Prominent Journalist, Activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett Dies
by: Dr. Clint Wilson
Ida B. Wells was born a slave in Holly Springs, Miss. and by age 14 her parents had died leaving her to care for her brothers and sisters. Always an avid writer, she used the pen name "Iola" from her days as a contributor to Fisk University's student newspaper. At age 27 she acquired one-third interest in a Black weekly newspaper in Memphis, Tenn., the Free Speech. After three young Black grocery store owners were lynched in Memphis in 1892, Wells wrote that the deed had been motivated by white food store competitors. A mob subsequently raided her newspaper office, destroyed it and threatened her life. She escaped to New York and began writing for T. Thomas Fortune's New York Age.
Fortune said of her, "She has become famous as one of the few of our women who can handle a goose-quill with diamond point, as easily as any man in newspaper work. If Iola were a man, she would be a humming independent in politics. She has plenty of nerve and is as sharp as a steel trap." Wells eventually moved to Chicago and married Ferdinand Barnett, a Black newspaper publisher there. She continued her tireless crusade for civil and women's rights until her sudden death, which was, reported by the Chicago Defender in its March 28, 1931 edition.
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