Image of Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Timeline

Lifetime: 1862 - 1931 Passed: ≈ 93 years ago

Title

Journalist , Teacher

Country/Nationality

United States
Wikipedia

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett 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). Over the course of a lifetime dedicated to combating prejudice and violence, and the fight for African-American equality, especially that of women, Wells arguably became the most famous Black woman in America.

Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War. At the age of 16, she lost both her parents and her infant brother in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. She went to work and kept the rest of the family together with the help of her grandmother. Later, moving with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, she found better pay as a teacher. Soon, Wells co-owned and wrote for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper. Her reporting covered incidents of racial segregation and inequality.

In the 1890s, Wells documented lynching in the United States in articles and through her pamphlet called Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, investigating frequent claims of whites that lynchings were reserved for Black criminals only. Wells exposed lynching as a barbaric practice of whites in the South used to intimidate and oppress African Americans who created economic and political competition and a subsequent threat of loss of power for whites. A white mob destroyed her newspaper office and presses as her investigative reporting was carried nationally in Black-owned newspapers. Subjected to continued threats, Wells left Memphis for Chicago. She married Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1895 and had a family while continuing her work writing, speaking, and organizing for civil rights and the women's movement for the rest of her life.

While her work contains extensive documentation of lynchings -- she was one of the first to do so her work is notable for its real-time reporting on the prevalent incendiary propaganda about Black rape that was used to justify the practice.

Wells was outspoken regarding her beliefs as a Black female activist and faced regular public disapproval, sometimes including from other leaders within the civil rights movement and the women's suffrage movement. She was active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. A skilled and persuasive speaker, Wells traveled nationally and internationally on lecture tours.

In 2020, Wells was posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize special citation "or her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."

Books by Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Southern Horrors : Lynch Law In All Its Phases Cover image

Southern Horrors : Lynch Law In All Its Phases

Essays
Short Works Modern

Thoroughly appalled and sickened by the rising numbers of white-on-black murders in the South since the beginning of Reconstruction, and by the unwillingness of local, state and federal governments to prosecute those who were responsible, Ida Bell We...

The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States Cover image

The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States

Crime
19th century Slavery Civilization Violence political America Modern Laws Sexuality United States

The Red Record, in 1895, a 100-page pamphlet with more detail, describing lynching in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. It also covered Black people's struggles in the South since the Civil War. The Red Record explored th...

Mob Rule In New Orleans Cover image

Mob Rule In New Orleans

Born into slavery in Mississippi in 1862, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, feminist, leader in the Civil Rights Movement, and one of the founders of the National Association for the A...