Tennessee Woman - Ida B. Wells-Barnett

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This is from my DAR September/October 2020 1 Volume 20. No. 5

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This is from the LOC. - If anyone knows how to make the picture smaller, I'd appreciate it.

"Journalist, civil rights leader, suffragist, and educator Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a powerful voice for change during the Jim Crow era. Wellls was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862, the eldest daughter of James and Elizabeth Warenton Wells. Wells attended Rust College, a historically black, liberal arts college that is still in operation today.

When her parents and an infant brother sadly died during a yellow fever epidemic, Wells took a teaching position to care for her younger siblings. The family moved to Memphis where Wells continued to teach while pursuing higher education at Fisk University during the summer. In 1884, Wells filed suit against the railroad when she was forcibly removed from a first class train car despite the fact that she had purchased a first class ticket. She won a $500 settlement in circuit court, which was later overturned.

Wells became a journalist to call attention to the injustice faced by African-Americans, serving as editor of the Evening Star, an African-American owned newspaper, and later becoming editor and co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight. Her groundbreaking investigative journalism exposed the lynchings of African-Americans, including local grocers Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart. Her office was subsequently burned and destroyed. Wells moved to New York and later moved to Chicago. She was a founding member of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and was founder of the Alpha Suffrage Club. In 1913, she marched in the Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.D., with the Illinois delegation, refusing to march at the back of the parade. She married attorney Ferdinand Barnett in 1895, and the couple had four children. In May 2020, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize citation for her courageous journalism. She will be honored on the Memphis Suffrage Monument "Equality Trailblazers" to be unveiled later this year."
 
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