Description
Born Holly Springs, MississippiThe daughter of former slaves, Ida B. Wells sued the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railway in 1883 after being dragged from her seat for refusing to move to a segregated railcar. Her anger over this incident spurred her to begin contributing articles to black-owned newspapers; she became part owner and editor of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight in 1889. After three black businessmen were lynched in Memphis in 1892, Wells launched what became a four-decade-long anti-lynching crusade. She vigorously investigated other lynchings and published her groundbreaking treatise on the topic, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
Image
Albumen Silver Print
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Record Contributed By
National Portrait GalleryRecord Harvested From
Smithsonian InstitutionKeywords
- Activist
- Activists
- Cabinet Card
- Civil Rights
- Civil Rights Activist
- Communications
- Editor
- Editors
- Education
- Educator
- Educators
- Enslaved Person
- Female
- Garrity, Sallie E
- Ida Bell Wells Barnett
- Journalism
- Journalist
- Literature
- Photographic Format
- Portrait
- Portraits
- Reformer
- Reformers
- Slaver
- Society And Social Change
- Teacher
- Wells Barnett, Ida Bell
- Women
- Writer
- Writers