Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, six months before the Emancipation Proclamation. Her father, James Wells, was a carpenter who was the son of his master. Her mother, Elizabeth, as a cook, who worked for the same man as her husband did. Both kept working for him after emancipation. Her father worked in politics and became a trustee of Rust College, a freedman's school, which Ida attended.
Ida B.
Wells was orphaned at 16 when her parents and some of her brothers and
sisters
died in a yellow fever epidemic. To support her surviving brothers and
sisters,
Ida B. Wells became a teacher for $25 a month, leading the school to
believe
that she was already 18 in order to obtain the job.
In
1880, after seeing her brothers placed as apprentics, she moved with
her two
younger sisters to live with a relative in Memphas.
There,
Ida B. Wells obtained a teaching position at a black school, and began
taking
classes at Fisk University in Nashville during summers.
Ida B.
Wells also began writing for the Negro Press Association. She became
editor of
a weekly, Evening Star, and then of Living Way, writing under the name
Iola.
Her articles were reprinted in other black newspapers around the
country.
In
1884, while riding in the ladies' car on a trip to Nashville, Ida B.
Wells was
forcibly removed from that car and forced into a colored-only car, even
though
she had a first class ticket. She sued the railroad, the Chesapeake and
Ohio,
and won a settlement of $500. In 1887, the Tennessee Supreme Court
overturned
the verdict, and Ida B. Wells had to pay court costs of $200.
Ida B.
Wells began writing more on racial injustice and she became a reporter
for, and
part owner of, Memphis Free Speech. She was particularly outspoken on
issues
involving the school system, which still employed her. In 1891, after
one
particular series, in which she had been particularly critical
(including of a
white school board member she alleged was involved in an affair with a
black
woman), her teaching contract was not renewed.
Ida B.
Wells increased her efforts in writing, editing, and promoting the
newspaper.
She continued her outspoken criticism of racism. She created a new stir
when
she endorsed violence as a means of self-protection and retaliation.
Lynching
in that time had become one common means by which African Americans
were
intimidated. Nationally, in about 200 lynchings each year, about
two-thirds of
the victims were black men, but the percentage was much higher in the
South.
In
Memphis in 1892, three black businessmen established a new grocery
store,
cutting into the business of white-owned businesses nearby. After
increasing
harassment, there was an incident where the business owners fired on
some
people breaking into the store. The three men were jailed, and nine
self-appointed deputies took them from the jail and lynchec them.
One of
the men, Tom Moss, was the father of Ida B. Wells' goddaughter, and she
knew
him and his partners to be upstanding citizens. She used the paper to
denounce
the lynching, and to endorse economic retaliation by the black
community
against white-owned businesses as well as the segregated public
transportation
system. She also promoted that African Americans should leave Memphis
for the
newly-opened Oklahoma territory, visiting and writing about Oklahoma in
her
paper. She bought herself a pistol for self-defense.
She
also wrote against lynching in general. In particular, the white
community
became incensed when she published an editorial denouncing the myth
that black
men raped white women, and her allusion to the idea that white women
might
consent to a relationship with black men was particularly offensive to
the
white community.
Ida B.
Wells was out of town when a mob invaded the paper's offices and
destroyed the
presses, responding to a call in a white-owned paper. Wells heard that
her life
was threatened if she returned, and so she went to New York,
self-styled as a
"journalist in exile."
Ida B. Wells was an educator, civil rights leader, and a journalist. Mistreated for not giving up her seat on a railroad car for "whites only," Ida Wells turned from teaching to journalism. While in MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, she wrote and exposed in her weekly publication, THE FREE SPEECH, the names of the persons responsible for the LYNCHING of three African Americans. Her press was destroyed by an angry mob, but she fled to NEW YORK CITY and kept up the exposure of the LYNCHING of Blacks as a topic for JUSTICE and FAIR LAWS. SOUTHERN HORRORS (1892) and A RED RECORD were two of her publications on the subject of lynching. On May 30, 1974, her Memphis home was designated a National Historic Landmark.