Ida B Wells Research Paper

Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs Mississippi, in 1862. She experienced firsthand the hardships of the Civil War and what followed in the Reconstruction Act from her childhood to a young adult. So she was very familiar with the freedoms and opportunities that African Americans had been denied. At first things weren’t as bad for Ida for her parents were well known and liked. But when she was 16 tragedy struck her hometown while she was off visiting her grandmother; yellow fever had plundered the lives of many including her parents and youngest brother. Now it was up to her to take care of her 5 other siblings. She had to drop out of school to take on the responsibilities of her family and found a job as a school teacher. Though she hadn’t completed schooling of her own, she was allowed the job because she knew the basic education and most of the students were illiterate.
Then Wells and her sisters moved in with their aunt in Memphis Tennessee, in the early 1880’s. There she continued schooling at Fisk University in Nashville and got another schooling job ten miles away.
It was in 1884 when on a train ride to her work she was asked by the conductor to move from the ladies front car to the smoking car at the end of the train. She got angry and refused exclaiming to the conductor that she had paid for her first class ticket. This

inclined the conductor and a few passengers to physically remove her from the train. Wells then hired a lawyer in Memphis and sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company. The court sided the Wells and she received $500. But this was short lived for once the railroad co. appealed the verdict soon after the supreme court reversed the decision and made Ida pay the court fees. This generated a lot of publicity in the south for it was the first case of the time. Ida then went under the pseudonym “Iola” and started to write articles in local black newspapers that disputed the Jim Crow laws, and then “She bought a share of a Memphis newspaper, the Free Speech and Headlight, and used it to further the cause of African Americans.”
Then in 1892, three of Ida’s friends were lynched. Calvin McDowell, Thomas Moss, and Henry Stewart owned and very profitable grocery store in Memphis and this greatly angered the some White store owners nearby. One day, a group of white men went over to McDowell, Moss, and Stewart and confronted them about their growing problem and soon a fight broke out. Many of the white men were injured causing McDowell, Moss, and Stewart to be arrested. Soon a white mob broke into the jail and brought out the three black business owners and lynched them.
Ida was horrified of the fate that had fallen on her friends and instantly started an investigation into lynching.

After extensive research she published a pamphlet in 1892 called “Southern Horrors.” from her findings, she uncovered that the “rape myth” was used by lynch mobs to defend themselves against the murder of African Americans. She also found that by challenging white authority and or even becoming involved in business or politics, you were an instant target for lynching. These public statements made her vulnerable and soon after the Free Speech offices were ravaged and her own life was threatened by a

mob.
Ida Wells had become one of the most recognized black woman in the U.S. throughout her lifetime, even as she was constantly facing relentless prejudice. She set the groundwork for reporting techniques that are still used in contemporary journalism.
Beaten down by slavery while standing less than 5 feet tall, she challenged the fundamentals of racism long before these ideas were rehashed, and long forgotten were her ideas during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Her anti-lynching campaign was her greatest accomplishment. She questioned the stereotype that was often used to defend oneself against lynching and disproved it. In her eyes, she found this subjugation to be violent and abusive.- “an excuse to get rid of negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep the race terrorized and ‘the nigger down’.” she wrote in a journal.
Wells additionally attempted to progress other political causes. She dissented the avoidance of African Americans from the 1893 World's Columbian Article in Chicago and after three years she helped dispatch the National Relationship of Hued Ladies (NACW). In 1909 Wells was an establishing individual from the National Relationship for the Progression of Minorities Individuals (NAACP). She likewise effectively battled for ladies' suffrage.
She died at age 69 in chicago in 1931