Ida B. Wells Civil Rights Activist and Journalist (1862–1931)
Ida B. Wells was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. When her parents and a younger brother died in a yellow fever epidemic in 1878, she accepted the first of several jobs as a rural schoolteacher to help support her six younger brothers and sisters. Success as a freelance writer eventually led to a career as a newspaper journalist and editor. Through newspaper articles and lectures, she quickly gained fame as a crusader against lynching. In addition to numerous newspaper and magazine articles, Wells is known for two pamphlets published in the 1890s—Southern Horrors and The Red Record. After marrying Ferdinand Lee Barnett, a Chicago newspaperman and civil rights advocate in 1895, Wells devoted much of her time to civic reform work. She also gained notoriety as an investigator into the causes of race riots. Wells disagreed philosophically with the accommodationist program advocated by Booker T. Washington. Although she was a signer of “The Call,” a...
