Ida B. Wells
10x10in
2023
Ida B. Wells was born on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, during the Civil War, to parents who were enslaved prior to emancipation. Growing up in Reconstruction-era Mississippi deeply shaped her understanding of racial injustice and inequality. After losing both parents and a sibling to a yellow fever epidemic, Wells assumed responsibility for her younger siblings and began working as a teacher in Mississippi, where she quickly became outspoken against racial and gender discrimination in education.
Wells’s activism was forged in Mississippi and the broader South through her work as a journalist and newspaper editor. As co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech, she conducted groundbreaking investigative reporting on lynching, exposing how racial violence; particularly in Mississippi and neighboring states was used as a tool of terror rather than justice. Following the 1892 lynching of three of her close friends, Wells launched an international anti-lynching campaign, using data, editorials, and public lectures to challenge white supremacist narratives. Her fearless reporting made her a target of threats and forced her to leave the South, though Mississippi remained central to the truths she revealed.
Ida B. Wells went on to become one of the most influential civil rights leaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She was an advocate for women’s suffrage, racial equality, and legal reform, and helped lay the foundation for organizations that later became the NAACP. From her beginnings in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells emerged as a global voice for justice, leaving a legacy of courage, truth-telling, and resistance that continues to inspire civil rights movements today.