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  2. Kids learn about the biography of Ida B. Wells, a former enslaved person who became a journalist and wrote about racial discrimination in the South. She ran a major campaign against lynching.

  3. Ida B. Wells. Ida B. Wells was journalist whose articles about the experiences of Black people shocked readers. Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Mississippi on July 16, 1862, less than a...

    • Early Life
    • Early Career and Anti-Segregation Activism
    • Marriage and Family
    • African-American Leadership
    • Organizing in Chicago
    • Suffrage
    • From "Race Agitator" to Political Candidate
    • Legacy and Honors
    • Monuments
    • Representation in Media

    Ida Bell Wells was born on the Bolling Farm near Holly Springs, Mississippi, July 16, 1862. She was the eldest child of James Madison Wells (1840–1878) and Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Warrenton). James Wells' father was a White man who impregnated an enslaved Black woman named Peggy. Before dying, James' father brought him, aged 18, to Holly Springs to bec...

    Soon after moving to Memphis, Tennessee, Wells was hired in Woodstock by the Shelby County school system. During her summer vacations, she attended summer sessions at Fisk University, a historically Black college in Nashville, Tennessee. She also attended Lemoyne-Owen College, a historically Black college in Memphis. She held strong political opini...

    On June 27, 1895, in Chicago at Bethel AME Church, Wells married attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett, a widower with two sons, Ferdinand Barnett and Albert Graham Barnett (1886–1962). Ferdinand Lee Barnett, who lived in Chicago, was a prominent attorney, civil rights activist, and journalist. Like Wells, he spoke widely against lynchings and for the civi...

    The 19th century's acknowledged leader for African-American civil rights Frederick Douglass praised Wells' work, giving her introductions and sometimes financial support for her investigations. When he died in 1895, Wells was perhaps at the height of her notoriety, but many men and women were ambivalent or against a woman taking the lead in Black c...

    Having settled in Chicago, Wells continued her anti-lynching work while becoming more focused on the civil rights of African Americans. She worked with national civil rights leaders to protest a major exhibition, she was active in the national women's club movement, and she ultimately ran for the Illinois State Senate. She also was passionate about...

    Negro Fellowship League

    Wells, her husband, and some members of their Bible study group, in 1908 founded the Negro Fellowship League (NFL), the first Black settlement house in Chicago. The organization, in rented space, served as a reading room, library, activity center, and shelter for young Black men in the local community at a time when the local Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) did not allow Black men to become members. The NFL also assisted with job leads and entrepreneurial opportunities for new arriva...

    Alpha Suffrage Club

    In the years following her dispute with Willard, Wells continued her anti-lynching campaign and organizing in Chicago. She focused her work on Black women's suffrage in the city following the enactment of a new state law enabling partial women's suffrage. The Illinois Presidential and Municipal Suffrage Bill of 1913 (see Women's suffrage in Illinois) gave women in the state the right to vote for presidential electors, mayor, aldermen and most other local offices; but not for governor, state r...

    During World War I, the U.S. government placed Wells under surveillance, labeling her a dangerous "race agitator". She defied this threat by continuing civil rights work during this period with such figures as Marcus Garvey, Monroe Trotter, and Madam C. J. Walker. In 1917, Wells wrote a series of investigative reports for the Chicago Defender on th...

    Since Wells' death, with the rise of mid-20th-century civil rights activism, and the 1971 posthumous publication of her autobiography, interest in her life and legacy has grown. Awards have been established in her name by the National Association of Black Journalists, the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, the Coordinating Coun...

    In 2021 Chicago erected a monument to Wells in the Bronzeville neighborhood, near where she lived and close to the site of the former Ida B. Wells Homes housing project. Officially called The Light of Truth Ida B. Wells National Monument (based on her quote, "the way to right wrongs is to cast the light of truth upon them"), it was created by sculp...

    In 1949 the anthology radio drama Destination Freedomrecapped parts of her life in the episode "Woman with a Mission". The PBS documentary series American Experience aired on December 19, 1989 – season 2, episode 11 (one-hour) – "Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice", written and directed by William Greaves. The documentary featured excerpts of Well...

  4. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a writer and public speaker in the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Her speeches and writings tell a shocking story of how whites killed African Americans in attacks called lynchings.

  5. African American journalist and civil rights advocate Ida B. Wells-Barnett led an antilynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. Lynching is a form of violence in which a mob claims to administer justice without a trial and executes a supposed offender.

  6. Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931), also known as Ida B. Wells, was an African-American journalist, suffragist and women's rights advocate. She was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi during the American Civil War. Wells grew up to become a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee.

  7. Apr 3, 2014 · (1862-1931) Who Was Ida B. Wells? Ida B. Wells was an African American journalist, abolitionist and feminist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. She went...

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