The Courageous Life of Ida B. Wells #OrdinaryWomen

There's something irresistible about

underdog stories,

where remarkable people rise

from humble beginnings

to do incredible things against all the odds.

But few stories are as dramatic as that of

Ida B. Wells.

A woman who was born a slave in Mississippi,

in the midst of the Civil War,

and became a daring investigative reporter

and civil rights crusader,

who would one day be called

"the loudest and most persistent voice for truth"

in an era of injustice.

From an early age, Wells carried

exceptional burdens with exceptional courage.

She became the head of her household

at the age of 16 when both her parents

died suddenly from yellow fever.

In order to support her five brothers and sisters,

she curtailed her education and started working

as a school teacher in rural Mississippi.

When she was 21 years old,

Wells boarded a train to Memphis

and seated herself in the first-class ladies car,

only to be told that black women were restricted

to second class.

Not only did she bite the conductor who tried

to remove her, she soon filed a discrimination

lawsuit against the railroad company.

She won the initial case,

and while it was overturned on appeal,

an article she wrote about the experience

helped launch her career as a journalist.

Wells' life changed forever in 1892,

when her friend, Thomas Moss, was murdered

by a white mob in Memphis

along with two other black men.

Their brutal killings inspired Wells to speak out

against the horrors of lynching,

an increasingly common tool of terror

used against black people in the decades

after the Civil War.

Black men were often falsely accused of rape

in order to justify their murders.

But in a series of widely-read

articles and pamphlets,

Wells argued that lynching had little to do

with protecting the honor of women,

and everything to do with protecting the power of

southern white men.

Like so many civil rights leaders who would

follow in her footsteps, including the

civil rights leaders of today,

her criticisms were powerful because

they took aim not just

at the misdeeds of individuals,

but at the unexamined institutions of racism

and power behind them.

Her groundbreaking analysis changed

the national conversation around lynching,

and ever her future mentor, Frederick Douglass

called his writing on the subject

"feeble" in comparison.

Wells was the co-owner and editor of

a black newspaper in Memphis.

After one of her anti-lynching articles

displeased the white community,

an angry mob stormed the office of the paper

and destroyed it.

Faced with death threats,

Wells started carrying a pistol in her purse,

but refused to back down from her

anti-lynching campaign.

She said it was better to die

fighting against injustice,

than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.

After that, she relocated to New York,

where she began to publish investigative

journalism for an even larger audience,

including pamphlets that collected statistical

documentation of lynching in the South.

Her popular anti-lynching speeches

eventually took her to Britain,

where white audiences seemed far more

outraged than many of their

American counterparts.

Her overseas speaking tour inspired

international condemnation of lynching,

particularly from British newspapers and politicians.

And elevated Wells to the most visible national

leader in the anti-lynching movement.

Although Wells often criticized herself

for being stubborn and hot-tempered,

those same qualities made her a fiery orator

and a relentless crusader against injustice.

Faced with death threats from southern Whites

and criticism from moderate black reformers,

who considered her too radical,

Wells refused to compromise her ideals

for the sake of comfort, convenience,

or even personal safety.

"The way to right wrongs is to turn

the light of truth upon them,"

wrote Wells, who never failed to speak

unpleasant truths even when it cost her friends

or potential allies.

Although surrounded by hostility and threats

from people who wanted to punish

her outspokenness because of

her race and her gender,

she refused to be silenced.

Although she fought for women's rights,

Wells was often disappointed by white suffragists

who considered racial issues a distraction

from the fight against sexism.

Some even endorsed segregation.

During the famous women's suffrage parade of 1913,

when black women were told to walk at the back,

Wells simply waited until the march started

and defiantly joined her states' delegation.

Similarly, she was frustrated by those in the

black community who saw women's rights as

unimportant to the fight against racism.

Caught between the struggles of her race and her gender,

Wells often felt like she fought alone.

Although she had many suitors,

and withstood enormous social pressure to marry,

Wells remained single throughout her twenties.

In her early 30s, she finally met her match

in Ferdinand Barnett,

a black lawyer who was equally passionate about

social justice and a man who wholeheartedly

supported her career.

They married and had four children together

and while Wells would eventually step down

from her full-time position as a newspaper editor,

she continued her work as a reformer

until the day she died.

When she passed away in 1931 at the age of 69,

Ida B. Wells had profoundly changed the way that

people had looked at race, gender,

and violence in America.

She transformed herself from a slave who was

regarded as property,

to someone once described as a

woman who walked as if she owned the world.