Biography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Journalist Who Fought Racism

She was also an anti-lynching advocate and a champion of intersectional feminism

Portrait of Ida B. Wells, 1920
Portrait of Ida B. Wells, 1920. Chicago History Museum / Getty Images

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862–March 25, 1931), known for much of her public career as Ida B. Wells, was an anti-lynching activist, a muckraking journalist, a lecturer, an activist for racial justice, and a suffragette. She wrote about racial justice issues for Memphis newspapers as a reporter and newspaper owner, as well as other articles about politics and issues of race for newspapers and periodicals throughout the South. Wells also called attention to the intersectionality between race and class as well as race and gender, especially in regards to the suffrage movement.

Fast Facts: Ida B. Wells-Barnett

  • Known For: Muckraking journalist, lecturer, activist for racial justice, and suffragette
  • Also Known As: Ida Bell Wells
  • Born: July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi
  • Died: March 25, 1931, in Chicago
  • Education: Rust College, Fisk University
  • Parents: James and Elizabeth Wells
  • Published Works: "Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells," "A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States 1892 - 1893 - 1894," and various articles published in Black newspapers and periodicals in the South
  • Spouse: Ferdinand L. Barnett (m. 1985–March 25, 1931)
  • Children: Alfreda, Herman Kohlsaat, Alfreda Duster, Charles, Ida B. Barnett
  • Notable Quote: “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

Early Life

Enslaved from birth, Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, six months before the Emancipation Proclamation. Her father, James Wells, a carpenter, was the son of a woman who was raped by her enslaver. James Wells was also enslaved from birth by the same man. Ida Wells' mother, Elizabeth, was a cook and was enslaved by the same man as her husband. Elizabeth and James kept working for him after emancipation, like many other formerly enslaved people who were often forced by economic circumstances to continue to live on, and rent, land of their former enslavers

Wells' father got involved in politics and became a trustee of Rust College, a freedman's school, which Ida attended. A yellow fever epidemic orphaned Wells at 16, when her parents and some of her brothers and sisters died. To support her surviving siblings, she became a teacher for $25 a month, leading the school to believe that she was already 18 in order to obtain the job.

Education and Early Career

In 1880, after seeing her brothers placed as apprentices, Wells moved with her two younger sisters to live with a relative in Memphis. There, she obtained a teaching position at a school for Black people and began taking classes at Fisk University in Nashville during summers.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett
R. Gates/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Wells also began writing for the Negro Press Association. She became editor of a weekly, Evening Star, and then of Living Way, writing under the pen name Lola. Her articles were reprinted in other Black newspapers around the country.

In 1884, while riding in the ladies' car on a trip to Nashville, Wells was removed and forced into a car for Black people, even though she had a first-class ticket. This happened more than 70 years before Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, helped spark the civil rights movement in 1955. Wells sued the railroad, the Chesapeake and Ohio, and won a settlement of $500. In 1887, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the verdict, and Wells had to pay court costs of $200.

Wells began writing more on racial injustice issues and she became a reporter and part-owner of the paper Memphis Free Speech. She was particularly outspoken on issues involving the school system, which still employed her. In 1891, after one series in which she had been particularly critical (including of a White school board member she alleged was involved in an affair with a Black woman), her teaching contract was not renewed.

Wells increased her efforts in writing, editing, and promoting the newspaper. She continued her outspoken criticism of racism. "She (also) crossed the country lecturing on the evils of mob violence," Crystal N. Feimster, an associate professor of African-American studies and American studies at Yale University, wrote in a 2018 opinion piece in the New York Times.

Lynching in Memphis

Lynching at that time was a common means by which White people threatened and murdered Black people. Nationally, lynching estimates vary—some scholars say that they have been underreported—but at least one study found that there were 4,467 lynchings between 1883 and 1941, including about 200 a year between the early 1880s and 1900. Of those, 3,265 were Black men,1,082 were White men, 99 were women, and 341 were of unknown gender (but likely male), 71 were Mexican or of Mexican descent, 38 were Native American, 10 were Chinese, and one was Japanese. An item in the Congressional Record states that there were at least 4,472 lynchings in the U.S. between 1882 and 1968, mainly of Black men. Yet another source says there were nearly 4,100 lynchings in the South alone—mainly of Black men—between 1877 and 1940.

