Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Wells exposed lynching as a barbaric practice of Whites in the South used to intimidate and oppress African Americans. In 2020, Wells will be posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize special citation.
About Ida B. Wells in brief
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War. At the age of 16, she lost both her parents and her infant brother in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. Later, moving with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, she found better pay as a teacher. Wells exposed lynching as a barbaric practice of Whites in the South used to intimidate and oppress African Americans. She was active in women’s rights and the women’s suffrage movement, establishing several notable women’s organizations. In 2020, Wells will be posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize special citation for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching. She is buried at the Bolling Farm, which has become the Ida B. Wells- Barnett Museum in Memphis, Mississippi. Wells is survived by her husband, Ferdinand L. Barnett, and five children. She died on November 14, 1998. She is remembered in a book, “Ida B. Wells: A Life in Black History,” by Ida Bell Wells, published by Simon & Schuster, $25.99. The book is also available on Amazon.com for $24.99, with a Kindle version for $9.99 and a hard copy for $12.99 each.
For more information, visit www.simonandschuster.com/Ida-B. Wells/My-Life-in-Black-History-Ida.html. For more on Ida’s life in black history, visit http://www.samaritans.org/ida-b-wells-story.html/. For more about Ida’s life in Black history, see http:// www.samarsher.com/. The complete book, Ida B. wells: A History of Black History in Black Culture, is available on www.sassafrances.com. In the 1890s, Wells documented lynching in the U.S. in articles and through her pamphlet called Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, investigating frequent claims of Whites that lynchings were reserved for Black criminals only. Her reporting covered incidents of racial segregation and inequality. Wells was outspoken regarding her beliefs as a Black female activist and faced regular public disapproval, sometimes including from other leaders within the civil rights movement. She left Memphis for Chicago in 1895 and had a family while continuing her work writing, speaking, and organizing for civil rights and women’s movement for the rest of her life. Her youngest sister, Eugenia, died of a stroke about 56 miles from her home in Memphis. She moved with her youngest sisters, Fanny Butler, at the invitation of an aunt in Memphis in 1883, at age 56.
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This page is based on the article Ida B. Wells published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
