Ida B. Wells
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.
"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."— Ida B. Wells
Key Milestones
A Life in Firsts
In Their Words
Notable Quotes
The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.
The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.
One had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.
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