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Ida B. Wells

Born July 16, 1862(1862-07-16)
Holly Springs, Mississippi
Died March 25, 1931 (aged 68)
Chicago, Illinois
Education Fisk University
Occupation Civil rights & Women's rights activist
Spouse Ferdinand L. Events 622 - The beginning of the Islamic calendar. 1054 - Three Roman legates fractured relations between the Western and Year 1862 was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year starting on Monday Holly Springs homejpg||right|250px|thumbnail|Montrose a Holly Springs home Events 1199 - Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France which leads to his death on April 6. Year 1931 ( MCMXXXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1931 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Chicago (ʃɪˈkɑːgoʊ is the largest City by population in the state of Illinois and the American Midwest of the United States. The State of Illinois ( roughly ill-i-NOY is a state of the United States of America, the 21st to be admitted to the Union. Fisk University is a historically-black university in Nashville, Tennessee, U Barnett
Parents James Wells
Elizabeth "Lizzie Bell" Warrenton

Ida Bell Wells (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931), aka Ida B. Events 622 - The beginning of the Islamic calendar. 1054 - Three Roman legates fractured relations between the Western and Year 1862 was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year starting on Monday Events 1199 - Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France which leads to his death on April 6. Year 1931 ( MCMXXXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1931 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Wells-Barnett, was an African American civil rights advocate and an early women's rights advocate active in the Woman Suffrage Movement. African Americans or Black Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa Beginnings Lydia Chapin (Taft (February 2 1712 – November 9 1778 was a forerunner of women's suffrage in Colonial Fearless in her opposition to lynchings, Wells documented hundreds of these atrocities. Lynching in the United States is the practice in the 19th and 20th centuries of the humiliation and killing of people by mobs acting outside the law

Contents

Biography

Ida B. Wells: born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16, 1862 to a carpenter, James Wells, and Elizabeth "Lizzie Bell" Warrenton Wells, both of whom were slaves until freed at the end of the Civil War. Holly Springs homejpg||right|250px|thumbnail|Montrose a Holly Springs home As a social-economic system slavery is a legal institution under which a Person (called "a slave" is compelled to work for another Causes of the war See also Origins of the American Civil War, Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War The coexistence of a slave-owning South When she was fourteen, her parents and her youngest sibling, a brother only nine months old, died of yellow fever during an epidemic that swept through the South. Yellow fever (also called yellow jack, black vomit or sometimes American Plague) is an acute viral disease [1] At a meeting following the funeral, friends and relatives decided that the six remaining Wells children should be farmed out to various aunts and uncles. Wells was devastated by the idea and, to keep the family together, dropped out of high school and found employment as a teacher in a black school. High school is the name used in some parts of the world (in particular Scotland, North America and Australia) to describe an institution Despite difficulties, Wells was able to continue her education by working her way through Rust College in Holly Springs.

In 1880, Wells moved to Memphis with all of her siblings except for her 15-year-old brother, January. Memphis is a City in the southwest corner of Tennessee, and the County seat of Shelby County. There she got a summer job. When possible, she attended summer sessions at Fisk University in Nashville. Fisk University is a historically-black university in Nashville, Tennessee, U Wells held strong political opinions and she upset many people with her views on women's rights. When she was 24, she wrote, "I will not begin at this late day by doing what my soul abhors; sugaring men, weak deceitful creatures, with flattery to retain them as escorts or to gratify a revenge. "

Wells became a public figure in Memphis when, in 1884, she led a campaign against racial segregation on the local railway. A conductor of the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company told her to give up her seat on the train to a white man and ordered her into the smoking or "Jim Crow" car, which was already crowded with other passengers. The federal Civil Rights Act of 1875—which banned discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color in theaters, hotels, transport, and other public accommodations—had just been declared unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), and several railroad companies were able to continue racial segregation of their passengers. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 ( was United States federal law proposed by Republican Senator Charles Sumner and Republican Congressman Benjamin F The Civil Rights Cases, 109 US 3 ( 1883) were a group of five similar cases consolidated into one issue for the United States Supreme Court Wells refused to give up her seat, 71 years before Rosa Parks, and the conductor, who had to get assistance from two other men, dragged her out of the car. Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4 1913 – October 24 2005 was an African American Civil rights activist whom the U When she returned to Memphis, she immediately hired an attorney to sue the railroad. She won her case in the local circuit court, but the railroad company appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, which reversed the lower court's ruling in 1887. A supreme court, also called a court of last resort or high court, is in some Jurisdictions the highest judicial body within that jurisdiction's

Wells, in her mid-thirties, c. 1897.
Wells, in her mid-thirties, c. 1897.

During her participation in women's suffrage parades, her refusal to stand in the back because she was black resulted in the beginning of her media publicity. In 1889, she became co-owner and editor of Free Speech, an anti-segregationist newspaper based in Memphis on Beale Street. Year 1889 ( MDCCCLXXXIX) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Beale Street is a street in downtown Memphis Tennessee, which runs from the Mississippi River to East Street a distance of approximately. In 1892, however, she was forced to leave the city because her editorials in the paper were seen as too agitating. In one of her articles, written after three of her friends who owned a grocery store were attacked and then lynched because they were taking business away from white competitors, she encouraged blacks to leave Memphis, saying, "there is . . . . only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons. " Many African-Americans did leave, and others organized boycotts of white-owned businesses. As a result of this and other investigative reporting, Wells' newspaper office was ransacked, and Wells herself had to leave for Chicago.

