Black History Month: Ida B. Wells
February 2, 2011
by Harley
|February is Black History Month. The New Agenda will celebrate Black History Month by highlighting ‘herstoric’ black women who made a difference. If you would like to submit a blog piece in celebration, please email us at blog@thenewagenda.net.
The following article was written by Amy Siskind’s son for his school assignment. His nom do plume is Harley. He managed to select a woman his mommy had never heard of, and for that, she thanked him. Now enjoy reading about Ida B. Wells.
Ida B. Wells was born on July 16, 1861 in Holy Springs, Mississippi. She was born a slave. Ida had three sisters, four brothers, a mom, and a dad. Ida was not afraid of anything. Ida traveled and she refused to give up her seat on the train, and her bravery was a big part of her life.
When Ida was 21 years old in 1883, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee. About a year later, she was riding a train. When the conductor asked her to move to the smoking car, Ida refused. Ida got thrown off the train and ended up suing the railroad company. That same year, she started writing articles with the name Iola. 11 years later, Ida wrote a book about lynching.
From 1896 to 1912, Ida’s life wasn’t like it was before. Ida moved to Chicago, Illinois. In 1913 Ida became an officer of the Chicago court. In 1916 she retired and would spend the rest of her life fighting for women and African American rights. On March 25, 1931 Ida died.
People will always remember Ida by her bravery. Ida was a big reason that women and African Americans got rights. Ida will be missed. But her legacy will continue. The end
great selection for the first day of Black History Month. Ida Wells is a great icon in not only black history, but women’s history. Thanks for introducing her story to even more people!
Great post! Thank you for the information! I’m sad to say that before your post I never knew who she was. Now I’m going to read more about her. GREAT JOB!!!
Thank you for writing this wonderful essay. I hadn’t heard of Ida Wells before, which makes it even better.
If you have to write another one, Henrietta Lacks did more for science than any one scientist, and she didn’t even know it.
Keep up the great work!
I did not know about Ida at all. Thank you for sharing her story. It’s great to have stories of brave women as role models. You’ve peaked my interest in her and I’ll have to read more about her.
I had never heard of Ida.
What a great piece as a result I will do some more reading on Ida. She was clearly very brave.
BTW to the writer… from now on I too will end all my pieces with “the end” I think that’s a GREAT way to end everything. well done.
I had heard of Ms. Wells before but didn’t know of her historical significance until now. Thanks for sharing this!
Cool! She had a US postage stamp issued in her honor. She clashed with some of the leaders of her time, like the womens temperance society. It’s kind of fascinating to read about the divisions within all these great womens rights advocates back then because they aren’t all that different from today. Some people believed that the best thing for women was to ban alcohol. Others believed the best thing was to have the right to vote. Everybody was committed to advancing womens rights and quality of life, but people had different ideas about how to do that. What I find kind of interesting is that they both won, prohibition happened, women got the right to vote, but neither of those benchmarks actually granted women genuine equality, far more important than getting legislation passed was the energy and speaking out that continues today. Raising awareness and declaring there’s a problem has accomplished much more than what side of the political aisle you support or what legislation you propose or what issues you prioritize.
Hi Harley, i am so pleased that you introduced Ida Wells (Iola) to us. You beat me. I wanted to write about her and am reading the 600 page biography on her. I am somewhere past page 300 and when I start writing I realize that I had forgotten a lot from the beginning. But I can fill in the events you picked. Ida’s biggest fame is her crucade against lynching. that task was the reason I started to study her. Her crucade against lynching was successful and I wanted to learn how they did it and whether there is anything to learn and apply to our fight against rape. back to Ida’s youth. she was a daughter of slaves and in her first few years the family together with all other slaves became free. Her father was a very skilled carpenter, the mother a gourmet cook in this household of their masters, where the couple had met (the owners were considered good masters in contrast to others where her mother had lived before. the mother was sold on the marked around age 8 into different families than her siblings). when Ida was very small the union troops were in Holly Springs Missisippi and people hid in the houses when they heard the noise of the troops. The family did financially quite well in the period after they became free and surpassed the old masters. when Ida was a young teen the yellow fever went through town and many many people died including her parents. Ida happened to be with relatives on the country side when this happened and took a train into the city to help her siblings. During that time nobody was allowed back into the town stricken with yellow fever and she is reported to have driven in a freight car. she dropped further education, became a teacher and supported her siblings while grandma watched over the little ones. her father had given the white doctor who cared for him the saved money to be given to the children. Ida received the money on the market place and rumors started about her character. whether she would sell herself to white men. this character slandering as Ida called in her writing insulted her tremendously and fueled her anger. she had to fight this all to common character assassination throughout her career. she overcame all these set backs. her biography is called: “Ida, a sword among lions.” after a few grueling years in Holy Springs caring for her siblings, cooking washing on the weekends and travel to the countryside for teaching in schools for black children during the week, her grandmother died and the family was invited by her aunt to Memphis. Memphis was a lively city with a large proportion of black people and a cultural life, for what Ida had longed. she continued teaching and started writing as a journalist in the beginning only for Christian papers. during that time she traveled and requested seating in first class, because first class had women only cars and smoking stinking guys could not make advances to her. she refused to give up her seat and was escorted out to the black people’s car, which was for blacks and whites, men and women and smoking was allowed. it took her several years and a switch in lawyers to successfully fight the Memphis railroad company. She won in the end. and there came many more challenges, plenty of reason to get furious. she was controversial in some circles but also had a large following and was certainly the driving force to completely stop lynching. I promise I am going to write this month more about her.
Biography is by Paula Giddings.
You have chosen my favorite woman in history. She was a remarkable and brave woman because she like a lot of African Americans were forced from her home in the South and had to migrate to the North because she dared to write about lynching. Ida was very important in the anti lynching movement and many in the South threatened her life.
Thank you for writing this. She is one of the Unsung Heroines of history.
I was curious how the lawsuit came out as well. I wonder if a news clipping exists of the outcome and what the judge’s comments were.
Thanks, She sounds like a very interesting woman and I had never heard of her. This article got me wondering was lynching something that happened to black women as well as black men? In the movies and books it is always only men who are lynched but of course we know Hollywood never feels bound by history or even the truth.
Helen completely agree that Ida is an unsung hero.
Daily Puma re: the lawsuit: in the initial trial, the questioning went regarding the colored car and whether there was smoking, talking, drinking in it. two black ministers testified that there was and that it was very rough in it. the conductor who with two white passengers had carried Wells against her resistance out of the ladies car testified that he “had gotten the worst of it” and that she bit him. however the 5 foot impeccably dressed Ida made a different impression and the trial went well, but somehow the court proceedings got delayed and Ida concluded that her lawyers was bought of the railroad company. Ida got a white attorney James Greer, who know her family from way back and who was running for attorney general. they got a conservative democrat judge who was known for progressive views James O Pierce. he concluded that the colored car was equal in construction but fell below standards of a first class car. he also noted that there were no strict separation of races and that black nurses commonly rode in the ladies car. finally Pierce found that Wells was a person of “lady-like appearance and deportment, a school teacher and one who might be expected to object to travelingin the compay of rough and boisterous men”.
the headline in the newspaper “avanlanche” (not in favor of civi rights) said “A darky damsel obtains a verdict for damages…what it cost to put a colored teacher in a smoking car..500$”
lynching happened mostly to black men, but it also happened to black women, children, and white people. you find numbers on wiki.
Ida actually thought that the accusations of raping white women was made up and that most lynchings had financial interests involved.
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