Last Updated: 20 Jul, 2023 | Views: 649
Age: 68
Profession: Journalist
Other Profession(s): Activist, Teacher, Newspaper Editor
Famous For: Documented lynching in the United States
Higher Education: Fisk University
About (Profile/Biography):
Ida B. Wells was born on July 16, 1862 and died on March 25, 1931. As a journalist, civil rights activist, and educator, she was one of the early leaders of the American civil rights movement. In addition to being a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), she was also the editor of the magazine. As one of the most famous Black women in the United States of the period, Wells dedicated her vast career to battling prejudice and violence, promoting the equality of African-Americans, especially women, and ultimately becoming arguably one of the most famous ones in the country.
Ida B. Wells Career:
During the 1890s, Wells documented the incidence of lynching in the United States through articles and through the publication of two pamphlets entitled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases and The Red Record;
There were lynchings in the South that were used by whites to intimidate and oppress African Americans who became a competitor in economic and political terms, leading to a threat of loss of power for Whites. Wells exposed lynching as a barbaric practice of whites in the South.
As a result of her articles criticising the conditions in the Black schools in the Memphis area, Wells was dismissed from her teaching position by the Memphis Board of Education in 1891.
In spite of the loss, she remained unscathed and continued to write articles for the Living Way, the Free Speech, and Headlight magazines.
Wells published her research on lynching in a pamphlet entitled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases in 1892, three days after she began to publish her research in a book.
Ida B. Wells Unknown Facts:
People's Grocery was founded by Thomas Henry Moss, Sr. (1853-1892) in 1889, a business he co-owned with his brother, who was also an African American.