Civil Rights & Activism

Ida B. Wells

Born July 16, 1862 · Holly Springs, Mississippi · Joined the Ancestors March 25, 1931

Investigative journalist, anti-lynching crusader, and suffragist — Ida B. Wells exposed the horror of racial violence in America and refused to be silenced when the truth needed telling.

Known For

Anti-lynching journalism

Co-Founded

NAACP

Legacy

Pulitzer Prize, posthumous, 2020

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, six months before the Emancipation Proclamation. Orphaned at 16, she raised her younger siblings while working as a teacher.

In 1892, after three of her friends were lynched in Memphis, Wells launched a fearless investigation into lynching across the South. Her research, published in pamphlets like "Southern Horrors" and "A Red Record," provided the first statistical analysis of lynching in America and exposed it as a tool of racial terror, not justice.

Driven out of the South by death threats, she continued her crusade from Chicago and abroad. She co-founded the NAACP, led suffrage marches, and established kindergartens and civic organizations for Black Chicagoans. In 2020, she was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting.