Ida B. Wells

Born into slavery with a childhood shaped by Reconstruction, Ida B. Wells was an investigative journalist and civil rights activist.

In her early 20s, Jim Crow was spreading across the south. After an incident on a train where she was forcibly removed from her seat, she successfully sued the railroad for damages. The success was short-lived as an appeals court overturned the decision.

When she lost her job as a teacher due to her open criticism of Memphis schools, she turned to journalism full-time. She joined the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and became the first woman co-owner and editor of a Black newspaper in the US.

She reshaped American journalism with her reporting on lynching. She documented 728 lynching cases that had occurred between 1884 and 1892. She brought light to the false accusations of Black villainy used to excuse lynching and exposed the real economic, white supremacist motives. Her compelling reporting upset the whites in power. In 1892, a white mob destroyed her newspaper office. She was no longer safe in Memphis and moved to Chicago.

Ida was also an active suffragist. She co-founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago which became the largest Black women's suffrage organization in Illinois. She was also a founding member of the NAACP. Though she was later asked to step away because she was thought to be too radical.