Ida B. Wells was born on July 16, 1862, on a plantation in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She was the oldest of eight children born to James and Lizzie Wells. Her father, who was enslaved, was a skilled carpenter and was able to make his own money and gain a kind of freedom that made him very active in fighting for freedom. He was a so-called “race man.”
In September 1878, tragedy struck the Wells family when both James and Lizzie succumbed to yellow fever following an epidemic that also claimed a sibling. Ida, who had been visiting her grandmother’s farm near Holly Springs at the time and was spared.
She and her remaining siblings were split up, and she went to live with a relative in Memphis, Tennessee, where she immersed herself in education and justice.
She went on to help create The Crisis with W.E.B. Dubois, where she went around the country chronicling cases of rape, murder and lynching. She gave voice to the voiceless and recorded their stories in the annals of history.
In 2020, the pioneering journalist was awarded a posthumous special citation during the announcement of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize winners. Several journalists, including Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ron Nixon and Topher Sanders, founded The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting in 2016 as “a news trade organization dedicated to increasing and retaining reporters and editors of color in the field of investigative reporting.”
Wells was recognized “for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.”
Ida B. Wells was recently named a History Change Maker on “The Karen Hunter Show.”
