Civil rights activists and suffragist, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, was born Ida B. Wells, a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. Wells attended Rust College to receive her early education, but was forced to drop out, shortly after. She became primary caregiver to her six brothers and sisters, when both of her parents succumbed to yellow fever. Family friends and relatives wanted to split the children up, but 16-year old Ida took on the responsibility of becoming the new head of her family to keep her siblings together. Ida took a job as a schoolteacher to support her siblings, as her grandmother watched the children.
The Wells family lived near Shaw University and she managed to continue her education at Shaw, now Rust College. After completing her studies Wells divided her time between caring for her siblings and teaching school. It was a very challenging time in Ida’s life. In 1881 Ida’s grandmother and one of Ida’s sisters died, so Ida and her two youngest sisters moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they had an aunt who could help her. Ida took another teaching job in Memphis and started writing articles for local newspapers. While working as a teacher in Memphis, she began writing a column for "The Living Way", a weekly newspaper, under the pen name “Iola.” Her writings for the newspaper on race injustices earned her a national reputation.
Wells first began protesting the treatment of Black Southerners on a train ride between Memphis and her job at a rural school. The conductor told her that she must move to the “Colored” train car, which was already crowded with other passengers. Wells refused, arguing that she had purchased a first-class ticket. The conductor and other passengers then physically removed her from the train. Wells returned to Memphis, hired a lawyer, and sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company, citing racial discrimination, claiming it had violated the 1875 Civil Rights Act. The court decided in her favor, awarding Wells $500 in damages. The railroad company appealed, and in 1887, the Supreme Court of Tennessee reversed the previous decision and ordered Wells to pay court fees.
The lynching of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart in 1892 spurred Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s investigation into the increasing violence against Black communities in Memphis. Thomas Moss Sr., opened People's Grocery, which he co-owned in Memphis with McDowell and Stewart, but their economic success had drawn customers away from Barrett's Grocery, owned by William Russell Barrett. On March 9, a group of White men gathered to confront McDowell, Moss, and Stewart. The group of White men were met by a barrage of bullets. Hundreds of Whites were deputized almost immediately to help out. Authorities arrested the three Black business owners. Authorities arrested the three Black business owners. A White mob subsequently broke into the jail, captured McDowell, Moss, and Stewart, shot them to death and then lynched them. Wells wrote articles decrying the lynching.
Ida was devastated by this violent death. She bought a pistol for self-defense and wrote an editorial urging Black people to move out of Memphis for their safety. Sponsored by Black women’s clubs to pursue her investigation of lynching, she published her findings in a pamphlet titled "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases." In it, she showed that one-third of charges against Black men were for the rape of White women, which therefore “justified” the violence in the name of protecting White women. Ida learned that an alarming 728 lynching cases occurred in the United States between 1884 and 1892. Most victims were African American men accused of raping White women. On May 21, 1892, Wells published an editorial in the Free Speech refuting what she called "that old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern men are not careful, a conclusion might be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women." While interviewing witnesses, Ida noticed that in most cases these accusations were made after a lynching had already taken place.
On May 25, The Daily Commercial wrote: "The fact that a Black scoundrel [Ida B. Wells] is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern Whites. But we've had enough of it". Ida also found that many of these relationships were consensual, causing outrage within the White community. The same night the expose’ appeared in the Free Speech, a mob destroyed her newspaper office in retaliation. James L. Fleming, co-owner with Wells and business manager, was forced to flee Memphis; and, reportedly, the trains were being watched for Wells's return. She fled Memphis determined to continue her campaign to raise awareness of southern lynching. She went to New York where she joined the staff of the New York Age, edited by T. Thomas Fortune, a former slave, and began a fervent crusade against lynching.
In 1893, the World's Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago. Together with Frederick Douglass and other Black leaders, Wells organized a Black boycott of the fair, for the fair's lack of representation of African-American achievement in the exhibits. Wells, Douglass, and her future husband, Ferdinand L. Barnett, wrote sections of the pamphlet The Reason Why: The Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition, which detailed the progress of Blacks since their arrival in America and also exposed the basis of Southern lynchings. Wells later reported that copies of the pamphlet had been distributed to more than 20,000 people at the fair. Wells then took her movement to England, and established the British Anti-Lynching Society in 1894.
She returned to the U.S. and settled in Chicago, Illinois, where on June 27, 1895, she married prominent civil rights activist, attorney and newspaper owner/editor Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1895. Despite being married, Wells was one of the first American women to keep her maiden name. During that year Ms. Wells-Barnett published "The Red Record", a serious statistical treatment of tragic lynching in the United States, which could not be refuted. It opened the eyes of the people around the world to the horrific lynchings that had been happening in the United States. A Red Record explored the alarmingly high rates of lynching in the United States (which was at a peak from 1880 to 1930). Wells said that during Reconstruction, most Americans outside the South did not realize the growing rate of violence against Black people in the South. She believed that during slavery, white people had not committed as many attacks because of the economic labor value of slaves. She risked her life to gained this information. Wells was putting names to stories and names to statistics.
