Wells, Ida B. (1862-1931) Also known as: Wells-Barnett, Ida B. (1862-1931)

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Mentioned in (4)
Written by (2)
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Jane Addams to Jenkin Lloyd Jones, October 20, 1903

Discuss Negroes Yearly, June 2, 1909

Jane Addams to Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, August 11, 1912

Political and Social Life in the Orient, February 3, 1924 (summary)

Call for a Lincoln Conference on the Negro Question, February 12, 1909

Jane Addams et al. to Harry Pratt Judson, November 25, 1912

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Birth Date

1862-07-16

Death Date

1931-03-25

Birthplace

Holly Springs, Mississippi

Biographical Text

Ida Bell Wells was an African-American journalist, civil rights activist, and a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Born into slavery a few months before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Wells attended Rust College until 1878 when her parents were killed in a yellow fever epidemic. She worked as a teacher and in 1883 began active work against segregation. She began writing articles in black newspapers and in 1892 became focused on anti-lynching activities, which forced her to leave the South. Wells moved to New York and wrote for the New York Age, traveled to Soctland and England to talk on lynching, and wrote a pamphlet with Frederick Douglass and Ferdinand Barnett. Barnett moved to Chicago, and managed her husband's newspaper the Chicago Conservator, and helped organize black women's groups and desegragate the suffrage movement. Wells-Barnett also served as a probation officer in Chicago from 1913 to 1916.

Wells married widowed attorney and civil rights activist Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1895. The couple had four children, Charles, Herman, Ida, and Alfreda. Wells died in 1931.