Ida B. Wells (1862-1931). Wells was an African-American journalist and activist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. She was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, six months before the Emancipation Proclamation. After Emancipation, her father, a carpenter, got involved with the Freedman’s Aid Society and helped start Shaw University, a school for the newly freed slaves in Holly Springs, serving on its first board of trustees. Ida attended that school (which later changed its name to Rust College) until she was 16, when her parents and some of her brothers and sisters died in a yellow fever epidemic. To support her surviving brothers and sisters, Wells lied about her age and found a job as a teacher for $25 a month. In 1880, she and her two younger sisters moved to Memphis to live with an aunt. In Memphis she taught at a black school and took summer courses at Fisk University in Nashville. In May 1884, Wells purchased a first-class train ticket from Memphis to Nashville. The train’s conductor ordered her to move to the car for African Americans. She refused and was forcibly removed from the train. She sued the railroad and won a $500 settlement in a circuit court, but that decision was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1887. Outraged by her treatment and by the court ruling, Wells began to write about issues of racial injustice for the Negro Press Association. She soon became editor of a weekly, Evening Star, and then of Living Way, at first writing under a pseudonym, “Iola.” Black newspapers around the country reprinted her articles. Wells eventually became an owner of Memphis’ Free Speech and Headlight, a black newspaper. She also worked as a teacher in Memphis’ public schools, but was fired in 1891 for criticizing the school district’s system of racial segregation. In 1892, her friend Thomas Moss and two other African-American men were lynched in Memphis. From that moment on, Wells dedicated her life to campaigning against lynching. In her editorials, she urged African Americans to leave Memphis.
