Ida B. Wells was a Journalist who lead a campaign against lynching. Ida was born July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs Mississippi. She grew up as a slave on a plantation along with her mother and father. When Ida grew up she went to school to become a teacher and also took college courses and began to write and edit for a local journal. She is remembered as one of the early leaders in the fight for African-American civil rights. Ida passed away from a kidney disease in Chicago on March 25, 1931. At the age of sixteen Ida’s parents died from yellow fever so, in order to keep her family together Ida went to work as a teacher and took care of her brothers and sisters. She moved to Memphis a couple years later to work for a job making more money. While
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
Businessmen in New York establish Wells, Fargo and Company, destined to become the leading freight and banking company of the West.
Ida Barnett-Wells was a true hero for the African Americans. She gave 100% of her time and
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.
Jane (Laura) Addams was born to Sarah (Weber) Addams and John Huy Addams on September 16, 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois near Rockford and Wisconsin border. She was the eighth of nine children. From this union out of the nine children only three of the daughters and one son survived to see adulthood.
Wells, on the other hand, was a civil rights leader that focused all of her resources against lynching and illegal treatment of others. She believed that African Americans should be putting all of their efforts into protecting themselves from those that would try to take away their rights as citizens. In doing so they would prove their conviction for equality and receive equal treatment. Wells is most known for her passion when she refused to move from a first class train seat that she purchased. The conductor and baggage man dragged her out and had her arrested (The Gale Group, n.p.). After this event she began to actively write against companies that deny people of their rights. She later became a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, in order to increase awareness to their mistreatment. It worked in many cases in the following years such as when they protested against President Wilson over him introducing segregation in
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
During the latter 19th and early 20th centuries racism and racial segregation were considerable problems. Mob violence, including lynchings were responsible for the deaths of thousands of black men, women and children, often for crimes they had no part in or which were not even committed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born into slavery by James and Elizabeth Wells during the Civil War. She attended Rust College, which was partly founded by her father in Mississippi. After Wells’ parents died of yellow fever, she attained a teaching position at a local school by lying about her age. After some time teaching she moved to Memphis with two of her sisters, where she acquired another teaching position and continued her schooling at Fisk University. While her professional life was moderately successful, her personal life was dismal, however, “it is the very qualities that problematize her personal relationships… that will impel her to undertake… a courageous crusade against lynching” (DeCosta-Willis). Being a freed black woman in the south, Wells had firsthand knowledge of the segregation and racial tension of the time. This knowledge and her experiences gave her insights about the South that were crucial in her successful crusade against lynching and segregation.
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
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
In the words of Miss Ida B. Wells: The student of American sociology will find the year of 1894 marked by a pronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy and outlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common, that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon the humane sentiments of the people of our land. She is depicting a period of time in American history stained with the blood of hundreds of free African American men, women and children. These people were unjustly slaughtered through the practice of lynching within the South. Wells was an investigative journalist and was involved in exploring, reporting, publishing literature on, and eventually campaigning against the
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
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.
Ida B. Wells was a woman dedicated to a cause, a cause to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from being murdered by lynching. Lynching is defined as to take the law into its own hands and kill someone in punishment for a crime or a presumed crime. Ida B. Wells’ back round made her a logical spokesperson against lynching. She drew on many experiences throughout her life to aid in her crusade. Her position as a black woman, however, affected her credibility both in and out of America in a few different ways.