Born a slave in 1862 in Mississippi, was an investigative journalist and founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
At a time when women of color did not get much education, she attended Rust College, Fisk University and LeMoyne-Owen’s College.
In 1892, three of her friends started a grocery store, and they were doing better than the white-owned store down the street.That store owner got mad, and got his friends together to attack the Black owned store. The Black store owners defended their store, and ended up shooting some white people in self-defense. The black store owners were arrested.
Soon after being put in jail, the black store owners were dragged from the jail and murdered. This happened a lot in the south especially - Black people accused of crimes often did not have trials. They were simply hanged from trees or murdered in other cruel ways.
Furious and sad, Ida B. Wells toured the south, speaking out against this kind of murder, called “lynching”. Her own life was threatened many times. She kept moving, one step ahead of her enemies. She wrote about the lynching of Black people for newspapers, and once a mob stormed the office where she was working, and destroyed all of her equipment.
She wrote a book called A Red Record , which included how many people were killed in lynchings and where they happened. Before this, lynchings were not officially recorded; they were whispered about in the Black community and ignored by the white community. “She also traveled in Europe, shedding light on lynching to an international audience. While there, she openly confronted white women suffrage leaders who refused to use their large platforms to denounce the difficult realities that Black people faced.”
The United States Mint: Connecting America through Coins https://www.usmint.gov/news/inside-the-mint/ida-b-wells-light-of-truth?srsltid=AU7gw4XrMJsgG2Mkd9thZbg2EtRFzShwXEKbvX8DtDOBnK4R2anevc5N
She used the pen name ‘Iola” when writing for the newspaper in Memphis, but her nickname was “The Princess of the Press”. Her most famous quote is:
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them”
In 2020, she was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for her courageous efforts.
Sources:
WIKIPEDIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center https://freedomcenter.org/ida-b-wells/
National Women’s History Museum https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett
Ida B Wells Foundation https://ibwfoundation.org/
