Throughout the 1890s, Wells documentedlynching of African-Americans in the United States in articles and through pamphlets such asSouthern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases andThe Red Record, which debunked the fallacy frequently voiced by whites at the time – that all Black lynching victims were guilty of crimes. Wells exposed the brutality of lynching, and analyzed its sociology, arguing that whites used lynching to terrorize African Americans in theSouth because they represented economic and political competition—and thus a threat of loss of power—for whites. She aimed to demonstrate the truth about this violence and advocate for measures to stop it.[3]
Wells was born intoslavery inHolly Springs, Mississippi. She was freed as an infant under theEmancipation Proclamation, whenUnion Army troops captured Holly Springs. At the age of 14,[4] she lost both her parents and her infant brother in the1878 yellow fever epidemic. She got a job teaching and kept the rest of the family together with the help of her grandmother, later moving with some of her siblings toMemphis, Tennessee. Soon, Wells co-owned and wrote for theMemphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, where her reporting covered incidents ofracial segregation and inequality. Eventually, her investigative journalism was carried nationally inBlack-owned newspapers. Subjected to continued threats and criminal violence, including when a white mob destroyed her newspaper office and presses, Wells left Memphis forChicago,Illinois. She marriedFerdinand L. Barnett in 1895 and had a family while continuing her work writing, speaking, and organizing for civil rights and thewomen's movement for the rest of her life.
Wells was outspoken regarding her beliefs as a Black female activist and faced regular public disapproval, sometimes including from other leaders within thecivil rights movement and thewomen's suffrage movement. She was active inwomen's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. A skilled and persuasive speaker, Wells traveled nationally and internationally on lecture tours.[5] Wells died on March 25, 1931, in Chicago, and in 2020 was posthumously honored with aPulitzer Prize special citation "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."[6]
Ida Bell Wells was born on the Boling Farm nearHolly Springs, Mississippi.[7] Born on July 16, 1862, Ida Wells was the first child of James Madison Wells (1840–1878) and Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Warrenton). James Wells was born to an enslaved woman named Peggy and Peggy's white enslaver, thus he was enslaved under the doctrine ofpartus sequitur ventrem. When James was 18, his father brought him to Holly Springs, hiring him out as a carpenter's apprentice to architectSpires Boling, with James's wages going to his enslaver. One of ten children born on aplantation in Virginia, Lizzie wasabducted and trafficked away from her family and siblings and tried without success to locate her family following theCivil War.[8] Lizzie was owned by Boling for domestic labor in his home, now theBolling–Gatewood House. Before theEmancipation Proclamation was issued, both of Wells's parents were enslaved to Boling, and thus Ida was also born enslaved. James Wells built much of the Bolling–Gatewood house, in which Boling lived, and which in March 2002[9] became the Ida B. Wells–Barnett Museum.[10] The Wells family lived elsewhere on the property. Ground plans on display in the Ida B. Wells–Barnett Museum identify shacks behind the house as the residence of the Wells family.
Afteremancipation, James became a trustee of the newly established Shaw University (nowRust College) in Holly Springs. He refused to vote forDemocratic candidates during the period ofReconstruction, became a member of theLoyal League, and was known as a "race man" for his involvement in politics and his commitment to theRepublican Party.[8] He founded a successful carpentry business in Holly Springs in 1867, and his wife Lizzie became known as a "famous cook".[11]
Ida B. Wells was one of their eight children, and she enrolled in Shaw University.[12] In September 1878, both of Ida's parents died during ayellow fever epidemic that also claimed one of her brothers.[13] Wells had been visiting her grandmother's farm near Holly Springs at the time and was spared.
Following the funerals of her parents and brother, friends and relatives decided that the five remaining Wells children should be separated and sent to foster homes. Wells resisted this proposition. To keep her younger siblings together as a family, she found work as a teacher in a rural Black elementary school outside Holly Springs. Her paternal grandmother, Peggy Wells (née Peggy Cheers; 1814–1887), along with other friends and relatives, stayed with her siblings and cared for them during the week while Wells was teaching.[14]
About two years after, Wells's grandmother (Peggy) had a stroke and her sister Eugenia died, Wells and her two youngest sisters moved to Memphis to live with an aunt, Fanny Butler (née Fanny Wells; 1837–1908), in 1883.[15] Memphis is about 56 miles (90 km) from Holly Springs.
Soon after moving toMemphis, Tennessee, Wells was hired in Woodstock by theShelby County school system. During her summer vacations, she attended summer sessions atFisk University, ahistorically Black college inNashville, Tennessee. She also attendedLeMoyne–Owen College, a historically Black college in Memphis. She held strong political opinions and provoked many people with her views on women's rights. At the age of 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."[16]
. . . It is with no pleasure that I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed ... Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.
On September 15, 1883, and again on May 4, 1884, a train conductor with theChesapeake and Ohio Railway[17][18] ordered Wells to give up her seat in the first-class ladies car and move to the smoking car, which was already crowded with other passengers.[14] In 1883, theUnited States Supreme Court had ruled against the federalCivil Rights Act of 1875 (which had banned racial discrimination in public accommodations). This verdict supported railroad companies that chose to racially segregate their passengers. When Wells refused to give up her seat on September 15, the conductor and two men dragged her out of the car. Wells gained publicity in Memphis when she wrote a newspaper article forThe Living Way, a Black church weekly, about her treatment on the train. In Memphis, she hired an African-American attorney to sue the railroad. When her lawyer was paid off by the railroad,[19] she hired a white attorney.
Wells won her case on December 24, 1884, when the local circuit court granted her a $500 (~$17,498 in 2024) award. The railroad company appealed to theTennessee Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court's ruling in 1887. It concluded: "We think it is evident that the purpose of the defendant in error was to harass with a view to this suit, and that her persistence was not in good faith to obtain a comfortable seat for the short ride."[20] Wells was ordered to pay court costs. Her reaction to the higher court's decision revealed her strong convictions on civil rights and religious faith, as she responded: "I felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things from my suit for my people. ... O God, is there no ... justice in this land for us?"[21]
While continuing to teach elementary school, Wells became increasingly active as a journalist and writer. She accepted an editorial position for a small Memphis journal, theEvening Star, and she began writing weekly articles forThe Living Way newspaper under thepen name "Iola".[22] Articles she wrote under her pen name attacked racistJim Crow policies.[23] In 1889, she became editor and co-owner with J. L. Fleming ofThe Free Speech and Headlight, a Black-owned newspaper established by the Reverend Taylor Nightingale (1844–1922) and based at theBeale Street Baptist Church in Memphis.