She also published in 1892 her famous pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. This pamphlet, along with her 1895 A Red Record, documented her research on and campaign against lynching. Lynching in the United States is the practice in the 19th and 20th centuries of the humiliation and killing of people by mobs acting outside the law Having examined many accounts of lynching based on alleged "rape of white women", she concluded that Southerners concocted the rape excuse to hide their real reason for lynching black men: black economic progress, which threatened not only white Southerners' pocketbooks but also their ideas about black inferiority.

In 1893, she and other black leaders, among them Frederick Douglass, organized a boycott of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14 1818 February 20 1895 was an American abolitionist, editor, Orator The World's Columbian Exposition (also called The Chicago World's Fair) a World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary At the suggestion of white abolitionist and anti-lynching crusader Albion Tourgée, Wells and her coalition produced a pamphlet to be distributed during the exposition. Albion Winegar Tourgée (May 2 1838 &ndash May 21 1905 was an American soldier Radical Republican, lawyer judge novelist and diplomat Called Why the Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition, it detailed in English and a few other languages the workings of Southern lynchings and a handful of other issues impinging on black Americans. She later reported to Tourgée that 2,000 copies had been distributed at the fair. [2]

Also in 1893, Wells found herself thinking of filing a libel suit against two black Memphis attorneys. She again turned to Tourgée, who had trained and practiced as a lawyer and judge, for possible free legal help. Deeply in debt, Tourgée could not afford to do the work, but he asked his friend Ferdinand L. Barnett if he could. Barnett accepted the pro bono job. [3] Two years later, he and Wells were married. [4] She set an early precedent as being one of the first married American women to keep her own last name with her husband's. This was very unusual for that time.

In 1892, Wells went to Great Britain at the behest of British Quaker Catherine Impey. Catherine Impey (1847 - December 14 1923 was a British Quaker activist against Racial discrimination. An opponent of imperialism and proponent of racial equality, Impey wanted to be sure that the British public was informed about the problem of lynching. Although Wells and her speeches, complete with at least one grisly photograph showing grinning white children posing beneath a suspended corpse, caused a stir among doubtful audiences, Wells was paid so little that she could barely pay her travel expenses. [5]

During her second British lecture tour, again arranged by Impey, Wells wrote about her trip for Chicago's Daily Inter Ocean in a regular column, "Ida B. Wells Abroad". In doing so, she became the first black woman paid to be a correspondent for a mainstream white newspaper. [6] (Tourgée had been writing a column for the same paper, which was the local Republican Party organ and competitor to the Democratic Chicago Tribune. )[7]

After her retirement, Wells wrote her autobiography, Crusade for Justice (1928). She died of uremia in Chicago on March 25, 1931, at the age of 68. Uremia is a term used to loosely describe the illness accompanying kidney failure (also called renal failure Events 1199 - Richard I is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France which leads to his death on April 6. Year 1931 ( MCMXXXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1931 calendar of the Gregorian calendar.

Summary

Throughout her life, Wells was militant in her demands for equality and justice for African-Americans and insisted that the African-American community must win justice through its own efforts. African Americans or Black Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa As playwright Tazewell Thompson sums her up,". Tazewell Thompson is a Playwright, a director, and former Artistic Director of the Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut . . A woman born in slavery, she would grow to become one of the great pioneer activists of the Civil Rights movement. A precursor of Rosa Parks, she was a suffragist, newspaper editor and publisher, investigative journalist, co-founder of the NAACP, political candidate, mother, wife, and the single most powerful leader in the anti-lynching campaign in America. Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4 1913 – October 24 2005 was an African American Civil rights activist whom the U Suffrage (from the Latin suffragium, meaning "voting tablet" and figuratively "right to vote" probably from suffrago "hough" and originally A dynamic, controversial, temperamental, uncompromising race woman, she broke bread and crossed swords with some of the movers and shakers of her time: Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Francis Willard, and President McKinley. Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14 1818 February 20 1895 was an American abolitionist, editor, Orator Susan Brownell Anthony ( February 15, 1820 &ndash March 13, 1906) was a prominent American Civil rights leader who played Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr, National Hero of Jamaica (17 August 1887 10 June 1940 was a Publisher, Journalist, Entrepreneur, Black nationalist Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5 1856 &ndash November 14 1915 was an American educator orator author and leader of the African-American community William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (duːˈbɔɪz ( February 23, 1868 August 27, 1963) was an American Civil rights activist Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard ( September 28, 1839 &ndash February 17, 1898) was an American educator temperance William McKinley Jr ( January 29, 1843 September 14, 1901) was the twenty-fifth President of the United States, and the last By any fair assessment, she was a seminal figure in Post-Reconstruction America. "

Significant quotations

“One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap. ”[8]

References

  1. ^ Biographical information by Lee D. Baker at Duke University
  2. ^ Elliott, Mark. Color-Blind Justice: Albion Tourgée and the Quest for Racial Equality from the Civil War to Plessy v. Ferguson. New York: Oxford University Press (2006), 239-40.
  3. ^ Elliott, 239.
  4. ^ "Miss Ida B. Wells About to Marry.", Washington Post, June 13, 1895. The Washington Post is the largest and most circulated Newspaper in Washington D Events 1525 - Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora, against the Celibacy rule decreed by the Roman Catholic Church for Year 1895 ( MDCCCXCV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year Retrieved on 2008-05-09. 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Events 1457 BC - Battle of Megiddo (15th century BC between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of  
  5. ^ Elliott, 240-41.
  6. ^ Elliott, 242.
  7. ^ Elliott, 232.
  8. ^ Women in History at Lakewood Public Library (OH) website, "Ida B. Wells-Barnett". Accessed December 13, 2005.

External links

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