There's something irresistible about
underdog stories,
where remarkable people rise
from humble beginnings
to do incredible things against all the odds.
But few stories are as dramatic as that of
Ida B. Wells.
A woman who was born a slave in Mississippi,
in the midst of the Civil War,
and became a daring investigative reporter
and civil rights crusader,
who would one day be called
"the loudest and most persistent voice for truth"
in an era of injustice.
From an early age, Wells carried
exceptional burdens with exceptional courage.
She became the head of her household
at the age of 16 when both her parents
died suddenly from yellow fever.
In order to support her five brothers and sisters,
she curtailed her education and started working
as a school teacher in rural Mississippi.
When she was 21 years old,
Wells boarded a train to Memphis
and seated herself in the first-class ladies car,
only to be told that black women were restricted
to second class.
Not only did she bite the conductor who tried
to remove her, she soon filed a discrimination
lawsuit against the railroad company.
She won the initial case,
and while it was overturned on appeal,
an article she wrote about the experience
helped launch her career as a journalist.
Wells' life changed forever in 1892,
when her friend, Thomas Moss, was murdered
by a white mob in Memphis
along with two other black men.
Their brutal killings inspired Wells to speak out
against the horrors of lynching,
an increasingly common tool of terror
used against black people in the decades
after the Civil War.
Black men were often falsely accused of rape
in order to justify their murders.
But in a series of widely-read
articles and pamphlets,
Wells argued that lynching had little to do
with protecting the honor of women,
and everything to do with protecting the power of
southern white men.
Like so many civil rights leaders who would
follow in her footsteps, including the
civil rights leaders of today,
her criticisms were powerful because
they took aim not just
at the misdeeds of individuals,
but at the unexamined institutions of racism
and power behind them.
Her groundbreaking analysis changed
the national conversation around lynching,
and ever her future mentor, Frederick Douglass
called his writing on the subject
"feeble" in comparison.
Wells was the co-owner and editor of
a black newspaper in Memphis.
After one of her anti-lynching articles
displeased the white community,
an angry mob stormed the office of the paper
and destroyed it.
Faced with death threats,
Wells started carrying a pistol in her purse,
but refused to back down from her
anti-lynching campaign.
She said it was better to die
fighting against injustice,
than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.
After that, she relocated to New York,
where she began to publish investigative
journalism for an even larger audience,
including pamphlets that collected statistical
documentation of lynching in the South.
Her popular anti-lynching speeches
eventually took her to Britain,
where white audiences seemed far more
outraged than many of their
American counterparts.
Her overseas speaking tour inspired
international condemnation of lynching,
particularly from British newspapers and politicians.
And elevated Wells to the most visible national
leader in the anti-lynching movement.
Although Wells often criticized herself
for being stubborn and hot-tempered,
those same qualities made her a fiery orator
and a relentless crusader against injustice.
Faced with death threats from southern Whites
and criticism from moderate black reformers,
who considered her too radical,
Wells refused to compromise her ideals
for the sake of comfort, convenience,
or even personal safety.
"The way to right wrongs is to turn
the light of truth upon them,"
wrote Wells, who never failed to speak
unpleasant truths even when it cost her friends
or potential allies.
Although surrounded by hostility and threats
from people who wanted to punish
her outspokenness because of
her race and her gender,
she refused to be silenced.
Although she fought for women's rights,
Wells was often disappointed by white suffragists
who considered racial issues a distraction
from the fight against sexism.
Some even endorsed segregation.
During the famous women's suffrage parade of 1913,
when black women were told to walk at the back,
Wells simply waited until the march started
and defiantly joined her states' delegation.
Similarly, she was frustrated by those in the
black community who saw women's rights as
unimportant to the fight against racism.
Caught between the struggles of her race and her gender,
Wells often felt like she fought alone.
Although she had many suitors,
and withstood enormous social pressure to marry,
Wells remained single throughout her twenties.
In her early 30s, she finally met her match
in Ferdinand Barnett,
a black lawyer who was equally passionate about
social justice and a man who wholeheartedly
supported her career.
They married and had four children together
and while Wells would eventually step down
from her full-time position as a newspaper editor,
she continued her work as a reformer
until the day she died.
When she passed away in 1931 at the age of 69,
Ida B. Wells had profoundly changed the way that
people had looked at race, gender,
and violence in America.
She transformed herself from a slave who was
regarded as property,
to someone once described as a
woman who walked as if she owned the world.