In 1891, Wells was dismissed from her teaching post by theMemphis Board of Education due to her articles criticizing conditions in the Black schools of the region. She was devastated but undaunted, and concentrated her energy on writing articles forThe Living Way and theFree Speech and Headlight.[21]
Anti-lynching campaign and investigative journalism
ThePeople's Grocery near Memphis, Tennessee, was a successful African-American cooperative. The 1892 lynchings of its owners led Wells to begin her investigations of lynching.
In 1889, Thomas Henry Moss Sr. (1853–1892), an African American, openedPeople's Grocery, which he co-owned. The store was located in aSouth Memphis neighborhood nicknamed "The Curve". Wells was close to Moss and his family, having stood as godmother to his first child, Maurine E. Moss (1891–1971). Moss's store did well and competed with a white-owned grocery store across the street, Barrett's Grocery, owned by William Russell Barrett (1854–1920).[24]
On March 2, 1892, a young Black male youth named Armour Harris was playing a game of marbles with a young white male youth named Cornelius Hurst in front of the People's Grocery. The two male youths got into an argument during the game, then began to fight. As the Black youth, Harris, seemed to be winning the fight, the father of Cornelius Hurst intervened and began to "thrash" Harris. The People's Grocery employees William Stewart and Calvin R. McDowell (1870–1892) saw the fight and rushed outside to defend the young Harris from the adult Hurst as people in the neighborhood gathered into what quickly became a "racially charged mob".[25]
The white grocer Barrett returned the following day, March 3, 1892, to the People's Grocery with a Shelby County Sheriff's Deputy, looking for William Stewart. Calvin McDowell, who greeted Barrett, indicated that Stewart was not present, but Barrett was dissatisfied with the response and was frustrated that the People's Grocery was competing with his store. Angry about the previous day'smêlée, Barrett responded that "Blacks were thieves" and hit McDowell with a pistol. McDowell wrestled the gun away and fired at Barrett—missing narrowly. McDowell was later arrested but subsequently released.[25]
On March 5, 1892, a group of six white men including a sheriff's deputy tookelectric streetcars to the People's Grocery. The group of white men were met by a barrage of bullets from the People's Grocery, and Shelby County Sheriff Deputy Charley Cole was wounded, as well as civilian Bob Harold. Hundreds of Whites were deputized almost immediately to put down what was perceived by the local Memphis newspapersCommercial andAppeal-Avalanche as an armed rebellion by Black men in Memphis.[25] Thomas Moss, a postman in addition to being the owner of the People's Grocery, was named as a conspirator along with McDowell and Stewart. The three men were arrested and jailed pending trial.[24]
Around 2:30 a.m. on the morning of March 9, 1892, 75 men wearing black masks took Moss, McDowell, and Stewart from their jail cells at the Shelby County Jail to aChesapeake and Ohio rail yard one mile north of the city and shot them dead. TheMemphis Appeal-Avalanche reports: Just before he was killed, Moss said to the mob: "Tell my people to go west, there is no justice here."[25]
After the lynching of her friends, Wells wrote inFree Speech and Headlight urging Blacks to leave Memphis altogether:
There is, therefore, only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us afair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons.[26]
The event led Wells to begin investigating lynchings. She began to interview people associated with lynchings, including a lynching inTunica, Mississippi, in 1892 where she concluded that the father of a young white woman had implored a lynch mob to kill a Black man with whom his daughter was having a sexual relationship, under a pretense "to save the reputation of his daughter".[25] In a 1909 speech at the National Negro Conference, Wells said:
During the last ten years from 1899 to 1908 inclusive the number lynched was 959. Of this number 102 were white, while the colored victims numbered 857. No other nation, civilized or savage, burns its criminals; only under that Stars and Stripes is the human holocaust possible. Twenty-eight human beings burned at the stake, one of them a woman and two of them children, is the awful indictment against American civilization—the gruesome tribute which the nation pays to the color line.[27]
Wells's anti-lynching commentaries in theFree Speech had been building, particularly with respect to lynchings and imprisonment of Black men suspected of raping White women. A story was published on January 16, 1892, in theCleveland Gazette, describing a wrongful conviction for a sexual affair between a married White woman, Julia Underwood (née Julie Caroline Wells), and a single Black man, William Offet (1854–1914) ofElyria, Ohio. Offet was convicted of rape and served four years of a 15-year sentence, despite his sworn denial of rape. Underwood's husband, Rev. Isaac T. Underwood – after she confessed to him that she had lied two years later – diligently worked to get Offet out of the penitentiary. After hiring an influential Pittsburgh attorney, Thomas Harlan Baird Patterson (1844–1907), Rev. Underwood prevailed, Offet was released and subsequently pardoned by the Ohio Governor.[28]
Dear Miss Wells: Thank you for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison... Brave woman!...
On May 21, 1892, Wells published an editorial in theFree Speech refuting what she called "that old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern men are not careful, a conclusion might be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women."[30]
Four days later, on May 25,The Daily Commercial wrote: "The fact that a Black scoundrel [Ida B. Wells] is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern Whites. But we've had enough of it."[31]The Evening Scimitar (Memphis) copied the story that same day, and added: "Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the Negroes themselves do not apply the remedy without delay it will be the duty of those whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation with a pair of tailor's shears."[31]
A White mob ransacked theFree Speech office, destroying the building and its contents.[32] James L. Fleming, co-owner with Wells and business manager, was forced to flee Memphis; and, reportedly, the trains were being watched for Wells's return. Creditors took possession of the office and sold the assets of theFree Speech. Wells had been out of town, vacationing inManhattan; she never returned to Memphis.[31] A "committee" of White businessmen, reportedly from theCotton Exchange, located Rev. Nightingale and, although he had sold his interest to Wells and Fleming in 1891,[33] assaulted him and forced him at gunpoint to sign a letter retracting the May 21 editorial.[34][35]
Wells subsequently accepted a job withThe New York Age and continued her anti-lynching campaign from New York.[36] For the next three years, she resided inHarlem, initially as a guest at the home ofTimothy Thomas Fortune (1856–1928) and wife, Carrie Fortune (née Caroline Charlotte Smiley; 1860–1940).[37]
According to Kenneth W. Goings, no copy of theMemphis Free Speech survives. The only knowledge of the newspaper ever existing comes from reprinted articles in other archived newspapers.[38]
Cover ofSouthern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
On October 26, 1892, Wells began to publish her research on lynching in a pamphlet titledSouthern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.[39][40] Having examined many accounts of lynchings due to the alleged "rape of white women", she concluded that Southerners accused Black men of rape to hide their real reasons for lynchings: Black economic progress, which white Southerners saw as a threat to their own economic progress, and white ideas of enforcing Black second-class status in the society. Black economic progress was a contemporary issue in the South, and in many states whites worked to suppress Black progress. In this period at the turn of the century, Southern states, starting with Mississippi in 1890, passed laws and/or new constitutions todisenfranchise most Black people and many poor white people through use ofpoll taxes, literacy tests and other devices.
Wells, inSouthern Horrors, adopted the phrase "poor, blind Afro-American Sampsons" to denote Black men as victims of "whiteDelilahs". The Biblical "Samson", in the vernacular of the day, came fromLongfellow's 1865 poem, "The Warning", containing the line: "There is a poor, blind Samson in the land ..." To explain the metaphor "Sampson",John Elliott Cairnes, an Irishpolitical economist, in his 1865 article aboutBlack suffrage, wrote that Longfellow was prophesizing;to wit: in "the long-impending struggle for Americans following the Civil War, [he, Longfellow] could see in the Negro only an instrument of vengeance, and a cause of ruin".[41]
After conducting further research, Wells publishedA Red Record, in 1895. This 100-page pamphlet was a sociological investigation of lynching in the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. It also covered Black people's struggles in the South since the Civil War.A Red Record explored the alarmingly high rates of lynching in the United States (which was at a peak from 1880 to 1930). Wells said that during Reconstruction, most Americans outside the South did not realize the growing rate of violence against Black people in the South. She believed that during slavery, white people had not committed as many attacks because of the economic labor value of slaves. Wells commented that "ten thousand Negroes have been killed in cold blood, [through lynching] without the formality of judicial trial and legal execution" since 1865, the final year of the civil war.[42]
Frederick Douglass had written an article noting three eras of "Southern barbarism" and the excuses that whites claimed in each period.
During the time of enslavement, she observed that whites worked to "repress and stamp out alleged 'race riots'" or suspected rebellions by the abducted, usually killing Black people in far higher proportions than any white casualties. Once the Civil War ended, white people feared Black people, who were in the majority in many areas. White people acted to control them and suppress them by violence.[42]
During theReconstruction Era white people murdered Black people as part of mob efforts to suppress Black political activity and re-establishwhite supremacy after the war. They feared so-called "Negro Domination" through voting and taking office. Wells urged Black people in high-risk areas to move away to protect their families.[44]
She observed that whites frequently claimed that Black men had "to be killed to avenge their assaults upon women". She said that white people falsely assumed that any relationship between a white woman and a Black man was a result of rape. But, given power dynamics, it was much more common for white men to take sexual advantage of poor Black women. She stated: "Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that Black men rape white women."[45] Wells connected lynching to sexual violence, showing how the myth of the Black man's lust for white women led to the murder of African-American men.
Wells collected 14 pages of statistics related to lynching cases committed from 1892 to 1895; she also included pages of graphic accounts detailing specific lynchings. She wrote that her data was taken from articles by white correspondents, white press bureaus, and white newspapers.[46] Her delivery of these statistics did not simply reduce the murders to numbers, Wells strategically paired the data with descriptive accounts in a way that helped her audience conceptualize the scale of the injustice. This powerful quantification captivated Black and White audiences about the horrors of lynching, through both her circulated works and public oration.[47]
Southern Horrors andA Red Record's documentation of lynchings captured the attention of Northerners who knew little about these mob murders or accepted the common explanation that Black men deserved this fate.[48]
According to theEqual Justice Initiative, 4,084 African Americans were murdered in theSouth, alone, between 1877 and 1950,[49] of which, 25 percent were accused of sexual assault and nearly 30 percent, murder.[49] Generally southern states and white juries refused to indict any perpetrators for lynching,[50] although they were frequently known and sometimes shown in the photographs being made more frequently of such events.[51][52]
Despite Wells's attempt to gain support among white Americans against mob murders, she believed that her campaign could not overturn the economic interests whites had in using lynching as an instrument to maintain Southern order and discourage Black economic ventures. Ultimately, Wells concluded that appealing to reason and compassion would not succeed in gaining criminalization of lynching by Southern whites.[53] In response to the extreme violence perpetrated upon Black Americans, Wells concluded that armed resistance was a reasonable and effective means to defend against lynching.[54] She said, a "Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home."[55][54]
Wells travelled twice toBritain in her campaign against lynching, the first time in 1893 and the second in 1894 in effort to gain the support of a powerful white nation such as Britain to shame and sanction the racist practices of the United States.[53] She and her supporters in America saw these tours as an opportunity for her to reach larger, white audiences with her anti-lynching campaign, something she had been unable to accomplish in America. In these travels, Wells notes that her own transatlantic voyages in themselves held a powerful cultural context given the histories of theMiddle Passage, and black female identity within the dynamics of segregation.[56] She found sympathetic audiences in Britain, already shocked by reports of lynching in America.[57]Wells had been invited for her first British speaking tour byCatherine Impey[58] andIsabella Fyvie Mayo. Impey, aQuaker abolitionist who published the journalAnti-Caste,[59] had attended several of Wells's lectures while traveling in America. Mayo was a writer and poet who wrote under the name of Edward Garrett. Both women had read of the particularly gruesome mob murder ofHenry Smith in Texas and wanted to organize a speaking tour to call attention to American lynchings.
Impey and Mayo asked Frederick Douglass to make the trip, but he declined, citing his age and health. He then suggested Wells, who enthusiastically accepted the invitation.[60][61] In 1894, before leaving the US for her second visit to Great Britain, Wells called onWilliam Penn Nixon, the editor of theDaily Inter-Ocean, a Republican newspaper in Chicago. It was the only major white paper that persistently denounced lynching.[62] After she told Nixon about her planned tour, he asked her to write for the newspaper while in England.[62] She was the first African-American woman to be a paid correspondent for a mainstream white newspaper.[63]
Wells touredEngland,Scotland,[64] withEliza Wigham in attendance[65] andWales for two months, addressing audiences of thousands,[66] and rallying a moral crusade among the British.[67] She relied heavily on her pamphletSouthern Horrors in her first tour, and showed shocking photographs of lynchings in America. On May 17, 1894, she spoke inBirmingham,West Midlands, at the Young Men's Christian Assembly and atCentral Hall, staying inEdgbaston at 66 Gough Road.[68] On June 25, 1894, atBradford she gave a "sensational address, though in a quiet and restrained manner".[69][70]
On the last night of her second tour, the British Anti-Lynching Committee[71][72] was established – reportedly the first anti-lynching organization in the world.[73]
As a result of her two lecture tours in Britain, Wells received significant coverage in the British and American press. Many of the articles published by the latter at the time of her return to the United States were hostile personal critiques, rather than reports of her anti-lynching positions and beliefs.The New York Times, for example, called her "a slanderous and nasty-mindedMulatress".[77] Despite these attacks from the American press, Wells had nevertheless gained extensive recognition and credibility, and an international audience of supporters for her cause.[78] Wells's tours in Britain even influenced public opinion to the extent that British textile manufacturers fought back with economic strategies, imposing a temporaryboycott onSouthern cotton that pressured southern businessmen to condemn the practice of lynching publicly.[79]
AttorneyFerdinand Lee Barnett (c. 1900). Wells married Barnett in 1895.Wells with her four children, 1909Grave marker for Ida B. Wells-Barnett and her husband Ferdinand L. Barnett atOak Woods Cemetery
On June 27, 1895, in Chicago at BethelAfrican Methodist Episcopal Church, Wells married attorneyFerdinand Lee Barnett,[80] a widower with two sons, Ferdinand Barnett and Albert Graham Barnett (1886–1962). Ferdinand Lee Barnett, who lived in Chicago, was a prominent attorney, civil rights activist, and journalist. Like Wells, he spoke widely against lynchings and in support of the civil rights of African Americans. Wells and Barnett had met in 1893, working together on a pamphlet protesting the lack of Black representation at theWorld's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Barnett foundedThe Chicago Conservator, the first Black newspaper in Chicago, in 1878. Wells began writing for the paper in 1893, later acquired a partial ownership interest, and after marrying Barnett, assumed the role of editor.[81]
Wells's marriage to Barnett was a legal union as well as a partnership of ideas and actions. Both were journalists, as well as established activists with a shared commitment to civil rights. In an interview, Wells's daughterAlfreda said that the two had "like interests" and that their journalist careers were "intertwined". This sort of close working relationship between a wife and husband was unusual at the time, as women often played more traditional domestic roles in a marriage.[82]
In addition to Barnett's two children from his previous marriage, the couple had four more: Charles Aked Barnett (1896–1957), Herman Kohlsaat Barnett (1897–1975), Ida Bell Wells Barnett Jr. (1901–1988), andAlfreda Marguerita Barnett(married surname Duster; 1904–1983). Charles Aked Barnett's middle name was the surname of Charles Frederic Aked (1864–1941), an influential British-born-turned-American progressive Protestant clergyman who, in 1894, while pastor of the Pembrooke Baptist Church inLiverpool, England, befriended Wells, endorsed her anti-lynching campaign, and hosted her during her second speaking tour in England in 1894.[83]
Wells began writing her autobiography,Crusade for Justice (1928), but never finished the book; edited by her daughterAlfreda Barnett Duster, it was posthumously published, in 1970, asCrusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.[13][84]In a chapter ofCrusade For Justice, titled "A Divided Duty", Wells described the challenge of splitting her time between family and work. She continued to work after the birth of her first child, traveling and bringing the infant Charles with her. Although she tried to balance her roles as a mother and as a national activist, it was alleged that she was not always successful.Susan B. Anthony said she seemed "distracted".[85]
The establishment by Wells of Chicago's firstkindergarten prioritizing Black children, located in the lecture room of the Bethel AME Church, demonstrates how her public activism and her personal life were connected; as her great-granddaughterMichelle Duster notes: "When her older children started getting of school age, then she recognized that black children did not have the same kind of educational opportunities as some other students .... And so, her attitude was, 'Well since it doesn't exist, we'll create it ourselves.'"[86]
The 19th century's acknowledged leader for African-American civil rights,Frederick Douglass praised Wells's work, giving her introductions and sometimes financial support for her investigations. When he died in 1895, Wells was perhaps at the height of her notoriety, but many men and women were ambivalent or against a woman taking the lead in Black civil rights at a time when women were not seen as, and often not allowed to be, leaders by the wider society.[87] The new leading voices,Booker T. Washington, his rival,W. E. B. Du Bois, and more traditionally minded women activists, often viewed Wells as too radical.[88]
Wells encountered and sometimes collaborated with the others, but they also had many disagreements, while also competing for attention for their ideas and programs. For example, there are differing in accounts for why Wells's name was excluded from the original list of founders of theNAACP. In his autobiographyDusk of Dawn, Du Bois implied that Wells chose not to be included.[89] However, in her autobiography, Wells stated that Du Bois deliberately excluded her from the list.[90]
Having settled in Chicago, Wells continued her anti-lynching work while becoming more focused on the civil rights of African Americans. She worked with national civil rights leaders to protest a major exhibition, she was active in the nationalwomen's club movement, and she ultimately ran for a position in theIllinois State Senate. She also was passionate about women's rights andsuffrage. She was a spokeswoman and an advocate for women being successful in the workplace, having equal opportunities, and creating a name for themselves.[91][page needed]
Wells was an active member of theNational Equal Rights League (NERL), founded in 1864, and was their representative calling on PresidentWoodrow Wilson to end discrimination in government jobs.[92][93] In 1914, she served as president of NERL's Chicago bureau.[94]
In 1911, Wells attended the second annual Single Tax Conference.[95] This meeting, which promoted the ideology ofLand Value Tax (see alsoSingle tax andGeorgism), was moved from its original location, Chicago'sLa Salle Hotel, to protest against the hotel's discrimination against African Americans at the conference banquet.[96]
Wells's earlier involvement with the Single Tax movement was noted in an October 28, 1891, issue ofThe Standard, which listed her alongside Rev. Thomas Nightingale (1844–1922), editor of theMemphis Free Speech;John Houston Burrus (1849–1917), President ofAlcorn University; Hon. James Hill (about 1837–1903), Postmaster,Vicksburg, Mississippi; and W.L. Grady (né William Lawson Grady; 1861–1918) ofBellevue, Mississippi (an original settler and later, an incorporator ofMound Mayou), in outreach efforts supporting land reform among Black Americans.[97]
In 1893, theWorld's Columbian Exposition was held inChicago. Together with Frederick Douglass and other Black leaders, Wells organized a Black boycott of the fair, for the fair's lack of representation of African-American achievement in the exhibits.[98] Wells, Douglass,Irvine Garland Penn, and Wells's future husband, Ferdinand L. Barnett, wrote sections of the pamphletThe Reason Why: The Colored American Is Not in the World's Columbian Exposition, which detailed the progress of Blacks since their arrival in America and also exposed the basis of Southern lynchings.[99] Wells later reported toAlbion W. Tourgée that copies of the pamphlet had been distributed to more than 20,000 people at the fair.[100] That year she started work withThe Chicago Conservator, the oldest African-American newspaper in the city.[101]
Living in Chicago in the late 19th century, Wells was very active in the nationalWoman's club movement. In 1893, she organizedThe Women's Era Club, a first-of-its-kind civic club for African-American women in Chicago. Wells recruited veteran Chicago activistMary Richardson Jones to serve as the first chair of the new club in 1894; Jones recruited for the organization and lent it considerable prestige.[102][103] It would later be renamed the Ida B. Wells Club in her honor. In 1896, Wells took part in the meeting inWashington, D.C., that founded theNational Association of Colored Women's Clubs.[104] After her death, the club advocated to have ahousing project in Chicago named after the founder, Ida B. Wells, and succeeded, making history in 1939 as the first housing project named after a woman of color.[105] Wells also helped organize theNational Afro-American Council, serving as the organization's first secretary.[106]
Wells received much support from other social activists and her fellow club women. Frederick Douglass praised her work: "You have done your people and mine a service... What a revelation of existing conditions your writing has been for me."[31]
Despite Douglass's praise, Wells was becoming a controversial figure among local and national women's clubs. This was evident when in 1899 the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs intended to meet in Chicago. Writing to the president of the association,Mary Terrell, Chicago organizers of the event stated that they would not cooperate in the meeting if it included Wells. When Wells learned that Terrell had agreed to exclude Wells, she called it "a staggering blow".[107]
In 1900, Wells was outraged when theChicago Tribune published a series of articles suggesting adoption of a system ofracial segregation in public schools. Given her experience as a schoolteacher in segregated systems in the South, she wrote to the publisher on the failures of segregated school systems and the successes of integrated public schools. She then went to his office and lobbied him. Unsatisfied, she enlisted the social reformerJane Addams in her cause. Wells and the pressure group she put together with Addams are credited with stopping the adoption of an officially segregated school system.[108][109]
Wells' role in the U.S. suffrage movement was inextricably linked to her lifelong crusade against racism, violence and discrimination towards African Americans. Her view of women'senfranchisement was pragmatic and political.[110] Like all suffragists, she believed in women's right to vote, but she also saw enfranchisement as a way for Black women to become politically involved in their communities and to use their votes to elect African Americans, regardless of gender, to influential political office.[111]
As a prominentBlack suffragist, Wells held strong positions against racism, violence and lynching that brought her into conflict with leaders of largely white suffrage organizations. Perhaps the most notable example of this conflict was her public disagreement withFrances Willard, the first President of theWoman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).[112]
The WCTU was a predominantly white women's organization, with branches in every state and a growing membership, including in the Southern United States, wheresegregation laws and lynching occurred. With roots in the call for temperance and sobriety, the organization later became a powerful advocate of suffrage in the U.S.
In 1893 Wells and Willard travelled separately to Britain on lecture tours. Willard was promoting temperance as well as suffrage for women, and Wells was calling attention to lynching in the U.S. The basis of their dispute was Wells' public statements that Willard was silent on the issue of lynching.[21] Wells referred to an interview Willard had conducted during her tour of the American South, in which Willard had blamed African Americans' behavior for the defeat of temperance legislation. "The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt", Willard had said, and "thegrog shop is its center of power. The safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities, so that men dare not go beyond the sight of their ownroof tree."[113][114][115]
Although Willard and her prominent supporterLady Somerset were critical of Wells' comments, Wells was able to turn that into her favor, portraying their criticisms as attempts by powerful white leaders to "crush an insignificant colored woman".[116]
Wells also dedicated a chapter inThe Red Record to juxtapose the different positions that she and Willard held. The chapter titled "Miss Willard's Attitude" condemned Willard for using rhetoric that promoted violence and other crimes against African Americans in America.[117]
Wells, her husband, and some members of their Bible study group, in 1908 founded theNegro Fellowship League (NFL), the first Blacksettlement house in Chicago.[118] The organization, in rented space, served as a reading room, library, activity center, and shelter for young Black men in the local community at a time when the localYoung Men's Christian Association (YMCA) did not allow Black men to become members. The NFL also assisted with job leads and entrepreneurial opportunities for new arrivals in Chicago from Southern States, notably those of theGreat Migration.[119] During her involvement, the NFL advocated for women's suffrage and supported the Republican Party in Illinois.[120]
In the years following her dispute with Willard, Wells continued her anti-lynching campaign and organizing in Chicago. She focused her work on Black women's suffrage in the city following the enactment of a new state law enabling partial women's suffrage. The Illinois Presidential and Municipal Suffrage Bill of 1913 (seeWomen's suffrage in Illinois) gave women in the state the right to vote for presidential electors, mayor,aldermen and most other local offices; but not for governor, state representatives or members of Congress.[121][122][a] Illinois was the first state east of the Mississippi to grant women these voting rights.[123]
The prospect of passing the act, even one of partial enfranchisement, was the impetus for Wells and her White colleagueBelle Squire to organize theAlpha Suffrage Club in Chicago on January 30, 1913.[124][125][page needed] One of the most important Black suffrage organizations in Chicago, the Alpha Suffrage Club was founded as a way to further voting rights for all women, to teach Black women how to engage in civic matters, and to work to elect African Americans to city offices. Two years after its founding, the club played a significant role in electingOscar De Priest as the first African Americanalderman in Chicago.[126]
As Wells and Squire were organizing the Alpha Club, theNational American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was organizing asuffrage parade in Washington D.C. Marching the day before theinauguration ofWoodrow Wilson as president in 1913, suffragists from across the country gathered to demand universal suffrage.[127] Wells, together with a delegation of members from Chicago, attended. On the day of the march, the head of the Illinois delegation told the Wells delegates that the NAWSA wanted "to keep the delegation entirely white",[128] and all African-American suffragists, including Wells, were to walk at the end of the parade in a "colored delegation".[129]
Instead of going to the back with other African Americans, however, Wells waited with spectators as the parade was underway, and stepped into the white Illinois delegation as they passed by. She visibly linked arms with her white suffragist colleagues, Squire andVirginia Brooks, for the rest of the parade, demonstrating, according toThe Chicago Defender, the universality of the women's civil rights movement.[130]
DuringWorld War I, the U.S. government placed Wells under surveillance, labeling her a dangerous "race agitator".[11] She defied this threat by continuing civil rights work during this period with such figures asMarcus Garvey,Monroe Trotter, andMadam C. J. Walker.[11] In 1917, Wells wrote a series of investigative reports for theChicago Defender on theEast St. Louis Race Riots.[131] After almost thirty years away, Wells made her first trip back to the South in 1921 to investigate and publish a report on theElaine massacre inArkansas (published 1922).[131]
In the 1920s, she participated in the struggle for African-American workers' rights, urging Black women's organizations to support theBrotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, as it tried to gain legitimacy.[11] However, she lost the presidency of theNational Association of Colored Women in 1924 to the more diplomaticMary Bethune.[132] To challenge what she viewed as problems for African Americans in Chicago, Wells started a political organization named Third Ward Women's Political Club in 1927. In 1928, she tried to become a delegate to the Republican National Convention but lost to Oscar De Priest. Her feelings toward the Republican Party became more mixed due to what she viewed as theHoover administration's poor stance on civil rights and attempts to promote a "Lily-White" policy in Southern Republican organizations. In 1930, Wells unsuccessfully sought elective office, running as an Independent for a seat in theIllinois Senate, against the Republican Party candidate,Adelbert Roberts.[131][11]
Ida B. Wells is widely regarded as an influential figure in Black feminist thought and activism.[133] Her work helped establish the foundation of intersectional feminism, which explores how racism and sexism intersect in the lives of Black women. As a journalist, educator, and anti-lynching activist, Wells addressed the challenges Black women faced at the convergence of racism and sexism.[134] Her persistence on Black women's autonomy and leadership influenced later generations of activists and scholars.[135]
Wells' activism often placed her at an imbalance with both white-dominated suffrage organizations and Black male leadership, as she criticized the exclusion of Black women's voices from both movements. Her refusal to march at the back of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession in Washington, D.C., is frequently cited as a critical moment that demonstrated her resistance to racial segregation within feminist movements.[136][137]
Scholars such as Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Patricia Hill Collins have emphasized Wells' role in shaping a distinct Black feminist tradition.[138] Her focus on collective action, documentation of racial violence, and advocacy for both racial justice and gender equality prefigured key principles of modern Black feminist theory.[139] Associations like theNational Association of Colored Women (NACW), which Wells co-founded, provided a platform for Black women's voices in national reform movements.[140]
Current Black feminist activists continue to draw inspiration from Wells' legacy. Her life and writings are often cited in discussions surrounding systematic racism, police violence, and reproductive justice.[141] In recent years, campaigns such as the #SayHerName movement have reflected Wells' emphasis on naming and confronting racial violence against Black women.[141]
On February 1, 1990, at the start ofBlack History Month in the U.S., theU.S. Postal Service dedicated a 25¢ stamp commemorating Wells in a ceremony at theMuseum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The stamp, designed byThomas Blackshear II, features a portrait of Wells illustrated from a composite of photographs of her taken during the mid-1890s. Wells is the 25th African-American entry – and fourth African-American woman – on a U.S. postage stamp. She is the 13th in the Postal Service's Black Heritage series.[157][158][159]
In 2006, theHarvard Kennedy School commissioned a portrait of Wells.[160] In 2007, the Ida B. Wells Association was founded byUniversity of Memphis philosophy graduate students to promote discussion of philosophical issues arising from the African-American experience and to provide a context in which to mentor undergraduates. The Philosophy Department at the University of Memphis has sponsored the Ida B. Wells conference every year since 2007.[161]
On February 12, 2012,Mary E. Flowers, a member of theIllinois House of Representatives, introduced House Resolution 770 during the 97th General Assembly, honoring Ida B. Wells by declaring March 25, 2012 – the eighty-ninth anniversary of her death – as Ida B. Wells Day in the State of Illinois.[162]
In 2016, the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting was launched in Memphis, Tennessee, with the purpose of promoting investigative journalism.[168] Following in the footsteps of Wells, this society encourages minority journalists to expose injustices perpetuated by the government and defend people who are susceptible to being taken advantage of.[168] This organization was created with much support from theOpen Society Foundations,Ford Foundation, andCUNY Graduate School of Journalism.[168]
Yvonne Mosquito, Lord Mayor of Birmingham, England, commemorating Wells's 1893 British Isles lecture tour with a blue plaque
On March 8, 2018,The New York Times published a belated obituary for her,[2] in a series markingInternational Women's Day and entitled "Overlooked", which set out to acknowledge that, since 1851, the newspaper's obituary pages had been dominated by white men, while notable women – including Wells – had been ignored.[171][172]
On July 13, 2019, a marker for her was unveiled in Mississippi, on the northeast corner of Holly Springs' Courthouse Square. The marker was dedicated by the Wells–Barnett Museum and theJewish American Society for Historic Preservation.[176]
In 2019, a new middle school in Washington, D.C., was named in her honor.[177] On November 7, 2019, aMississippi Writers Trail historical marker was installed at Rust College in Holly Springs, commemorating the legacy of Ida B. Wells.[178]
On May 4, 2020, she was posthumously awarded aPulitzer Prizespecial citation, "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching".[6][179] The Pulitzer Prize board announced that it would donate at least $50,000 in support of Wells's mission to recipients who would be announced at a later date.[6]
Also in 2021, Memphis dedicated a new Ida B. Wells plaza with a life-sized statue of Wells. The monument is adjacent to the historicBeale Street Baptist Church, where Wells produced theFree Speech newspaper.[188]
ThePBS documentary seriesAmerican Experience aired on December 19, 1989 – season 2, episode 11 (one-hour) – "Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice", written and directed byWilliam Greaves. The documentary featured excerpts of Wells's memoirs read byToni Morrison.[192] (viewableviaYouTube)
In 1995, the playIn Pursuit of Justice: A One-Woman Play About Ida B. Wells, written by Wendy D. Jones (born 1953) and starring Janice Jenkins,[193] was produced. It draws on historical incidents and speeches from Wells's autobiography, and features fictional letters to a friend. It won four awards from theAUDELCO (Audience Development Committee Inc.), an organization that honors Black theater.[194]
In 1999, a stagedreading of the playIola's Letter, written by Michon Boston (née Michon Alana Boston; born 1962), was performed atHoward University in Washington, D.C., under the direction of Vera J. Katz,[b][195] including then-studentChadwick Boseman among the cast. The play is inspired by the real-life events that compelled a 29-year-old Ida B. Wells to launch an anti-lynching crusade from Memphis in 1892 using her newspaper,Free Speech.[196]
Wells's life is the subject ofConstant Star (2002), a widely performed musical drama byTazewell Thompson,[197] who was inspired to write it by the 1989 documentaryIda B. Wells: A Passion for Justice.[75] Thompson's play explores Wells as "a seminal figure in Post-Reconstruction America".[197]
Wells was played by Adilah Barnes in the 2004 filmIron Jawed Angels. The film dramatizes a moment during theWoman Suffrage Parade of 1913 when Wells ignored instructions to march with the segregated parade units and crossed the lines to march with the other members of her Illinois chapter.[198]
May 7, 1913: Senate Bill 63 – State Senator Hugh Stewart Magill, Jr. (1868–1958), fromPrinceton, sponsored a limited women's suffrage bill. TheIllinois Senate (the Upper House) passed it May 7, 1913, by a vote of 29 to 15 – three more than the required majority.
June 11, 1913: The House posed a stiffer challenge, right up to the day of the vote. TheIllinois House of Representatives (the Lower House) passed it June 11, 1913, by a vote of 83 to 58.
June 26, 1913: GovernorEdward F. Dunne signed the bill June 26, 1913, inSpringfield. The signing ceremony was filmed for the movies.
^Vera J. Katz (née Vera Joy Weintraub; born 1936) isProfessor Emerita fromHoward University, Department of Theater Arts, where she taught acting and directing for 32 years – from 1969 to about 2001. [Like many of the writers cited in this article], Katz has devoted much of her career to fighting bigotry. (Hentoff March 28, 1994)
Roth Horowitz Gallery, 160A East 70th Street,Manhattan (January 14, 2000 – February 12, 2000); Andrew Roth and Glenn Horowitz, gallery co-owners,Witness: Photographs of Lynchings from the Collection of James Allen and John Littlefield, organized by Andrew Roth
New York Historical Society (March 14, 2000 – October 1, 2000);OCLC809988821,Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, curated by James Allen and Julia Hotton
Andy Warhol Museum (September 22, 2001 – February 21, 2002),The Without Sanctuary Project, curated by James Allen; co-directed by Jessica Arcand and Margery King
Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park (May 1, 2002 – December 31, 2002),Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America;OCLC782970109, curated by Joseph F. Jordan, PhD (né Joseph Ferdinand Jordan Jr.; born 1951); Douglas H. Quin, PhD (born 1956) exhibition designer;National Park Service MLK site team: Frank Catroppa, Saudia Muwwakkil, and Melissa English-Rias
The 2002 short film,Without Sanctuary, directed by Matt Dibble (né Matthew Phillips Dibble; born 1959) and produced by Joseph F. Jordan, PhD (né Joseph Ferdinand Jordan Jr.; born 1951), accompanied the 2002–2003 exhibition by the same name,Without Sanctuary, at theMartin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park (co-sponsored byEmory University)
"... several black single taxers, including Frank Warren of Mackinac, Michigan and Ida Wells-Barnett of Chicago participated in various meetings. In fact, the 1911 Single Tax Conference was moved from Chicago'sLaSalle Hotel in protest against that establishment's refusal to provide equal service to Negroes at the conference banquet."
Chicago Literary Hall of Fame (November 15, 2011)."Ida B. Wells".chicagoliteraryhof.org.Archived from the original on October 18, 2017. RetrievedOctober 17, 2017. (inducted during the Second Annual Ceremony at theHarold Washington Library November 15, 2011; the article includes a video.)
Giddings, Paula J. (1984). "1: 'To Sell My Life as Dearly as Possible': Ida B. Wells and the Antilynching Campaign".When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America.
Jones, Wendy D."Wendy Jones".AALBC.com (autobiography).Tampa, Florida: AALBC.com, LLC (African American Literature Book Club). RetrievedNovember 3, 2020. The article is a short autobiography connected to the author's 2017 book,An Extraordinary Life: Josephine E. Jones [née Josephine Ebaugh; 1920–2017] – the author's mother. "I come from a family of storytellers. My mother and my grandmother [Anna Mae Ebaugh, née Nance; 1888–1982] were my first teachers."
Liles, [Stuart] Stinson (August 7, 2021)."Memphis Unveils New Ida. B. Wells Monument".Southern Hollows (podcast and blog of Stinson Liles).Archived from the original on August 7, 2021. RetrievedAugust 7, 2021.
Norwood, Arlisha Renae (2017)."Ida B. Wells-Barnett". Revised in 2025 by Corina Gonzalez.Archived from the original on April 23, 2025. RetrievedApril 21, 2025.
Paisana, Joanne (2016). "Playing the Transatlantic Card: The British Anti-Lynching Campaigns of Ida B. Wells".Diacrítica.30 (2):187–203.hdl:1822/46204.S2CID164398439.
Pinar, William Frederick (January 2001). "8 – White Women and the Campaign Against Lynching: Frances Willard, Jane Addams, Jesse Daniel Ames".Counterpoints. Vol. 163 –The Gender of Racial Politics and Violence in America: Lynching, Prison Rape, & the Crisis of Masculinity.163.Frankfurt am Main:Peter Lang:487–554.ISSN1058-1634.JSTOR42977758.OCLC5792541764. (Pinar offers a description of the accusations made between Willard and Wells in England in 1894.)
Portrait of Ida B. Wells (April 6, 2006)."A Celebration of Ida B. Wells". (i)Institute of Politics & (ii) Women and Public Policy Program (co-sponsors).The Institute of Politics at Harvard University (archived video of a forum; 1:08:15).Cambridge:Harvard Kennedy School Forum. John F. Kennedy, Jr., Forum.Archived from the original on February 23, 2017. RetrievedFebruary 22, 2017. (the video relates to the unveiling of several new portraits installed at theKennedy School, including a poster reproduction of a painting of Ida B. Wells – painted byPatricia Watwood – commissioned by the school for $20,000 and installed April 2006 in the Fainsod Room of the Littauer Building, nextWinston Churchill's portrait)
Type Investigations Fellowship."Ida B. Wells Fellowship".www.typeinvestigations.org.New York: Type Investigations, formerly The Investigative Fund, the investigative newsroom of theType Media Center.Archived from the original on July 12, 2019. RetrievedNovember 29, 2018.
Zackodnik, Teresa (July 2005). "Ida B. Wells and 'American Atrocities' in Britain".Women's Studies International Forum.28 (4):259–273.doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2005.04.012.
Audio/visual media
Recording:Destination Freedom: "Woman With a Mission: The Story of Ida B. Wells" (Originally broadcast on Chicago radio station, WMAQ). Episode 41. April 10, 1949.OCLC1323169789,44432615.
Via YouTube. audio only; uploaded January 4, 2025, by Old Time Radio Researchers. January 4, 2025www.otrr.org). Retrieved July 25, 2025.
Via YouTube (audio only; uploaded January 12, 2025, by Gold World Entertainment). January 11, 2025. RetrievedJuly 25, 2025.
Grossman, Ron (June 23, 2013). "Illinois Women Win the Right to Vote" (blog ed.). "A New Voice, a New Vote" (print ed.). Chicago Flashback.
Blog ed.. June 23, 2013. Archived fromthe original on August 3, 2021. RetrievedNovember 17, 2018. (archived ed.)ProQuest1370403632 (US Newsstream database).
Pratt, Gregory; Byrne, John (July 25, 2018). "Ida B. Wells Gets Her Street – City Council Approves Renaming Congress in Her Honor". Contributor:Lolly Bowean.
Dickerson, Caitlin (March 8, 2006)."Blog ed".The New York Times (National ed.).Archived from the original on July 18, 2019. Retrieved April 22, 2018, viaNew York Times.
Print ed (Late, East Coast ed.). March 8, 2018. p. 4 (section F).ProQuest2012602827 (U.S. Newsstream database).
Staples, Brent (July 10, 2021).Blog ed. Archived fromthe original on March 1, 2025. RetrievedApril 1, 2022. Retrieved April 1, 2022, viaNew York Times.
"... The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that the Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give." – Ida B. Wells, fromSouthern Horrors.Chapter 6: "Self Help". p. 23.
Flowers, Mary E. (February 12, 2012). "House Resolution 770: Ida B. Wells Day in the State of Illinois".House Journal, Ninety-Seventh General Assembly(PDF).Illinois House of Representatives 104th Legislative Day, Regular & Perfunctory Session. pp. 7–8.Archived(PDF) from the original on November 1, 2020. RetrievedNovember 9, 2020.... presented to Michelle Duster, great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells for efforts to protect her legacy.
Wells, Ida B. (May 31 – June 1, 1909). "Lynching, Our National Crime".Proceedings of the National Negro Conference, 1909 (Morning Session, June 1, 1909). Preface byWilliam English Walling (1877–1936).New York.LCCN69-18544 (1969 reprint from a copy at the Harvard Library);OCLC16530911 (all editions).
Pich, Hollie. "Various, Beautiful, and Terrible: The Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells-Barnett,Australasian Journal of American Studies 34#2 (2015), pp. 59–74.online
"Video" – In the videos, Schechter talks about Wells' experiences and legacy –archive linkArchived May 7, 2012, at theWayback Machine viaWayback Machine. Archived from the original on July 19, 2008 (14 files archived inRealMedia format). Retrieved March 28, 2008.
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