Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Ms. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a towering public figure during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She led a campaign against segregation on the local railway in Memphis, she wrote articles on civil rights for local newspapers, and led a campaign for racial equality in the United States Army during the First World War. Ms. Wells-Barnett was a trailblazer indeed and her fight for Black freedom and dignity brought her face-to-face with many personal challenges. She lost her job as a teacher after criticizing the Memphis Board of Education for underfunding African American schools, her printing press was destroyed after she wrote articles condemning the lynching of Blacks, and she was threatened with treason after distributing anti-lynching buttons during the First World War (see Fradin and Fradin 2001). What Ms. Wells-Barnett understood was that there were issues that needed to be addressed and she used her various vantage point make keen and incisive observations in order that her voice be heard. In one of her many publications on lynching she wrote, “It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so” (Wells 1892: 5). Throughout her civil rights career, Ms. Wells-Barnett campaigned against racial violence in the United States and argued that the country’s national crime was lynching (Wells-Barnett 1900). She argued that the main aim of lynching was to intimidate Blacks from becoming involved in politics and therefore maintaining white power in the South. Ms. Wells-Barnett formed the Negro Fellowship League, was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was an editor of several major Black newspapers, established the first Black women’s suffrage club (Alpha Suffrage Club), and pursued political office in Illinois (see Peebles-Wilkins and Francis 1990).

Fradin, Dennis Brindell and Judith Bloom Fradin. 2001. Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. Houghton Mifflin.

Peebles-Wilkins, Wilma and E. Aracelis Francis. 1990. “Two Outstanding Black Women in Social Welfare History: Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.” Affilia, 5 (4): 87-100.

Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 1892. Southern Horror: Lynch Laws in All Its Phases.

Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 1900. “Lynch Law in America.” Accessed from: http://www.sojust.net/speeches/ida_wells_lynch_law.html

Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 1901. Lynching and the Excuse for It.