayed organised boycotts of white-owned businesses. While she was travelling to New York City, her paper was destroyed and she was warned not to return or her life would be in danger.
Wells remained in the North and conducting research into lynching, finding that black people were lynched for: falling to pay debts, not giving way to whites, competing with whites economically and being drunk in public. She found no evidence for the basis that they were lynched for assaulting white women, on the contrary she found most encounters between black men and white women were consensual. She also lectured in New York City, at a testimonial dinner at Lyric Hall Victoria Earle Matthews and Maritcha Remond Lyons raised significant funds for Ida B. Wells’ anti-lynching campaign. This led to the founding of the Women’s Loyal Union of New York and Brooklyn. Wells lectured abroad, looking for support among reform-minded whites.
After a ban on African-American exhibitors at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition Wells wrote a pamphlet entitled The Reason Why the Colored American Is Represented in the World’s Columbian Exposition.“ She also organised a black boycott. The pamphlet was supported and funded by famed abolitionist and freed slave Frederick Douglass, and lawyer and editor Ferdinand Barnett whom she later married. She was one of the first married American women to keep her own last name as well as taking her husband’s, becoming Ida B Wells-Barnett.
In 1896 Wells formed the National Association of Colored Women which would later become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She cut ties with the organisation because she felt that it lacked action-based initiatives. Wells also worked with the National Equal Rights League, calling for President Woodrow Wilson to put an end to discriminatory hiring practices for government jobs. She created the first African-American kindergarten in her community and fought for women’s suffrage.
Wells died at the age of 69 in Chicago, Illinois. She fought for black civil and political rights and an end to lynching until shortly before she died and left behind a legacy of social and political heroism.