Wells-Barnett, Ida (1862–1931)

Early Life

Ida B. Wells was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, 6 months before the Emancipation Proclamation. Her parents worked to support their seven children, her father as a carpenter and her mother as a “famous” local cook. She was orphaned when the 1878 yellow fever epidemic swept through Northern Mississippi and worked as a school teacher in rural Mississippi and Tennessee to support herself and her siblings. She finished her studies at nearby Rust College, in Hollis Springs. In 1884, she filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad, for forcing her to give up her seat on a train to a White man; this made her the second African American to file a civil rights lawsuit. The conductor attempted to drag Wells out of the car and after failing to do so, received help from other men on the train. As she was forcefully removed, White passengers of the train applauded. Initially winning her case in the local court, the ruling was eventually overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court after the railroad company appealed.

Wells's pastor at the Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church invited her to contribute a story about her frustration with the courts to the Living Way, a religious weekly. The articles were well received, and Wells began to write for the local Black press, under the pseudonym “Iola.” In 1889, she was elected secretary of the Colored Press Association and joined [Page 1389]J. L. Fleming and Reverend Taylor Nightingale, pastor of the Beale Street Baptist Church, as partner and editor of the militant journal Free Speech and Headlight. Between 1889 and 1892, they published articles and editorials about racist practices directed toward African Americans.

Wells and Lynching

On March 9, 1892, three close friends of Wells—Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and William Stewart—were mutilated and hung from trees on the outskirts of Memphis. Moss was killed for owning a prosperous grocery store that competed successfully with a White grocer, revealing the economic tensions and rivalries in America as Reconstruction opened opportunities for African Americans. A group of White men, attempting to “eliminate” the competition, attacked Moss's grocery store. The owners fought back, shooting one of the attackers. The three men were arrested and jailed, but a lynch mob broke into the jail, dragging the men to where they were eventually lynched.

Wells urged people to abandon Memphis and move west, saying that Blacks should save their money and leave a town that had little respect for property rights and the lives of Black people. If they couldn't leave, they should boycott the city streetcars. Over 2,000 Blacks left Memphis, and the streetcars were almost bankrupt by the end of the summer because of the boycotts. In retaliation, local Whites burned Wells's newspaper offices, forcing her to seek refuge in the North.

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