On July 16, 1863, Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, MS. She grew up to take on structural racism in the Deep South with her potent reporting on the lynching of black people. Bringing international attention to the violent epidemic of lynching in the United States, she is considered one of the most influential reporters in American history. However, her contributions transcend her work as a writer. In her lifetime, she also fought against segregation and for women’s suffrage. Although Wells’ brought national attention to the lynching of black people, a federal anti-lynching bill still does not exist today.
Wells was born less than a year before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln. She and her eight siblings were raised by their parents during the Reconstruction Era. From 1865 to 1877, black men, including her father, were allowed to vote, as well as hold positions in the state legislatures. In 1878, one year after Reconstruction ended, Wells lost her parents and one sibling to yellow fever. As 16-year-old Wells was left to care for her brothers and sisters, the South began to institute its systematic process of disenfranchising African-Americans. The rampant lynching of black men became an integral part of this subjugation.
Before Wells began her anti-lynching campaign, she contested segregation in the courts. On a train ride between Memphis and the school where she worked, Wells refused to comply with the Jim Crow laws on the train. She hired a lawyer and sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company. Although the circuit court ruled in her favor, the Supreme Court of Tennessee later reversed the decision. Under a pseudonym, she wrote editorials against Jim Crow laws in the South for a series of black newspapers. She bought a share of the Memphis newspaper “The Free Speech and Headlight” to further champion her cause. Thus began Wells’ political activism as a writer.
Wells became an ardent anti-lynching activist after three of her friends were lynched by a white mob. In response, she began an extensive investigation of lynching in the Deep South. In 1892, she published the pamphlet “Southern Horrors,” which detailed her findings. She further shared her research in a series of lectures, as well as her 1895 book, “The Red Record.” Wells debunked the “rape myth” that had been used to justify the lynching of black men and revealed what actually motivated the violence. All the victims of lynching had either challenged white authority, posed an economic or political threat to white people or had engaged in a consensual interracial relationship.
As a result of her brave reporting, she had a target on her back. A white mob destroyed her newspaper office and threatened to kill her. Facing continuing threats, she left Memphis and moved to Chicago, IL. Wells devoted the rest of her life to the civil rights and women’s rights movements. She helped launch the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and, in 1909, Wells was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She also actively campaigned for women’s suffrage.
On March 25, 1931, Wells passed away in Chicago, ILs, at 68 years old. Today, three African-American senators – Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Tim Scott – look to be carrying on Wells’ legacy. They recently introduced a bipartisan bill in June to finally make lynching a federal crime.