Ida B. Wells: Investigative Journalist, Civil Rights Leader, Passionate Suffragist

- Chicago Stories special documentary, WTTW.

(Wiki, Ed.). 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). Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women. 📄

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.

Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Miss. At the age of 14, she lost her parents and infant brother in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. She went to work and kept the family together with the help of her grandmother. Wells moved to Memphis, Tenn., where she found better pay as a teacher. Soon, she co-owned and wrote for the Memphis Free Speech & Headlight. Her reporting covered incidents of racial segregation and inequality. In time, her investigative journalism was carried nationally in Black-owned newspapers.

Subjected to continued threats and criminal violence, including a white mob that destroyed her newspaper office, Wells left Memphis for Chicago, Ill. 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. Wells was outspoken regarding her beliefs as a Black female activist and faced regular public disapproval, sometimes from other leaders within the civil rights movement and the women's suffrage movement. She established several notable women's organizations. A skilled and persuasive speaker, Wells traveled nationally and internationally on lecture tours...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells
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- A Noble Endeavor: Ida B. Wells - Barnett & Suffrage, National Park Service. Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument, Penn. Ave., Women's Rights National Historical Park

With no sacredness of the ballot there can be no sacredness of human life itself. --Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)

On March 3, 1913, the eve of Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was in a Washington, D.C. drill rehearsal hall with 64 other Illinois suffragists. She was there representing the Alpha Suffrage Club (ASC)-- which she had founded as the first black suffrage club in Chicago just 2 months before. Ida planned to march with the women in what promised to be a parade of unprecedented scale and significance.

Organized by the young suffragist Alice Paul and the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA), thousands of suffragists from across the country would descend on the Capitol along with 9 bands, 4 mounted brigades, 20 floats and an allegorical enactment on the steps of the Treasury Department...
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/a-noble-endeavor-ida-b-wells-barnett-and-suffrage.htm