Erika's Page

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Ida B. Wells: An Inspiration Ida B. Wells is a remarkable woman and true fighter for justice. Ida B. Wells: An Inspiration Ida B. Wells was a remarkable woman and true fighter for justice. I found her life to be an inspiration for me because of her determination to fight against a system that many did not have the courage to fight. She took on, among other things, a Railroad Company, the Memphis school board, lynching of blacks in particular and segregation as a whole and she won it for us all. She has given me the hope and faith to believe that freedom is real and can be achieved and her strong spirit gives me the strength to continue to fight for justice for all. Legacy Continues Her influence today is still very apparent. In 1941 the Chicago Housing Authority opened the Ida B. Wells Housing Project. High Schools have been named for her from San Francisco, California, all across the United States to Jamaica, New York. A prestigious award for promoting excellence of Black writers in journalism is named the Ida B. Wells Award. She was honored by the nation with the Ida B. Wells Commemorative Stamp issued in 1990. She was the subject of a prize-winning video, "Ida B. Wells: a Passion for Justice" produced by William Greaves in 1989. There are over 33,000 references to her on the internet and the Spires Boiling house in Holly Springs where she was born is now the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Family Art Gallery and open to the public.
Ida B. Wells: A Courageous Voice for Civil Rights Ida B. Wells (1862-1931), one of the most important civil rights advocates of the l9th Century, was born in Holly Springs, just before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Ida B. Wells: A Courageous Voice for Civil Rights Ida B. Wells (1862-193 1), one of the most important civil rights advocates of the l9th Century, was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi just before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Ida. B. Wells spent only the first six months of her life as a slave, but she spent the rest of it fighting for justice for others. When her parents died of yellow fever in 1878, she was left to raise her six siblings. She eventually moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she got a job as a teacher in a small town called Woodstock. Ida B. Wells has contributed so much to the fight for freedom for African Americans and her list of accomplishments are tremendous. The best way to speak on Ida B. Wells is to talk about what she has done because her work was her life. Ida B. Wells life: a graduate of Fisk University, a teacher, refused to give up her seat in the ladies car for one in the colored section and sued the railroad in 1880's, wrote articles in pen name "Iola", led the national campaign against lynching, which caused her Memphis newspaper to be mobbed and destroyed 1892, lectured and organized clubs, protested the exclusion of Blacks from the World's Columbian Exposition of 1894, married a lawyer, had four children, founded Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago with Black suffragists, marched in the Washington, D.C. (1913) and Chicago (1916) suffrage parades, Chicago probation officer 1913-1916, ally of W.E.B. DuBois, and felt that the NAACP was not outspoken enough. This is Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Journalist, Civil Rights Activist, Wife, Mother and True Leader.