Ida B. Wells
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).[1] Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women.[2]
For the American lawyer, see Ida V. Wells.
Ida B. Wells
March 25, 1931 (aged 68)
- Ida B. Wells-Barnett
- Iola (pen name)
- Civil rights and women's rights activist
- journalist and newspaper editor
- teacher
- Independent (1930)
6, including Alfreda Duster
Throughout the 1890s, Wells documented lynching in the United States in articles and through pamphlets such as Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases and The Red Record, which debunked the fallacy frequently voiced by whites at the time that all Black lynching victims were guilty of crimes. Wells exposed the brutality of lynching, and analyzed its sociology, arguing that whites used lynching to terrorize African Americans in the South because they represented economic and political competition—and thus a threat of loss of power—for whites. She aimed to demonstrate the truth about this violence and advocate for measures to stop it.[3]
Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi. At the age of 16,[4] she lost both her parents and her infant brother in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. She went to work and kept the rest of the family together with the help of her grandmother. Later, moving with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, Wells found better pay as a teacher. Soon, Wells co-owned and wrote for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, where her reporting covered incidents of racial segregation and inequality. Eventually, her investigative journalism was carried nationally in Black-owned newspapers. Subjected to continued threats and criminal violence, including when a white mob destroyed her newspaper office and presses, Wells left Memphis for Chicago, Illinois. She married Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1895 and had a family while continuing her work writing, speaking, and organizing for civil rights and the women's movement for the rest of her life.
Wells was outspoken regarding her beliefs as a Black female activist and faced regular public disapproval, sometimes including from other leaders within the civil rights movement and the women's suffrage movement. She was active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. A skilled and persuasive speaker, Wells traveled nationally and internationally on lecture tours.[5] Wells died of kidney disease on March 25, 1931, in Chicago, and in 2020 was posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize special citation "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."[6]
African American leadership[edit]
The 19th century's acknowledged leader for African-American civil rights, Frederick Douglass praised Wells' work, giving her introductions and sometimes financial support for her investigations. When he died in 1895, Wells was perhaps at the height of her notoriety, but many men and women were ambivalent or against a woman taking the lead in Black civil rights at a time when women were not seen as, and often not allowed to be, leaders by the wider society.[81] The new leading voices, Booker T. Washington, his rival, W. E. B. Du Bois, and more traditionally minded women activists, often viewed Wells as too radical.[82]
Wells encountered and sometimes collaborated with the others, but they also had many disagreements, while also competing for attention for their ideas and programs. For example, there are differing in accounts for why Wells' name was excluded from the original list of founders of the NAACP. In his autobiography Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois implied that Wells chose not to be included.[83] However, in her autobiography, Wells stated that Du Bois deliberately excluded her from the list.[84]
From "race agitator" to political candidate[edit]
During World War I, the U.S. government placed Wells under surveillance, labeling her a dangerous "race agitator".[10] She defied this threat by continuing civil rights work during this period with such figures as Marcus Garvey, Monroe Trotter, and Madam C. J. Walker.[10] In 1917, Wells wrote a series of investigative reports for the Chicago Defender on the East St. Louis Race Riots.[122] After almost thirty years away, Wells made her first trip back to the South in 1921 to investigate and publish a report on the Elaine massacre in Arkansas (published 1922).[122]
In the 1920s, she participated in the struggle for African American workers' rights, urging Black women's organizations to support the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, as it tried to gain legitimacy.[10] However, she lost the presidency of the National Association of Colored Women in 1924 to the more diplomatic Mary Bethune.[123] To challenge what she viewed as problems for African Americans in Chicago, Wells started a political organization named Third Ward Women's Political Club in 1927. In 1928, she tried to become a delegate to the Republican National Convention but lost to Oscar De Priest. Her feelings toward the Republican Party became more mixed due to what she viewed as the Hoover administration's poor stance on civil rights and attempts to promote a "Lily-White" policy in Southern Republican organizations. In 1930, Wells unsuccessfully sought elective office, running as an Independent for a seat in the Illinois Senate, against the Republican Party candidate, Adelbert Roberts.[122][10]
Influence on Black feminist activism[edit]
Wells explained that the defense of white women's honor allowed Southern white men to get away with murder by projecting their own history of sexual violence onto Black men. Her call for all races and genders to be accountable for their actions showed African American women that they can speak out and fight for their rights. According to some, by portraying the horrors of lynching, she worked to show that racial and gender discrimination are linked, furthering the Black feminist cause.[124]