In Memphis in 1892, three Black business owners established a new grocery store, cutting into the business of White-owned businesses nearby. After increasing harassment, the Black business owners fired on armed White men who broke into the store and surrounded them. The three men were jailed, and a White mob took them from the jail and lynched them.

One of the lynched men, Tom Moss, was the father of Ida B. Wells' goddaughter. She used the paper to denounce the lynching and to endorse economic retaliation by the Black community against White-owned businesses as well as the segregated public transportation system. She also promoted the idea that Black people should leave Memphis for the newly opened Oklahoma territory, visiting and writing about Oklahoma in her paper. She bought a pistol for self-defense.

Wells also wrote against lynching in general. In particular, the White community became incensed when she published an editorial denouncing the myth that Black men raped White women. Her allusion to the idea that White women might consent to a relationship with Black men was particularly offensive to the White community.

Wells was out of town when a mob invaded the paper's offices and destroyed the presses, responding to a call in a White-owned paper. Wells heard that her life was threatened if she returned, and so she went to New York, self-styled as a "journalist in exile."

Journalist in Exile

Anti-Lynching Crusader Ida B. Wells
Fotoresearch/Getty Images

Wells continued writing newspaper articles at New York Age, where she exchanged the subscription list of Memphis Free Speech for a part ownership in the paper. She also wrote pamphlets and spoke widely against lynching.

In 1893, Wells went to Great Britain, returning again the next year. There, she spoke about lynching in America, found significant support for anti-lynching efforts, and saw the organization of the British Anti-Lynching Society. She debated Frances Willard during her 1894 trip; Wells had been denouncing a statement of Willard's that tried to gain support for the temperance movement by asserting that the Black community was opposed to temperance, a statement that raised the image of drunken Black mobs threatening White women, a theme that played into a defense of lynching. Despite the country exhibiting similar widespread race discrimination as the U.S., Wells was very well-received in England. She traveled there twice in the 1890s, garnering significant press coverage, having breakfast with members of the British Parliament at one point, and helping to establish the London Anti-Lynching Committee in 1894.  And she is still revered in that country today: A plaque was dedicated in her honor in February 2019 in Birmingham, the second-largest city in England, 120-miles northwest of London.

Move to Chicago

On returning from her first British trip, Wells moved to Chicago. There, she worked with Frederick Douglass and a local lawyer and editor, Ferdinand Barnett, in writing an 81-page booklet about the exclusion of Black participants from most of the events around the Colombian Exposition. She met and married widower Ferdinand Barnett in 1895. (Thereafter she became known as Ida B. Wells-Barnett.) Together they had four children, born in 1896, 1897, 1901, and 1904, and she helped raise his two children from his first marriage. She also wrote for his newspaper, the Chicago Conservator.

In 1895, Wells-Barnett published "A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States 1892 - 1893 - 1894." She documented that lynchings were not, indeed, caused by Black men raping White women.

From 1898 through 1902, Wells-Barnett served as secretary of the National Afro-American Council. In 1898, she was part of a delegation to President William McKinley seeking justice after the lynching in South Carolina of a Black postman. Later, in 1900, she spoke for women's suffrage and worked with another Chicago woman, Jane Addams, to defeat an attempt to segregate Chicago's public school system.

Chicago Cityscapes And City Views
Journalist, educator and activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, lived in this home from 1919-1930 in Chicago, Illinois. Raymond Boyd / Getty Images

Helps Found, Then Leaves, NAACP

In 1901, the Barnetts bought the first house east of State Street to be owned by a Black family. Despite harassment and threats, they continued to live in the neighborhood. Wells-Barnett was a founding member of the NAACP in 1909, but withdrew because of opposition to her membership and because she felt the other members were too cautious in their approach to fighting racial injustice. "Some members of the NAACP...felt that Ida and her ideas were too harsh," according to Sarah Fabiny, in her book, "Who Was Ida B. Wells?" In particular, Black leader and writer W.E.B. Du Bois "believed that (Wells') ideas made the fight for the rights of Black people more difficult," Fabiny wrote, adding that many of the founding members of the NAACP, who were mostly men, "did not want a woman to have as much power as they did."

