Wells, was an African American writer and activist famous for her work campaigning against lynching in the South. Ida B. She lives in New York City. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a fearless anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, women's rights advocate, journalist, and speaker. ida b. wells New York City , Oct. 26, 1892 To the Afro-American women of New York and Brooklyn, whose race love, earnest zeal and unselfish effort at Lyric Hall, in the City of New York, on the night of October 5, 1892—made possible its publication, this … Wells (left), with the family of Thomas H. Moss, Sr., Maurine, Betty, and Thomas, Jr. Mr. Moss, a postman and grocery store owner, was lynched in Memphis, Tennessee, 9 March 1892. When Wells died in 1931 at the age of 68 from a brief illness due to kidney failure, her influence was waning, her autobiography was unfinished and her ambition of a federal anti-lynching … The horrendous practice of lynching had become widespread in the South in the decades following the Civil War. Ida B. Wells is widely known for her relentless work on behalf of the anti-lynching movement. Wells was an African American journalist and activist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. Wells protested the lynching in an editorial for The Gate City Press, a black newspaper in Kansas City, Mo. At only 16 years old, Wells took a job as a teacher in Memphis in order to support her five younger siblings. Wells continued her journalism, and often published articles on the subject of lynching and civil rights for African Americans. Wells. ThoughtCo uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. “Lynching” refers to an instance when a person or group of people acting outside the law physically punishes another person, often resulting in death. Wells' friend Thomas Moss and two other African-American men were lynched in Memphis, a horrific act that inspired Wells to begin her anti-lynching crusade. BY JACQUELINE HUBBARD, ESQ., ASALH President. There has also been a movement to honor Wells with a statue in the Chicago neighborhood where she lived. Wells used the power of investigative journalism to bring the darkness of lynching into the light. Ida B. The city was long overdue to pay tribute to Wells’ anti-lynching work, which […] In March 2018, as part of a project to highlight women who had been overlooked, the New York Times published a belated obituary of Ida B. Wells traveled by train from Memphis to Woodstock, Tennessee, … She wanted her beloved Memphis to pay tribute to an iconic pioneer of civil rights, Ida B. Wells." In Memphis, Wells found work as a teacher. Wells (1862–1931) was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi. You can also suggest a primary source set topic or view resources for National History Day. An illustration with portraits of African American leaders, including Ida B. Wells-Barnett, ca. Wells went to heroic lengths in the late 1890s to document the horrifying practice of lynching Black people. Ida B. Biography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Journalist Who Fought Racism, The African American Press Timeline: 1827 to 1895, 27 Black American Women Writers You Should Know, The Early History of the NAACP: A Timeline, Biography of the Rev. ThoughtCo. Wells was an intrepid journalist, anti-lynching crusader, women's rights activist, and civil rights pioneer. By Michelle Duste r September 20, 2018 Wells was also involved in women’s rights activism, specifically focusing on African American women, and was among the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Lynching was the law of the land. Ida B. Her efforts began in 1892 after three African-American men, having recently opened a grocery store in competition with the other white-owned store, were lynched by a white mob. Wells died she had faded from public view somewhat, and major newspapers did not note her passing. There were 135 human beings that met death at the hands of mobs during this year. Wells, Ida: A Sword Among Lions, which won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and was a finalist … In a sense, Wells practiced what today is often lauded as data journalism, as she scrupulously kept records and was able to document the large numbers of lynchings which were taking place in America. Wells was the most prominent anti-lynching campaigner in the United States. Ida B. The bill exposed both lynching and the effects it had on the people. Ida B. Wells-Barnett stepped back from public engagements and travel while she raised her four children, but remained committed to racial justice and ran for Illinois state senator in 1930, though she did not win. Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement.She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When three of her friends were lynched in retribution for their economic success and a mob of white residents destroyed the office of her newspaper, Wells was forced to leave Memphis, but she continued her anti-lynching activism as a writer, journalist, and lecturer. When lynching pervaded the country she exposed what black life and suffering looked like facing this danger. By challenging the white power structure, she became a target. She grew up to be a journalist who fought to expose the injustice of lynching through her writing, lecturing, and political activism. In 1895 Wells married Ferdinand Barnett, an editor and lawyer in Chicago. She began to write about her experiences, and became affiliated with The Living Way, a newspaper published by African Americans. A political cartoon by Thomas Nast titled “The Union as it Was,” published in. She attended Fisk University in Nashville. A legal brief for Ida B. Wells’ lawsuit against Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad Company before the state Supreme Court, 1885. Though her campaign against lynching did not stop the practice, her groundbreaking reporting and writing on the subject was a milestone in American journalism. Wells was an African American journalist, abolitionist and feminist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. A Texas newspaper called her an "adventuress," and the governor of Georgia even claimed that she was a stooge for international businessmen trying to get people to boycott the South and do business in the American West. Wells, Mary Burnett Talbert and Angelina Grimké. Many women contributed to the anti-lynching movement through the Dyer Bill, including Ida B. With her towering courage, she has a place as one of histories most uncompromising leaders and greatest defenders of democracy. During Reconstruction and after, instances of lynching in the US rose dramatically as Southern white communities targeted, threatened, and killed African Americans, often with little or no justification, in an attempt to maintain social, economic, and political power. Born in 1862 at Holly Springs in Mississippi, Wells had witnessed the lynching of a friend and … All by fighting prejudice and violence. Ida B. Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862–March 25, 1931), known for much of her public career as Ida B. Wells was enslaved from her birth on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Explore resources and ideas for Using DPLA's Primary Source Sets in your classroom. https://www.thoughtco.com/ida-b-wells-basics-1773408 (accessed February 9, 2021). Ida B. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Her Passion for Justice Lee D. Baker . She is the author of When and Where I Enter: The Impact on Black Women on Race and Sex in America; In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement; and, most recently, the biography of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Author: Ida B. He was Amazon.com's first-ever history editor and has bylines in New York, the Chicago Tribune, and other national outlets. Ida B. She married racial justice activist and lawyer Ferdinand Barnett in 1895 and settled in Chicago, where she became one of the leading members of the Chicago black community and worked on another newspaper, The Conservator. Wells was born a slave in Mississippi in 1862, six months before the Emancipation Proclamation. Mia Bay is Professor of History at Rutgers University and Director of the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity. Ida B. As a young adult, Wells moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she became a teacher and soon took a stand against Jim Crow segregation. The late Dr. Miriam DeCosta-Willis, the accomplished Civil Rights activist, author, historian and University of Memphis educator, had one more dream in December 2019. Wells was born a slave in 1862 in Holly Springs, Miss. Women’s Suffrage: Campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Civil Rights Movement in Rural Mississippi, Immigration and Americanization, 1880-1930, Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern American Architecture, Exodusters: African American Migration to the Great Plains, The Underground Railroad and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, When Miners Strike: West Virginia Coal Mining and Labor History, Environmental Preservation in the Progressive Era, Busing & Beyond: School Desegregation in Boston, Boomtimes Again: Twentieth-Century Mining in the Mojave Desert, Reservations, Resistance, and the Indian Reorganization Act, 1900-1940, Fake News in the 1890s: Yellow Journalism, American Imperialism: The Spanish-American War, Treaty of Versailles and the End of World War I, These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the, The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930). And it hit home for Ida B. Over the course of a lifetime dedicated to combating prejudice and violence, and the fight for African-American … Among Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s achievements were the publication of a detailed book about lynching entitled A Red Record (1895), the cofounding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the founding of what may have been the first Black women’s suffrage group. McNamara, Robert. Wells became deeply interested in the lynching problem after three Black businessmen she knew were killed by a white mob outside Memphis, Tennessee, in 1892. Ida B. Wells-Barnett—journalist, suffragist and anti-lynching activist—is Thursday’s Google doodle, in honor of her 153rd birthday. She continued her work documenting lynchings. To give feedback, contact us at education@dp.la. She stands as one of our nation's most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy. In 1892, Ida B. McNamara, Robert. 1900. The journalist Ida B. Ida B. Wells resolved to document the lynchings in the South, and to speak out in hopes of ending the practice. The New York Times reported on her speech: In 1895 Wells published a landmark book, A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings In the United States. Wells. Wells was a journalist, lecturer, civil rights leader, and the leading activist against lynching during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wells Anti-Lynching Campaign Ida B. Born to slavery, Wells didn’t just go on to become a champion of women’s rights but also a successful journalist. At the time Ida B. On this date in 1862, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was born. Wells was awarded a Pulitzer Prize "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching." When Ida was young she was educated in a local school, though her education was interrupted when both her parents died in a yellow fever epidemic when she was 16. An address she gave in Brooklyn, New York, on December 10, 1894, was covered in the New York Times. The report noted that Wells had been welcomed by a local chapter of the Anti-Lynching Society, and a letter from Frederick Douglass, regretting that he couldn't attend, had been read. Wells died on March 25, 1931. She was, of course, attacked for that at home. Wells wrote many pamphlets exposing white violence and lynching and defending black victims. A portrait of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 1920s. In 1892 she became the co-owner of a small newspaper for African Americans in Memphis, the Free Speech. Following the end of the Civil War, her father, who as an enslaved person had been the carpenter on a plantation, was active in Reconstruction period politics in Mississippi. "Ida B. Wells spent a lifetime lending her voice and pen to anti-lynching and women’s rights. A letter from Ida B. Ida B. Robert J. McNamara is a history expert and former magazine journalist. McNamara, Robert. For the next four decades she would devote her life, often at great personal risk, to campaigning against lynching. Fierce and anti-lynching crusader. Biography of Angela Davis, Political Activist and Academic, Black History and Women's Timeline: 1900–1919, The Most Important Inventions of the Industrial Revolution. An often unsung American icon, Wells was an outspoken woman who fought with the national president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Frances E. Willard, about intersectionality before the word was even invented. Her groundbreaking work, which included collecting statistics in a practice that today is called "data journalism," established that the lawless killing of Black people was a systematic practice, especially in the South in the era following … Wells is most famous for her anti lynching campaign, a crusade she had led almost singlehandedly. “Lynching” refers to an instance when a person or group of people acting outside the law physically punishes another person, often resulting in death. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee. In 1894 she returned to America and embarked on a speaking tour. Wells was a well-established journalist who lived during the late 19th century and the early 20th century. In her lifetime, Wells may have been the most famous black women in America. In 1883, Ida B. She became involved in local politics in Chicago and also with the nationwide drive for women's suffrage. Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931), often referred to as Ida B. Students will analyze Ida B. Wells’ actions to stop lynchings. They lived in Chicago and had four children. Wells went to heroic lengths in the late 1890s to document the horrifying practice of lynching Black people. Ida B. Ida B. Wells and Anti-Lynching Activism A legal brief for Ida B. Wells’ lawsuit against Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad Company before the state Supreme Court, 1885. Wells was born in rural Mississippi in the midst of the Civil War. The photograph was taken in Indianapolis, Indiana … Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/ida-b-wells-basics-1773408. She traveled to England in 1893 and 1894, and spoke at many public meetings about the conditions in the American South. Wells in March 1892 when three young African American businessmen she knew in Memphis were abducted by a mob and murdered. (2020, August 27). Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Civil Rights Leader, 10 of the Most Important Black Women in U.S. History, Biography of Georgia Douglas Johnson, Harlem Renaissance Writer, Black American History and Women Timeline: 1800–1859, Black History and Women's Timeline: 1920-1929. Who Were the Muckrakers in the Journalism Industry? ThoughtCo, Aug. 27, 2020, thoughtco.com/ida-b-wells-basics-1773408. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the first of eight children, was born six months before the … And she was certainly no stranger to death threats. A letter from A. M. Middlebrook to Albion Tourgée about a lynching to be held in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Sept. 28, 1894. She was born in Mississippi in 1862 to James and Elizabeth Wells, who were enslaved until the Emancipation Proclamation. Wells Barnett. In 1889, Wells became co-owner and editor of The Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, which she used to speak out against racial injustice. Wells. African American journalist Ida B. Wells, was an American journalist, black civil rights leader, and anti-lynching crusader since after the Reconstruction era. Yet she doggedly reported on lynchings and made the subject of lynching a topic which American society could not ignore. She was a Black journalist, advocate of civil rights, women's rights, economic rights, and an anti-lynching crusader. When Ida B. Students will apply their knowledge to determine ways to be responsible in their own lives. The campaign against lynching began in earnest in 1892 when Ida B. Ida B. Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, better known as Ida B. Ida B. African American journalist Ida B. Wells." In this op-ed, author, speaker, and professor Michelle Duster explains the life and legacy of her great-grandmother, anti-lynching crusader Ida B. And she resolved to become an activist when, on May 4, 1884, she was ordered to leave her seat on a streetcar and move to a segregated car. Wells was a journalist, lecturer, civil rights leader, and the leading activist against lynching during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An address about Ida B. Wells’ speaking tour in England, adopted by a group of African American citizens in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1894. "Ida B. In 2020, Ida B. Ida B. She refused and was ejected from the train. She was the eldest of eight children. Her groundbreaking work, which included collecting statistics in a practice that today is called "data journalism," established that the lawless killing of Black people was a systematic practice, especially in the South in the era following Reconstruction. Wells is associated with the Ida B. Wells-Barnett House. Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. She began advocating for the Black citizens of Memphis to move to the West, and she urged boycotts of segregated streetcars. Students will evaluation Wells taking responsibility to teach and inform others about lynching. Wells to Albion Tourgée, Nov. 27, 1894. The documents and images in this primary source set follow the development of Ida B. Wells’ career as a journalist and activist and also represent the practice of lynching that she dedicated her career to fighting against. Office of Anti-Lynching Bureau 2939 Princeton Avenue Chicago To the Members of the Anti-Lynching Bureau: The year of 1901 with its lynching record is a thing of the past. She had to take care of her siblings, and she moved with them to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with an aunt. Wells, "Speech on Lynch Law in America, Given by Ida B. Reality was grim. Wells. Enter Ida B. Ida B. And in May 1892 the office of her newspaper, the Free Speech, was attacked by a white mob and burned. Wells, was an anti-lynching activist, a muckraking journalist, a lecturer, an activist for racial justice, and a suffragette. A skilled writer and speaker, she traveled the United States and Europe lecturing on women’s and civil rights, and wrote an influential anti-lynching pamphlet called “Southern Horrors: Lynch Laws in All Its Phases.” By using ThoughtCo, you accept our. Wells took her anti-lynching campaign to England and was well received. By 1909 Ida B. From the early 1890s she labored mostly alone in her effort to raise the nation’s awareness and indignation about these usually unpunished murders. Ida B. Ida B. At one point a newspaper she owned was burned by a white mob. Wells Took on Lynching, Threats Forced Her to Leave Memphis Death threats drove Wells from Memphis, but she was not silenced and would find her home in Chicago. And in June 2018 the Chicago city government voted to honor Wells by naming a street for her. University and Director of the anti-lynching movement through the Dyer Bill, including Ida.! 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