Ida Wells was born into slavery in 1862 in Mississippi. After emancipation, her parents were active in Reconstruction politics. The family became prosperous enough for her father, James Wells, to
found Shaw University (now known as Rust College) in 1866, which still exists and is still educating African American students.

A yellow fever epidemic killed her parents, and at age 16 Ida became responsible for her seven brothers and sisters. Ida moved the family to Memphis where there were some relatives. She lied to a school administrator that she was really 18, and got a job teaching school for $25 a month. Her brothers got some trainings and found jobs. Ida left the younger ones with relatives and moved to Nashville to attend Fisk University.

In 1884 she bought a first-class train ticket to Nashville from Memphis. The conductor ordered her to go sit in the segregated car for African Americans, and she refused. Enraged passengers forced her off the train. Ida sued the railroad company for $500 in damages, and amazingly for a Black woman in Tennessee in the 1880s, she won. However, the Tennessee State Supreme Court overturned the judgment, and she was required to pay court costs.

She continued to teach school in Memphis but criticized the school and was fired. She had written some articles using a pseudonym, and discovered a gift for writing. With some assistance and her savings, she became editor and part owner of two newspapers, The Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and Free Speech.

She discovered a cause through horrific experiences. Several of the men she knew were lynched by mobs of white people. In one case, three Black men had started a successful grocery store, cutting into the business or a store owned by a white man. A mob gathered and went to the grocery with the intent of burning it down to eliminate the competition. The owners defended themselves, shooting and wounding several of the attackers. The three were arrested and jailed. A mob attacked the jail, dragged the three Black men out and hanged them.

In 1892, a Black man named Thomas Moss was taken out of jail and lynched by another mob. He had been one of Ida’s friends, and she was godmother to his child.

Ida decided to investigate the lynching of Black men. She traveled all over the South looking into cases where Black men had been killed by white mobs. The stereotype was that mobs were defending the honor of white women by dealing with rapists. Ida discovered that the stereotype was wrong and that accusations of rape was not an issue in most lynchings.

She published the results of her investigation in her papers in a serious of passionate editorials. They drew national attention and were widely reprinted, especially in the 200 or so African American newspapers. Her editorials touched a nerve and suggested that Southern women might have
made false accusations against Black men. After a particularly fiery editorial, in May 1892 an enraged white mob attacked her newspaper, destroying the press. She was in New York City on a visit. If Ida had
been in her office, it is almost certain she would have been lynched.

In the fall of 1892, she published the detailed results of her investigations a pamphlet titled Southern Horrors: Lynching Law in all Its Phases. Her detailed descriptions stunned Northern readers and resulted in extremely angry denials in the South. Ida visited Britain in 1894, speaking about American violence and lynching. She was criticized back home for criticizing her country, and Southerners were outraged that she asked
for the British to boycott American cotton.

She returned to Chicago and in 1895 married Ferdinand Barnett, who was a Black civil rights activist and an accomplished lawyer. They had a remarkably equal marriage, with Ferdinand willingly doing cooking and child care for their four children when Ida was on speaking tours. She changed her name to Ida Wells-Barnett.

Ida was active in other causes, including the campaign to get women the right to vote. She campaigned for the first Black alderman in the city of Chicago, and remarkably for the time, he won. She was active in labor union campaigns, and ran for the Illinois state senate in 1930.

She was considered a dangerous woman by the U.S. government, being placed undersurveillance during World War 1.

Ida Wells was an activist for civil rights and for women her entire life. Her most fearless investigation was traveling through the South investigating lynchings, and daring to publish the results, despite it resulting in threats to her life.

In 2020, Ida was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in recognition of herachievements.

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