Memphis Heritage Trail/Ida B. Wells

Memphis Heritage Trail/Ida B. Wells. Commmerce Historic Loop. , (front:), Memphis Heritage Trail , Memphis Heritage Trail (MHT) is a cultural district and an expansive community redevelopment plan to celebrate the rich business, cultural, and musical heritage of African American achievements in Memphis, Tennessee. MHT covers a historic 20-block redevelopment area in South Memphis and also has nodes of linkage to the historic Orange Mound and the Soulsville USA communities. Encompassing the area is the southern quadrant of downtown and the South City redevelopment area. This project brings heritage tourism, urban redevelopment and citywide pride to important public spaces that chronicles the African American journey. It aims to educate and promote an appreciation for diversity, history, and culture to a global audience through authentic interactive experiences that create community investments and economic opportunities., Ida B. Wells , Born a slave in 1862, Ida B. Wells was an investigative journalist and civil rights advocate. Through her Memphis-based newspaper, The Free Speech and Headlight, and other publications, she addressed the inequalities faced by African Americans and the cruelties of lynching. In response to an outspoken editorial condemning the lynching of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart in 1892, her newspaper office was destroyed by a white mob while she was attending a conference in Philadelphia. She was threatened with bodily harmed if she returned to Memphis. For several years, she traveled throughout the United States and Europe speaking out against lynching. She finally settled in Chicago where she continued her work as a journalist and activist. Following a race riot in Springfield, IL in 1908, Wells joined W.E.B. DuBois and other prominent leaders to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She was also a leading suffragist who viewed enfranchisement as a path for African Americans to become politically active. Wells died in Chicago in 1931 and left a legacy of social justice, activism, and courage. She was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize Special Citation in 2020 for her "outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching." A life-size bronze statue of Wells was unveiled in the Ida B. Wells Plaza on Beale Street in 2021., (back:), The Free Speech and Headlight , Founded by Rev. Taylor Nightingale, the Free Speech newspaper was published in the basement of Historic First Baptist Beale Street Church. In 1868, the name was changed to the Free Speech and Headlight when J.L. Fleming, owner of the "Marion Headlight Newspaper" in Arkansas, was forced to leave Marion and crossed the Mississippi River to join forces with Rev. Nightingale. A year later, Ida B. Wells came on board as a co-owner with Nightingale and Fleming. Nightingale was the sales manager. Fleming managed the office and Wells wrote most of the editorials. Free Speech was one of the earliest African American newspapers in Memphis.