Ida B. Wells Essay -- essays research papers

Ida B. WellsIda B. Wells (1862-1931) was a newspaper editor and journalist who went on to lead the American anti-lynching crusade. Working closely with two African-American community leaders and American suffragists, Wells worked to raise gender issues within the "Race Question" and race issues within the "Woman Question." Wells was innate(p) the daughter of slaves in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. During Reconstruction, she was educated at a Missouri Freedmans School, Rust University, and began teaching school at the age of fourteen. In 1884, she discoverd to Memphis, Tennessee, where she proceed to teach while attending Fisk University during summer sessions. In Tennessee, especially, she was appalled at the poor treatment she and other African-Americans received. After she was forcibly removed from her seat for refusing to move to a "colored car" on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected her suit against t he railroad for violating her civil rights in 1877. This event and the legal repugn that followed it, however, encouraged Wells to continue to oppose racial injustice toward African-Americans. She took up journalism in addition to school teaching, and in 1891, after she had written some(prenominal) newspaper articles critical of the educational opportunities afforded African-American students, her teaching contract was not renewed. Effectively barred from teaching, she invested her savings in a part-inte...