Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was a newspaper editor and journalist who went on to lead the American anti-lynching crusade. Working closely with both African-American community leaders and American suffragists, Wells worked to raise gender issues within the "Race Question" and race issues within the "Woman Question." Wells was born the daughter of slaves in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. During Reconstruction, she was educated at a Missouri Freedman's School, Rust University, and began teaching school at the age of fourteen. In 1884, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she continued to teach while attending Fisk University during summer sessions. In Tennessee, especially, she was appalled at
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In the aftermath of the lynching and her outspoken criticism of it, her newspaper's office was sacked. Wells then moved to New York City, where she continued to write editorials and against lynching, which was at an all time high level in the years after Reconstruction. Joining the staff of The New York Age, Wells became a very respected lecturer and organizer for anti-lynching societies made up of men and women of all races. She traveled throughout the U.S. and went to Britain twice to speak about anti-lynching activities.
In 1895 Wells married Ferdinand L. Barnett, a Chicago lawyer, public official, and publisher of the Conservator. She settled in Chicago and adopted as her married name Ida Wells-Barnett. After 1895 she limited her activities to Chicago, but she was quite active in Chicago's rapidly growing African-American community. In Chicago she wrote for the Conservator, published an expose of lynching, The Red Record, and organized Chicago women regarding several causes, from anti-lynching to suffrage. From 1898 to 1902, Wells served as secretary of the National Afro-American Council, and in 1910 she founded and became the first president of the Negro Fellowship League.
Throughout her life, Wells was militant in her demands for equality and justice for African-Americans, and insisted that the African-American community must win justice through its own efforts. She
There, she started to write at the age of seven and published her first poem at 13. After she completed school, Gwendolyn Brooks found herself working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and continued to write about the struggles of African Americans in her community. During Gwendolyn Brooks’s career she expanded the topic of her writings. Between 1940-1960’s, her writings were about the oppression of blacks and women of all colors in her community, and she poetically criticized the shocking prejudice that African Americans had for one another. However, during 1960’s she developed a new attitude, due to her growing political awareness. She began to expand her poetry from the day-to-day life of the African Americans in her community, to writing about the wider world and the racial struggles of African American people everywhere. She then brought back all of her accomplishments to her community by reading her poems to children at various venues. By the end of her life, she had inspired thousands of young
Wells was on of the founding members of the NAACP. In 1930, Wells was disgusted by the nominees for the state legislature, so she decided to run for Illinois State Legislature. This made her one of the first black women to run for public office in the U.S. The Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African-Americans and redefined African-American expression. She was a person who never stopped believing in what she thought or knew was important to her and other people of her race and gender. She had to have a large amount of courage to do all that she has accomplished in her time, and this is why she is an important figure to the Harlem Renaissance.
Wells-Barnett was an investigative journalist and was involved in researching, reporting, publishing pamphlets, and eventually campaigning against the historical tragedy known as lynching. She became aware of these atrocities occurring against African Americans at an alarming rate in the United States. Wells-Barnett had published a total of three pamphlets that had worked through the half-truths and outright lies to uncover the inhumane activity of lynching mob. In Mob Rule in New Orleans, Wells-Barnett stated, “Legal sanction was given to the mob or any man of the mob to kill Charles at sight by the Mayor of New Orleans, who publicly proclaimed a reward of two hundred and fifty dollars, not for the arrest of Charles, not at all, but the reward was offered for Charles’ body, “dead or alive.” (Wells-Barnett 842) This statement reflects the mindset of the majority of white Americans during this turbulent time. Consequently, Ida B. Wells-Barnett became not just a reporter of the facts, but a crusader for the cause of justice for
Ida B. Wells also bought an interest in the _New York Age_ and wrote two weekly columns entitled "Iola's Southern Field," and kept increasing her oral and written campaign against lynching mainly through lectures and editorials. Some of these works by Ida B. Wells include _Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases_; _A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States_; and _Mob Rule in New Orleans_ (1900). In all of these works, Wells argues and contemplates the economic and political causes of racial oppression and injustices. In her writing she analyzes racist sexual tensions, and explains the relationship between terrorists and community leaders, and urges African-Americans to resist oppression through boycotts and emigration. Her
Her brothers found work as carpenter apprentices. For a time Ida continued her education at Fisk University in Nashville. A moment in My 1884 will change Ida’s life and goals forever. Having bought a first class ticket for a train ride to Nashville Tennessee she was denied the right to her seat and was forced to ride a car that was specifically for African Americans. Rightfully so she refused to give up her seat and ticket and fought the train crew and even bit one of the crew members, she later took the train company to court and won getting a 500$ settlement however the Supreme Court overruled the hearing and took her money away. After that Ida decided to start her own newspaper company named Memphis Free Speech and Highlight and begin to write her displeasure with the american government and america's prejudice practices.
