Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Ida B. Wells-Barnett. July 16, 1862 — March 25, 1931. , Ida Bell Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Orphaned at 16, she became a teacher to support her five younger siblings. She later moved to Memphis where she became a pioneering data Journalist, newspaper co-owner, and civil rights activist. In 1892 after three of her friends were lynched, she urged people to boycott businesses and leave the city. She investigated and documented other lynchings. In response to her outspoken writings, a mob destroyed her printing press and threatened her life. She continued writing and speaking in New York City, then across Great Britain and the United States. In 1895 she moved to Chicago, married attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett, and hyphenated her name to Wells-Barnett. She continued her activism while raising a family of four children. She co-founded the NAACP and founded the Alpha Suffrage Club , an organization of Black women that worked for women's political empowerment. She worked with Jane Addams to prevent the segregation of public schools, helped establish Chicago's first kindergarten for Black children, and founded the Negro Fellowship League to provide housing and job assistance to Black migrants. Wells-Barnett and her husband are interred together in Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery. In 2020, Ida B. Wells was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize Special Citation "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.",

"What is, or should be a woman? ... A strong, bright presence, thoroughly imbued with a sense of her mission on earth and a desire to fill it.", "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.", "One had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap."