Who is Ida B. Wells?

Question

Who is Ida B. Wells and what did she do to contribute in the african american history?

Answer 1

Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Her Passion for Justice
Lee D. Baker
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a fearless anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, women's rights advocate, journalist, and speaker. She stands as one of our nation's most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy. She was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862 and died in Chicago, Illinois 1931 at the age of sixty-nine.

Although enslaved prior to the Civil War, her parents were able to support their seven children because her mother was a "famous" cook and her father was a skilled carpenter. When Ida was only fourteen, a tragic epidemic of Yellow Fever swept through Holly Springs and killed her parents and youngest sibling. Emblematic of the righteousness, responsibility, and fortitude that characterized her life, she kept the family together by securing a job teaching. She managed to continue her education by attending near-by Rust College. She eventually moved to Memphis to live with her aunt and help raise her youngest sisters.

It was in Memphis where she first began to fight (literally) for racial and gender justice. In 1884 she was asked by the conductor of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man and ordered her into the smoking or "Jim Crow" car, which was already crowded with other passengers. Despite the 1875 Civil Rights Act banning discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color, in theaters, hotels, transports, and other public accommodations, several railroad companies defied this congressional mandate and racially segregated its passengers. It is important to realize that her defiant act was before Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court decision that established the fallacious doctrine of "separate but equal," which constitutionalized racial segregation. Wells wrote in her autobiography:

I refused, saying that the forward car [closest to the locomotive] was a smoker, and as I was in the ladies' car, I proposed to stay. . . [The conductor] tried to drag me out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand. I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had already been badly bitten he didn't try it again by himself. He went forward and got the baggageman and another man to help him and of course they succeeded in dragging me out.
Wells was forcefully removed from the train and the other passengers--all whites--applauded. When Wells returned to Memphis, she immediately hired an attorney to sue the railroad. She won her case in the local circuit courts, but the railroad company appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, and it reversed the lower court's ruling. This was the first of many struggles Wells engaged, and from that moment forward, she worked tirelessly and fearlessly to overturn injustices against women and people of color.

Her suit against the railroad company also sparked her career as a journalist. Many papers wanted to hear about the experiences of the 25-year-old school teacher who stood up against white supremacy. Her writing career blossomed in papers geared to African American and Christian audiences.

In 1889 Wells became a partner in the Free Speech and Headlight. The paper was also owned by Rev. R. Nightingale-- the pastor of Beale Street Baptist Church. He "counseled" his large congregation to subscribe to the paper and it flourished, allowing her to leave her position as an educator.

In 1892 three of her friends were lynched. Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart. These three men were owners of People's Grocery Company, and their small grocery had taken away customers from competing white businesses. A group of angry white men thought they would "eliminate" the competition so they attacked People's grocery, but the owners fought back, shooting one of the attackers. The owners of People's Grocery were arrested, but a lynch-mob broke into the jail, dragged them away from town, and brutally murdered all three. Again, this atrocity galvanized her mettle. She wrote in The Free Speech

The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the ***** if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival. There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms. The white mob could help itself to ammunition without pay, but the order is rigidly enforced against the selling of guns to Negroes. There is therefore only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons.
Many people took the advice Wells penned in her paper and left town; other members of the Black community organized a boycott of white owned business to try to stem the terror of lynchings. Her newspaper office was destroyed as a result of the muckraking and investigative journalism she pursued after the killing of her three friends. She could not return to Memphis, so she moved to Chicago. She however continued her blistering journalistic attacks on Southern injustices, being especially active in investigating and exposing the fraudulent "reasons" given to lynch Black men, which by now had become a common occurrence.

In Chicago, she helped develop numerous African American women and reform organizations, but she remained diligent in her anti-lynching crusade, writing Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. She also became a tireless worker for women's suffrage, and happened to march in the famous 1913 march for universal suffrage in Washington, D.C. Not able to tolerate injustice of any kind, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, along with Jane Addams, successfully blocked the establishment of segregated schools in Chicago.

In 1895 Wells married the editor of one of Chicago's early Black newspapers. She wrote: "I was married in the city of Chicago to Attorney F. L. Barnett, and retired to what I thought was the privacy of a home." She did not stay retired long and continued writing and organizing. In 1906, she joined with William E.B. DuBois and others to further the Niagara Movement, and she was one of two African American women to sign "the call" to form the NAACP in 1909. Although Ida B. Wells was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she was also among the few Black leaders to explicitly oppose Booker T. Washington and his strategies. As a result, she was viewed as one the most radical of the so-called "radicals" who organized the NAACP and marginalized from positions within its leadership. As late as 1930, she became disgusted by the nominees of the major parties to the state legislature, so Wells-Barnett decided to run for the Illinois State legislature, which made her one of the first Black women to run for public office in the United States. A year later, she passed away after a lifetime crusading for justice.

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Answer 2

Below is an excerpt from Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society. Read the whole article; it's very good.

"Ida B. Wells has been described as a crusader for justice, and as a defender of democracy. Wells was characterized as a militant and uncompromising leader for her efforts to abolish lynching and establish racial equality. Wells challenged segregation decades before Rosa Parks, ran for Congress and attended suffrage meetings with the likes of Susan B. Anthony and Jane Addams, yet most of her efforts are largely unknown due to the fact that she is African American and female.

Ida B. Wells was born July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, during the second year of the Civil War (Sterling 61). Her parents, James and Elizabeth Wells, were slaves, and thus Wells, a woman who devoted her life to promoting racial equality, was born a slave."

A caveat:
Referencing Information

As noted above, each paper included on this Web site was written by a student enrolled in an undergraduate seminar. These papers are provided to highlight the lives of women and the significant contributions these women have made or continue to make to the behavioral and social sciences. However, they should not be used as primary reference material for any academic work (e.g., class paper). It is recommended that the primary source material listed at the end of each paper be read and used for any academic endeavor.

Answer 3

D. Ida Welles was a teacher, journalist and African-American Activist. Much more in source below:

Answer 4

Ida B. Wells, (Holly Springs, Mississippi, July 16, 1862 – Chicago, Illinois, March 25, 1931), later known as Ida Wells-Barnett and "Ida B. Wells-Barnett", was an African American civil rights advocate and women's rights activist. A fearless anti-lynching advocate, Wells documented hundreds of lynchings.

Wells became a public figure in Memphis when in 1884 she led a campaign against segregation on the local railway. In 1884, she was asked by the conductor of the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man and ordered into the smoking or "Jim Crow" car, which was already crowded with other passengers. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 banning discrimination on the basis of race, creed or color, in theaters, hotels, transport and other public accommodations, had just been declared unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases (1883). So, several railroad companies defied this congressional mandate of the 1875 Act and racially segregated their passengers. Wells refused to give up her seat, 71 years before Rosa Parks, and the conductor, who was assisted by two other men, dragged her out of the car. When she returned to Memphis, she immediately hired an attorney to sue the railroad. She won her case in the local circuit court, but the railroad company appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, which reversed the lower court's ruling, in 1887.

During her participation in women's suffrage parades, her refusal to stand in the back because she was black resulted in the beginning of her media publicity. In 1889, she became co-owner and editor of an anti-segregationist newspaper based in Beale Street in Memphis. In 1892, however, she was forced to leave Memphis because her editorials in the paper, Free Speech, were seen as too agitating. 1892 was the same year that she published her famous pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. In 1895, she published A Red Record, which documented her campaign against lynching.

Answer 5

Ida B. Wells was a person who tried to stop whites from lynching African-Americans. She also was a writer and public speaker. She wrote articles in African-American magazines that criticized Jim Crow laws which is a law that keeps Whigs and blacks seperated

Answer 6

That's an interesting question!

Answer 7

Ida B. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Her father (James Wells) was a carpenter and her mother (Elizabeth "Lizzie Bell" Warrenton Wells) was a professional cook. Her parents were slaves but the family achieved freedom in 1865. When Wells was 16 both her parents and an older brother died of yellow fever during an epidemic that swept the South. At a meeting following the funeral, friends and relatives decided that the five remaining Wells children should be farmed out to various aunts and uncles. Wells was devastated by the idea and, to keep the family together, dropped out of high school, and found employment as a teacher in a black school.

In 1880, Wells moved to Memphis with her siblings. The only one who didnt go was her 15 year old brother January Wells. When she moved here she got a summer job.During the summer sessions, she attended Fisk University in Nashville. Wells held strong political opinions and she upset many people with her views on women's rights. When she was 24, she wrote, "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge."

Wells became a public figure in Memphis when in 1884 she led a campaign against segregation on the local railway. In 1884, she was asked by the conductor of the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man and ordered into the smoking or "Jim Crow" car, which was already crowded with other passengers. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1875 banning discrimination on the basis of race, creed or color, in theaters, hotels, transport and other public accommodations, had just been declared unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases (1883). So, several railroad companies defied this congressional mandate of the 1875 Act and racially segregated their passengers. Wells refused to give up her seat, 71 years before Rosa Parks, and the conductor, who was assisted by two other men, dragged her out of the car. When she returned to Memphis, she immediately hired an attorney to sue the railroad. She won her case in the local circuit court, but the railroad company appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, which reversed the lower court's ruling, in 1887.

During her participation in women's suffrage parades, her refusal to stand in the back because she was black resulted in the beginning of her media publicity. In 1889, she became co-owner and editor of an anti-segregationist newspaper based in Beale Street in Memphis. In 1892, however, she was forced to leave Memphis because her editorials in the paper, Free Speech, were seen as too agitating. 1892 was the same year that she published her famous pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. In 1895, she published A Red Record, which documented her campaign against lynching.

In 1895, in Chicago, she married attorney Ferdinand Lee Barnett, who founded and edited the Chicago Conservator, the city's first black newspaper. The couple had four children.Their children were Charles, Ferdinand, Ida, and Alfreda. Although Wells tried to retire from public life to raise her children, she soon returned to her campaign for equal rights. In 1906, she joined with W.E.B. Du Bois to promote the Niagara Movement, a group which advocated full civil rights for Blacks. In 1910, Wells helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (the NAACP).

She never obtained a position of leadership within the NAACP, perhaps because she opposed Booker T. Washington's moderate position that blacks focus on economic gains rather than social and political equality with whites. Or perhaps it was because at this time women did not have such power. In 1913 she founded the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, the first black suffrage organization, and from 1913 to 1916 she worked as a probation officer in Chicago. She was also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, and participated in a suffrage march in 1913. The poet Langston Hughes said her activities in the field of social work laid the groundwork for the Urban League.

In 1930, she ran for the Illinois state legislature, one of the first black women ever to run for public office. She died in Chicago, Illinois, where a public housing complex was later named in her honour. There is also a high school named after her, on Hayes Street in San Francisco, California.

After her retirement, Wells wrote her autobiography, Crusade for Justice (1928). She died of uremia on March 25, 1931.

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.

Answer 8

Yeah it's possible

Answer 9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells