Ida B Wells: Fighting For Racial and Gender Equality

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Ida B. Wells was born in 1862 in Holly Springs Mississippi to Elizabeth and James Wells. She is famous for her campaign against lynching. Ida set an example for all African – Americans to stand up for their rights in the late 1800’s. Through her tireless work on exposing the horrors of lynching, she almost single-handedly attacked and kicked off the beginning of the civil right movement and without her; there would have been a delayed start to the basic rights for African – Americans (man or woman). Eventually, her work inspired the feeling that every American can and must exercise their Civil Rights and responsibilities to make our country a better or more equal place to live.
Ida B. Wells had a rough childhood. Her parents were enslaved before the Civil War, but still made ends meet as her mother worked as a cook and her father worked as a skilled carpenter. Ida was the eldest of eight children. When a yellow fever epidemic swept through Holly Springs taking the lives of Ida’s mother, father and baby brother Stanley, but fortunately for Ida her parents gave her very good leadership skills which she used to keep and manage the rest of her six younger siblings after her parent’s death. She obtained a job as a schoolteacher where the local African – Americans attended. With this job she was able to put food on the table working for $25.00 a month. She then moved to Memphis Tennessee for a higher paying job while being taken care of by her Aunt Fannie and friends and other family took care of her younger siblings.
While Ida was in Memphis she began to fight for gender and racial justice. While Ida was on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company Train she was asked by the conductor to move to the “Jim Crow” car which was essenti...

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... that theses 7 amazing African Americans helped create today.

Wagner, Bryan. Disturbing the peace Black culture and the police power after slavery. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009. Print.

Annotation: This book discusses the interactions of Ida B. Wells with other people.

"We shall overcome." We shall overcome. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2015. .

Annotation: This website is about Ida but also the civil rights movement and all it went to get through to the whites that we are all human.

Wideman, John Edgar. My soul has grown deep: classics of early African-American literature. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2001. Print.

Annotation: This DVD provides valuable information on Ida B. Wells’s life through interviews and narration. Along with some other actors that were important in the civil rights movement.

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