Ida Wells Barnett Research Paper

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

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

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.

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.

(1) ‘Julia Hooks, fellow teacher and Musician, went to a concert with Wells (June 1886) shared the determination to stand up for civil rights with Ida. Hooks

She became a leading community activist through a sequence of events. In 1884 Ida was riding a train in a first class car, when she was asked to move to the smoking car. When she refused, two conductors tried to physically move her. She instead got off the train and filed a discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit was initially won, but the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the verdict. After the train incident, in 1889, Ida went to The Free Speech paper; this is where her most promising worked developed. In 1892, three of her friends were brutally killed during a lynching. This one particular event opened the eyes of Wells and prompted her to write some of her most controversial works yet. However this type of writing got the Free Speech office ransacked and destroyed. The other owner of the Free Speech barely escaped with his life, but he carried the message that if Ida were to show her face ever again in Tennessee she would be killed. Now with all this ammunition based on personal experience, even as an African American woman, she had gained credibility to be able to speak with

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a bold fight against lynching, suffragist, defender of the rights of women, journalist and speaker of international stature. It stands as one of the most intransigent leaders, and more determined to defend democracy. Born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and died in 1931 in Chicago, Illinois, at the age of sixty-nine.

While the South would continue to grow in racial violence and inequality, Wells would attend Shaw University (though the president would later expel her) and become a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee (a more progressive area of the South, compared to Holly Springs, Mississippi) Wells would become a major influence in the South after a day in 1883. One Saturday while riding the train into Woodstock, a conductor removed her from the first-class car she was riding in, that she had paid to ride in, to put her in the smoking car. She refused to be treated as less than she was and got off the train. She would in turn sue the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company and win, only to have it overturned. Wells would take this and over the next few years she would speak out about the racial injustice across the South. After the lynching of three men in 1892, she would travel the South and learn of lynching stories in other parts of the South, documenting them as she went. Her writings would end up in African American newspapers as well as her own, the Free Speech. Regardless of losing her teaching job and threats against her life, Wells continued her

“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

Women’s issues during slavery and even into the Reconstruction Era were not held as top priorities within the social structure of life during those times. The main political and social issues were within the male spectrum, and therefore left women’s rights and values in second place, behind men. Within the nineteenth century, there were four specific characteristics that society deemed should be associated with a woman; piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. However, this was not the case when it came to black women. They were not able to exemplify the expected worldview of womanhood due to their circumstances.

She was born in a log cabin in Erie County, Pennsylvania on November 5th, 1857. When she was 3 years old when her family moved to Titusville where her father used his skills to build wooden oil storage tanks. She saw firsthand on what big companies did to littler companies, just like what happened to her father’s company and other small businessmen. In 1880 she graduated from Allegheny College where she studied biology. After graduation she became a teacher in Poland, Ohio, however after two short years she realized that teaching was too much and she enjoyed writing more. Ida then pursued a journalism career, which is when she met Theodore L. Flood the editor of The Chautauquan and offered a job. She quickly accepted. After four

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

To really understand my background you have to take a look at my grandmother. Who was born in Jamaica but came to America for a better life. My grandmother Mrs. Blanche Gordon was born on July 17, 1925 in St. Mary Jamaica. From there she raised with her Great-Aunt Vashti in Kingston Jamaica until she was 14 and move back home to St. Mary where she met the rest of siblings. My grandma have 5 siblings with each they all showed their love in different ways. Let’s just say it was never a dull moment in the house. Some years passed by and she ventured off to have a life of her own in Jamaica. While her life in Jamaica she had 6 kids and raise one grandson as her own. Also, my mother who was born here in America. With her kids in Jamaica they all

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 summer of 1892, on a small farm in Hillsboro, West Virginia a girl by the name of Pearl S. Buck was born. At the time she was born, her parents, both Presbyterian missionaries, they decided to leave China before Pearl was born, and they left China because their children were catching deadly diseases. Buck's parents were so dedicated to their church that they decided to go back to the chinese village Chinkiang with 5-month-old Pearl . (Biography.com Editors).