Ida B. 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, Ida B. 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.
On returning from her first British trip, she moved to Chicago. There, she worked with Frederick Douglass and a local lawyer and editor, Frederick Barnett, in writing an 81-page booklet about the exclusion of black participants from most of the events around the Colmbian Exposition.
She met and married Frederick Barnett, a widower. 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 Ida B. 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 1898-1902, Ida B. Wells-Barnett served as secretary of the National Afro-American Council. In 1898, she was part of a delegation to President William McKinley to seek justice after the lynching in South Carolina of a black postman.
In 1900, she spoke for woman suffrage, and worked with another Chicago woman, Jane addams, to defeat an attempt to segregate Chicago's public school system.
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 her membership, criticizing the organization for not being militant enough. In her writing and lectures, she often criticized middle-class blacks including ministers for not being active enough in helping the poor in the black community.
In 1910, Ida B. Wells-Barnett helped found and became president of the Negro Fellowship League, which established a settlement house in Chicago to serve the many African Americans newly arrived from the South. She worked for the city as a probation officer from 1913-1916, donating most of her salary to the organization. But with competition from other groups, the election of an unfriendly city administration, and Wells-Barnett's poor health, the League closed its doors in 1920.
In 1913, Ida B. 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 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, she failed in a bid to be elected to the Illinois State Senate as an independent.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett died in 1931, largely unappreciated and unknown, but the city later recognized her activism by naming a housing project in her honor.
Her autobiography Crusade for Justice, on which she worked in her later years, was published in 1970, edited by her daughter Alfreda M. Wells-Barnett.
More women's history biographies, by name:
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P/Q | R | S | T | U/V | W | X/Y/Z