In her writing and lectures, Wells-Barnett often criticized middle-class Black people, including ministers, for not being active enough in helping the poor in the Black community. Indeed, Wells-Barnett was one of the first to call attention to the intersectionality between race and class, and her writings and lectures influenced the way race and class were considered moving forward by generations of thinkers, such as Angela Davis. Davis is a Black activist and scholar who wrote extensively about the issue, including in her book "Women, Race, & Class," which traces the history of the women's suffrage movement and how it has been hampered by race and class biases.

In 1910, Wells-Barnett helped found and became president of the Negro Fellowship League, which established a settlement house in Chicago to serve the many Black people newly arrived from the South. She worked for the city as a probation officer from 1913 to 1916, donating most of her salary to the organization. But with competition from other groups, the election of a racist city administration, and Wells-Barnett's poor health, the league closed its doors in 1920.

Women's Suffrage

In 1913, Wells-Barnett organized the Alpha Suffrage League, an organization of Black women supporting women's suffrage. She was active in protesting the strategy of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the largest pro-suffrage group, regarding the participation of Black people and how the group treated racial issues. The NAWSA generally made the participation of Black people invisible—even while claiming that no Black women had applied for membership—so as to try to win votes for suffrage in the South. By forming the Alpha Suffrage League, Wells-Barnett made clear that the exclusion was deliberate, and that Black people did support women's suffrage, even knowing that other laws and practices that barred Black men from voting would also affect women.

Union Station Unveils Mosaic Honoring Civil Rights Icon Ida B. Wells
"Our Story: Portraits of Change" is a mural of civil rights icon Ida B. Wells, designed by artist Helen Marshall of the Peoples Picture at Union Station in Washington, D.C. The portrait is comprised of thousands of historical photos featuring woman who fought for the right for women to vote, according to the Women's Suffrage Centennial Commission. Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images

A major suffrage demonstration in Washington, D.C., timed to align with the presidential inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, asked that Black supporters march at the back of the line. Many Black suffragists, like Mary Church Terrell, agreed for strategic reasons after initial attempts to change the minds of the leadership—but not Wells-Barnett. She inserted herself into the march with the Illinois delegation, and the delegation welcomed her. The leadership of the march simply ignored her action.

Wider Equality Efforts

Also in 1913, Wells-Barnett was part of a delegation to see President Wilson to urge non-discrimination in federal jobs. She was elected as chair of the Chicago Equal Rights League in 1915, and in 1918 organized legal aid for victims of the Chicago race riots of 1918.

In 1915, she was part of the successful election campaign that led to Oscar Stanton De Priest becoming the first Black alderperson in the city. She was also part of founding the first kindergarten for Black children in Chicago.

In 1924, Wells-Barnett failed in a bid to win election as president of the National Association of Colored Women, defeated by Mary McLeod Bethune. In 1930, Wells was one of the first Black women to run for public office when she ran for a seat on the Illinois State Senate as an independent. Though she came in third, Wells opened the door for future generations of Black women, 75 of whom have served in the U.S. House of Representatives, and dozens who have served in state leadership positions and as mayors of major cities throughout the U.S.

Death and Legacy

Wells-Barnett died in 1931 in Chicago, largely unappreciated and unknown, but the city later recognized her activism by naming a housing project in her honor. The Ida B. Wells Homes, in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, included rowhouses, mid-rise apartments, and some high-rise apartments. Because of the housing patterns of the city, these were occupied primarily by Black people. Completed from 1939 to 1941, and initially a successful program, over time, neglect, "government ownership and management, and a collapse of the original idea that the rents of low-income tenants could support the physical maintenance of the project" led to their decay, including gang problems, according to Howard Husock, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writing in the Washington Examiner in a May 13, 2020, article. They were torn down between 2002 and 2011 and replaced by a mixed-income development project.

Ida B. Wells Housing Project
The Ida B. Wells housing project in Chicago, Illinois. March 1942.

Corbis / Getty Images

Although anti-lynching was her main focus, and Wells-Barnett shined a light on this important racial justice issue, she never achieved her goal of federal anti-lynching legislation. However, she inspired generations of legislators to try to achieve her goal. Though there have been more than 200 unsuccessful attempts to pass a federal anti-lynching law, Wells-Barnett's efforts may soon pay off. The U.S. Senate passed an anti-lynching bill in 2019 by unanimous consent—where all senators voted to express support of the bill—and a similar anti-lynching measure passed the House by a vote of 414 to four in favor in February 2020. But because of the way the legislative process works, the House version of the bill needs to again pass the Senate by unanimous consent before it can go to the president's desk, where it can be signed into law. And, in that second attempt, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky opposed the legislation in a contentious debate on the Senate floor in early June 2020, and thus held up the bill. Wells-Barnett also had lasting success in the area of organizing Black women in gaining the right to vote, despite racism in the suffragist movement.