In “A Red Record” Ida speak of while in slavery, individuals were reflected as property and for that reason they were a kind of investment that ensured their lives while treated as unhuman. While after slavery ended these people were cruelly murdered. Wells lost a number of friends to lynching and so her urge became telling the country about all of these terrible happenings that she knew of. She published several articles discussing the killings of her friends. That was not the safest path to choose; soon after she began writing, she started to receive threats and, her newspaper office was destroyed by a mob. After she remained an active writer and also becoming a speaker for the rest of her life, helping to found the NAACP and publishing articles
Wells’ resistance to white male ideology influenced other leading black women of the time, such as Anna Julia Cooper, who was instrumental in organizing women to resist race and gender
“From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings happened in the United States. Of these individuals that were lynched, 3,446 were dark colored. The blacks lynched represented 72.7% of the general population lynched”(“Ida B. Wells Quotes”). Ida Bell Wells Barnett, commonly known as Ida B. Wells was a women who wanted the best for her colleagues. Like most people, she was faced with a big complication. Wells Barnett was a critical part of America's history. Her story is one that must be known and brought to life by African Americans of all ages, today and in the future. In the 1890s Wells led an “anti-lynching crusade in the United States and went deeper in life to become someone who looked and strived for African American justice. Wells was a former slave who became a journalist and wrote about the unpleasant, severe race issues going on in the world which later resulted in death. Ida Bell Wells Barnett, an early leader in the civil rights movement, significantly impacted the lives of African Americans today by
Another way that white southerners were able to rolled back many of the rights held by African Americans is by lynching. Lynch is a mob of people killed, especially by hanging, for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial. The primary source, ““Lynch Law in America” the author Ida B. Wells organized a national fight against lynching in the early twentieth century. Born a slave, Wells became a teacher and civil rights leader in Memphis, Tennessee. When a white mob lynched three of her friends, she helped organize a black boycott of white-owned businesses and wrote harsh editorials in her own newspaper. According to Wells, lynching “ It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is
On February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts, a woman by the name of Susan Brownell Anthony was born to parents Daniel and Lucy (Read) Anthony. She was the second born of a strongly rooted Quaker family of eight (Hist.Bio.-1). Because they lived in a Quaker neighborhood, Susan was not heavily exposed to slavery. The family made anti-slavery talks an almost daily conversation over the dinner table. She also saw men and women on the same level (Stoddard 36). “A hard working father, who was not only a cotton manufacturer, but a Quaker Abolitionist also, prevented his children from what he called childish things such as toys, games and music. He felt that they would distract his children from reaching their peak of
Ida B. Wells-Barnett dedicated her life to social justice and equality. She devoted her tremendous energies to building the foundations of African-American progress in business, politics, and law. Wells-Barnett was a key participant in the formation of the National Association of Colored Women as well as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She spoke eloquently in support of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The legacies of these organizations have been tremendous and her contribution to each was timely and indespensible. But no cause challenged the courage and integrity of Ida B. Wells-Barnett as much as her battle against mob violence and the terror of lynching at the end of
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” Sun Tzu. Many of the famous Civil Rights leaders would agree with this quote, but while there also leaders that wanted violence. Many famous people of this time period had differing opinions on how to make the lives of African Americans safer. The primary sources from Wells, Washington, Turner, Du Bois, and Harper showed their separate opinions on how to better the lives of African Americans, and each person had positives and negatives, but the alternative offered by Ida B. Wells would have caused larger problems between the black and white communities.
Ida B. Wells is well known for her influence during the civil rights and women’s rights movements. She was born in 1862 in Holly Springs Mississippi. Her parents died of yellow fever when she was only sixteen years old. She was to be split up from her other six siblings, but she dropped out of school and managed to get a job as a teacher and was able to keep her family together. She soon realized the discrimination in pay that there was as she was taking home thirty dollars compared to someone else’s eighty dollars a month. Then in 1884, she was confronted by a railroad conductor, asking her to move to the overly crowded smoking car. She refused and was drug off the train. She hired an attorney and tried to sue the railroad. Her
Ida B was a heroic because she wrote letters so people would read how unfairly they were treated. In the text it states “Ida B. Wells, the young journalist from Memphis, Tennessee”(Moreau,1999). This quote shows us that she was a journalist. Ida B. wells wrote in her company with her partner J. L. “Free speech” . IN the text it states “Free Speech, the black newspaper she owned with her business partner, J. L. Fleming”.(Moreau,1999).
Ella Baker was a human rights activist that believes everyone was equal and fought for what she wanted.. Ella Baker was the most inspiring person to change color people’s lives. Did you know when Ella was six years old she hit a boy for calling her nigger?First, Ella was apart of the SCLC and the NAACP, through those organizations Ella was able to help many lives. Second, Ella helped the rise of M.L.K, she got no credit for the work she did with him. Colored women never got the rights they deserved in Ella’s life time.Finally,Ella inspired many people, Ella made people believe that everyone was equal.