Throughout March, the Democrats will present an ongoing blog series celebrating American women of distinction, both past and present. Staff members at the Democratic National Committee and several female leaders in the Democratic Party have been asked to write about influential women in our country’s history and leaders who continue making contributions today.
When I expressed an early interest in writing, my parents, products of the San Francisco activist movement in the sixties, gave me Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Wells was a journalist, a publisher, and an activist. She wielded power with her pen, bringing attention to the lynching of black men in the South and advocating for women’s suffrage. Wells was a stalwart for justice and fought tenaciously for the civil rights of black people and women in a time when blacks were subjugated. Her story and what she was able to accomplish in the late 1800s inspired me to do what I can to champion African American causes today.
Born in 1862, one year before the Emancipation Proclamation, Wells took on early responsibilities after her parents and 10-month old brother succumbed to a Yellow Fever epidemic that swept through the south—including her hometown of Holly Springs, Mississippi. Determined to keep her remaining six siblings together, 16 year old Wells dropped out of high school and found work as a teacher in an African American school. The teaching position brought forth the stark reality of racial politics and educational disparity: in Mississippi at that time, white teachers were paid $80 per month while black teachers were paid $30.
In 1883, Wells moved to Memphis where she continued teaching and began attending summer session at Fisk University in Nashville. She began documenting racial injustices in small church weeklies, writing:
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
Wells quickly gained notoriety for her writings about racial injustice as she turned her attention to the sanctioned vigilantism of lynching. Racial tensions in Memphis were rising and violence was often the solution. The People’s Grocery Company, owned by three of Wells’ friends, was accused of taking business away from a white-owned store across the street. One night a white mob invaded the store, resulting in the shooting of 3 white men. The owners of the People’s Grocery Company, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Henry Stewart, were promptly arrested and jailed. Soon after a large lynch mob stormed the jail and killed the three owners. Wells was devastated by the deaths of her friends and wrote articles in the Free Speech, urging the black citizens of Memphis to leave. Over 6,000 persons left the city in response. Wells “pen advocacy” evoked death threats and she had to take her anti-lynching crusade on the road. She traveled from Philadelphia to New York and abroad to the British Isles, writing articles against lynching and speaking out about the atrocities. Her documentation and research on lynching became more known when she published a pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, and A Red Record, 1892–1894. She posited:
“If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service.”
By the early 1900s, Wells had settled in Chicago with her husband, Ferdinand Barnett—lawyer and editor of the Chicago Conservator. Together they had four children. She continued working on reform, creating African American women organizations to fight lynching and support the women’s suffrage movement.
Wells was a founding member of the NAACP and laid the groundwork for the organization as a member of the monumental “Committee of 40.”
Ida B. Wells-Barnett was ahead of her time. Daughter of former slaves, she refused to accept injustice based upon racial or gender discrimination. She is my hero because she utilized communication to bring injustice into light. I admire that resolve and know that her fight for civil rights lead the way for liberated woman journalists and activists for generations.