In 1896, Wells along with leaders like Frances E.W. Harper, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Harriet Tubman, and Mary Church Terrell formed the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), in Washington, D.C., which became the National Association of Colored Women Clubs. The NACW pursued many goals: education, anti-lynching, elderly care, job preparedness, fighting Jim Crow legislation, and suffrage. Their ideals were best summed up in their motto “Lifting as We Climb”, which represented their holistic approach to aid. They would bring everyone to a higher standard of living along with themselves. As a non-suffrage specific institution, the NACW endorsed women’s suffrage before its White counterpart organizations. From 1898 to 1902 Wells-Barnett served as secretary of the National Afro-American Council. She brought her anti-lynching campaign to the White House in 1898 and called for President William McKinley to make reforms.
Progressive reformer Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells-Barnett collaborated, as well as sometimes challenged one another, in their effort to create a more just world. The two reformers triumphed in their successful struggle to block the establishment of segregated public schools in Chicago. On the topic of lynching, Wells-Barnett challenged Addams and the White progressive movement. Wells-Barnett was critical of Addams’ assumption that Black men had actually committed crimes prior to being lynched, a common assumption among White progressives. In 1901, Addams published her article "Respect for Law" in the New York Independent, in which she condemned lynching. A few months later, Ida B. Wells-Barnett penned a response, "Lynching and the Excuse for It," that praised Addams’ analysis. Because of her stance, she was often ridiculed and ostracized by women’s suffrage organizations in the United States.
In 1908, she found the Negro Fellowship League, the first Black settlement house. Wells-Barnett compared her own work at The Negro Fellowship League in Chicago to Addams’ work at Hull-House. The organization 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 arrivals in Chicago from Southern States, notably those of the Great Migration. The Negro Fellowship League had 40 to 50 patrons a day and had placed 115 men in jobs. With the help of Ferdinand Barnett, Wells’ husband and lawyer, the center also provided legal aid for young men accused of crimes. During her involvement, the NFL advocated for women's suffrage and supported the Republican Party in Illinois.
After an outbreak of violence against Blacks in Springfield, Illinois, she was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells-Barnett was one of two African American, women along with Mary Church Terrell, to sign a petition to form the NAACP in 1909. However, she distanced herself from the NAACP, because of differences with one of the founders, W.E.B Du Bois over strategy, racial politics, and because She felt it that in its infancy it lacked action-based initiatives. she felt the other members were too cautious in their approach to fighting racial injustice. There are differing in accounts for why Wells's name was excluded from the original list of founders, depending on which autobiography you read.
Anti-lynching was not the only cause Ida championed. She was also a staunch supporter of women’s suffrage and believed that the only way to pass anti-lynching laws was to get Black women the right to vote. She co-founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago in 1913, which became the largest Black women’s suffrage organization in Illinois. The Negro Fellowship League was the meeting location for the Alpha Suffrage Club. When the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) announced a march in Washington D.C to coincide with President Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 inauguration, club members raised money to attend. Upon their arrival, NAWSA leadership informed the interracial delegation that African Americans must walk at the back of the parade. She refused to walk with the other Black women at the rear of the parade. She instead choose to joined the ranks of her White Illinois "peers" after the march began.
In addition to supporting women’s efforts to obtain the vote, the Alpha Suffrage Club taught women how to be politically active and promoted Black candidates for office. Through her leadership, the Suffrage Club became actively involved in the election of Oscar DePriest, the first African American alderman of Chicago. Work done by Wells and the Alpha Suffrage Club played a crucial role in the victory of woman suffrage in Illinois on June 25, 1913 with the passage of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Act. Their persistent activism and frequent clashes with the Wilson administration eventually resulted in the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. In 1917, Wells wrote a series of investigative reports for the Chicago Defender on the East St. Louis Race Riots. After almost thirty years away, Wells made her first trip back to the South in 1921 to investigate and publish a report on the Elaine massacre in Arkansas.
During the following years, Wells-Barnett continued to advocate for women’s suffrage and investigate racial violence. She also returned to her journalistic roots, focusing on issues of fair housing, education, jobs, and equal treatment before the law. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment legalized women’s suffrage and Wells-Barnett, eager to encourage newly enfranchised African American women to challenge social injustices, founded several political organizations, including the Third Ward Women’s Political Club. Her goal in establishing this group was to train black women to run for political office. Her interest in politics eventually led to Wells-Barnett’s unsuccessful campaign running as an Independent for a seat in the Illinois Senate, against the Republican Party candidate, in 1930.
In 1928 she began an autobiography, which was published posthumously. Wells-Barnett died on March 25, 1931, at sixty-eight years old, in Chicago. Even after her death, her influence lives on and has impacted how the public and future lawmakers have responded to lynching and mob violence. A skilled and persuasive speaker, Wells traveled nationally and internationally on lecture tours. Her call for all races and genders to be accountable for their actions showed African American women that they can speak out and fight for their rights. Civil rights leader, Frederick Douglass praised Wells's work. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was dedicated to combating prejudice and violence, and the fight for Black equality, especially that of women until her death in 1931. Arguably, she is one the most famous Black woman in history. Ida B. Wells-Barnett left a courageous indomitable spirit for the Civil Rights activists of the future.
She was a fearless anti-lynching crusader, educator, suffragist, public speaker and women’s club leader. Black journalist and civil rights activist, Ida B. Wells-Barnett improved the African American experience by confronting sexism, racism and exposing the truth.