Her autobiography, titled "Crusade for Justice," on which she worked in her later years, was published posthumously in 1970, edited by her daughter Alfreda M. Wells-Barnett. Her home in Chicago is a National Historic Landmark and is under private ownership.

Ida B. Wells Stamp
The U.S. Postal service issued a stamp honoring Ida B. Wells in 1991. U.S. Postal Service/Public Domain

In 1991, the U.S. Postal Service issued the Ida B. Wells stamp. In 2020, Wells-Barnett was awarded the Pulitzer Prize "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching." Lynchings continue to this day. One of the more recent known examples is the February 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man in Georgia. While on a jog, Arbery was stalked, assaulted, and shot to death by three White men. 

Additional References

  • Goings, Kenneth W. “Memphis Free Speech.” Tennessee Encyclopedia, Tennessee Historical Society, 7 Oct. 2019.
  • Ida B. Wells-Barnett.” Ida B. Wells-Barnett | National Postal Museum.
  • Ida B. Wells (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.
  • Wells, Ida B. and Duster, Alfreda M. Crusade for Justice: the Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. University of Chicago Press, 1972.
View Article Sources
  1. Feimster, Crystal N. “Ida B. Wells and the Lynching of Black Women.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 28 Apr. 201.

  2. Seguin, Charles and Rigby, David. “National Crimes: A New National Data Set of Lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941.” SAGE Journals, 1 June 1970, doi:10.1177/2378023119841780.

  3. "Emmett Till Antilynching Act." Congress.gov.

  4. Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, Third Edition. Equal Justice Initiative, 2017.

  5. Zackodnik, Teresa. "Ida B. Wells and ‘American Atrocities’ in Britain." Women s Studies International Forum, vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 259-273, doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2005.04.012.

  6. Wells, Ida B., et al. "Ida B. Wells Abroad: A Breakfast with Members of Parliament." The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader. Penguin Books, 2014.

  7. Ida Wells Barnett honored in Birmingham, England." The Crusader Newspaper Group, 14 Feb. 2019

  8. Fabiny, Sarah. Who Was Ida B. Wells? Penguin Young Readers Group, 2020..

  9. Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race & Class. Vintage Books, 1983.

  10. History of Women of Color in U.S. Politics.” CAWP, 16 Sept. 2020.

  11. Malanga, Steven, et al. “Ida B. Wells Deserved a Pulitzer Prize, Not the Punishment of a Public Housing Memorial.” Manhattan Institute, 16 Aug. 2020.

  12. Portalatin, Ariana. “Editor's Note: Anti-Lynching Bill Passes Senate Days after Ida B. Wells Honor.” The Columbia Chronicle, 16 Apr. 2019.

  13. Fandos, Nicholas. “Frustration and Fury as Rand Paul Holds Up Anti-Lynching Bill in Senate.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 June 2020.

  14. The Associated Press. “Sen. Rand Paul Single-Handedly Holds up Anti-Lynching Bill amid Widespread Protests.” Lexington Herald-Leader, 5 June 2020.

  15. Ida B. Wells: A Suffrage Activist for the History Books – AAUW : Empowering Women Since 1881.” AAUW.

  16. McLaughlin, Eliott C. “America's Legacy of Lynching Isnt All History. Many Say Its Still Happening Today.” CNN, Cable News Network, 3 June 2020.

  17. McLaughlin, Eliott C. and Barajas, Angela. “Ahmaud Arbery Was Killed Doing What He Loved, and a South Georgia Community Demands Justice.” CNN, Cable News Network, 7 May 2020.

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Lewis, Jone Johnson. "Biography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Journalist Who Fought Racism." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/ida-b-wells-barnett-biography-3530698. Lewis, Jone Johnson. (2023, April 5). Biography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Journalist Who Fought Racism. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/ida-b-wells-barnett-biography-3530698 Lewis, Jone Johnson. "Biography of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Journalist Who Fought Racism." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/ida-b-wells-barnett-biography-3530698 (accessed March 19, 2024).