July 16 …

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was an American journalist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the 1890s and actively pursued justice for African Americans throughout the early twentieth century.

Ida B. Wells was born during the Civil War on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, MS. In 1865, Wells and her parents, Elizabeth Warrenton Wells and James Wells gained their freedom with passage of the Emancipation Proclamation.

In the fall of 1878, Wells’s parents died of yellow fever, leaving her at age 16 the primary caretaker for six siblings. To support her family Ida became a schoolteacher, eventually moving to Memphis, where she worked in the schools of Shelby County, Tennessee.

Her career in journalism also began in Memphis. As editor of the local newspaper, The Evening Star, and a writer for The Living Way under the pen name “Iola,” Wells addressed the discrimination African Americans faced daily. She also later became co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech. Her editorials were read widely, earning her a national reputation and the nicknames “Princess of the Press” and “The Brilliant Iola.”

In 1892, after three of her friends were lynched by a white mob, Wells began an editorial campaign against lynching which was quickly retaliated by the sacking of her newspaper’s office. Undaunted, she continued her anti-lynching crusade, first as a staff writer for the New York Age and then as a lecturer and organizer of anti-lynching societies. Wells traveled throughout the U.S. and twice in Great Britain, speaking out against lynching.

In 1895, Wells married Ferdinand L. Barnett, a Chicago lawyer, editor, and public official, and adopted the name Wells-Barnett. At this point focusing much of her work in Chicago, Wells-Barnett wrote for the Chicago Conservator, her husband’s newspaper, and other local journals, and was active in organizing local African American women in various causes, from the anti-lynching campaign to the suffrage movement.

In 1895, Wells-Barnett published her detailed survey of lynching in A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States, 1892–1893–1894, 100 pages of the history and statistical record of lynchings in the United States. The book brought years of research and journalism to the public, promoting awareness of the heinous crime and encouraging her readers to join the fight for racial equality.

From 1898 to 1902, Wells-Barnett participated in various organizations addressing the issues of Black people in general and specifically those affecting working-class women. She served as secretary of the National Afro-American Council, and helped found several suffrage organizations for Black women, including the League of Colored Women, the National Association of Colored Women, and the Alpha Suffrage Club.

In 1909, she participated in the meeting of the Niagara Movement and the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) that sprang from it.

In 1910, Wells-Barnett founded and became the first president of the Negro Fellowship League, which aided newly arrived migrants from the South.

In 1913, she founded what may have been the first Black women’s suffrage group, Chicago’s Alpha Suffrage Club.

From 1913 to 1916 she served as a probation officer of the Chicago municipal court. She was militant in her demand for justice for African Americans and in her insistence that it was to be won by their own efforts.

On March 15, 1931, Ida B. Wells-Barnett died from kidney disease. A respected leader in Chicago’s Black community, she left a legacy not fully acknowledged until the publication of her autobiography in 1970. While her activism predated the Civil Rights Movement, her anti-lynching activism and journalism prefigured its radical spirit, demonstrating the power and effectiveness of collective action in the Black community.

Footnotes:

• Gonzalez, Corina. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett.” National Women’s History Museum, 2024. Accessed 13 May 2025.
• The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 9 May. 2025. Accessed 13 May 2025.