Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born Ida B. Wells in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi. The oldest of eight children, Wells became a teacher to support her younger siblings after the death of her parents in 1880 from yellow fever. Despite her many obstacles, financial and racial, Wells finished her studies at Rust College and in 1888, became a teacher and anti-lynching activist in Tennessee. She became editor and co-owner of a local black newspaper called "The Free Speech and Headlight," and Wells utilized her editorial column to denounce the lynching of blacks and encourage the black people of Memphis to move west.While at an editor's convention in New York, Wells was informed that if she returned to Memphis, she would be murdered. She decided then to travel to England and gave a series of passionate speeches gaining support for her cause. She took up residence in Chicago upon her return to the U.S. and formed the Women's Era Club, the first organization to work towards both suffrage and civil rights. The organization was later renamed the Ida B. Wells Club. She later marched in the famous 1913 march for universal suffrage in Washington, D.C., but she did not neglect her crusade against lynching. In 1895, she published "A Red Record," a book that chronicled the history of race lynching in America.

Wells married black newspaper editor and attorney Ferdinand Barnett in 1895 and gave birth to two sons and two daughters. After the birth of her second son, she stepped down as president of the Women's Era Club. In 1909, Wells-Barnett became a member of the "Committee of 40," which set up the foundation for the civil rights organization that is today called the NAACP. One of her final efforts towards defeating injustice was to run for office in the Illinois state legislature, making her one of the first black women to run for public office in the country. She died a year later in 1931.

Information compiled from Duke University and Lakewood Public Library Online.