Ida B. Wells was a fearless journalist, an advocate for women’s right to vote, and a very early civil rights leader. She was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi and raised a devout Christian. When Ida was 16 and visiting her grandmother, she found out that her parents and her infant brother had died of yellow fever. She and her five siblings were orphans. After the funeral, those close to the family decided to split the siblings up and send them to different foster homes. But Ida couldn’t bear it. She got a job at a Black elementary school so that she could support them and keep them all home together. Her grandmother watched her siblings while she worked. Ida was dismayed that white teachers were paid $80 a month and she was paid only $30 a month.
In 1883, she moved to Memphis with several of her siblings where she found the wages were higher. During the summers, she took college classes. On May 4, 1884, she was riding in the first-class section of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad when a train conductor ordered her to give up her seat for a white lady. He ordered her to move to the smoking car, which was over-crowded, even though she had purchased a first-class ticket. Ida would not give up her seat (in 1884!) and so the conductor and two men dragged her from the car. Ida would not be silenced – she wrote about her mistreatment in a newspaper called “The Living Way.” She hired an African-American attorney to sue the railroad, but the railroad paid him off. Then she hired a white attorney and he actually won her case on December 24, 1884 along with $500 in damages. This decision was appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court and the ruling was reversed. Ida was forced to pay the court costs. In recalling that moment, she said, “I felt so disappointed because I had hoped such great things from my suit for my people…O God, is there no…justice in this land for us?”
Resources:
–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells
–https://blackwomensreligiousactivism.org/activists/ida-b-wells/
–https://info.umkc.edu/womenc/2018/02/21/ida-b-wells-suffragist-feminist-and-leader/