1862-1931
Journalist for Racial Justice

Early Adversity.

When a yellow fever epidemic claimed the lives of sixteen-year-old Ida Wells's parents, she determined to keep her brothers and sisters together. She taught in a one-room school near Holly Springs, Mississippi. She soon moved the family to Memphis, in order to take a teacher's examination and find a better job. Riding the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad to her job, she refused to sit in the smoky, dingy car reserved for African Americans and filed suit against the railroad for not providing "separate but equal" accommodations. Wells won her case and $500 in damages, but in 1887 the Supreme Court of Tennessee reversed the decision. As a teacher, she began to write for the black church weekly Living Way under the pseudonym "Iola" and soon realized that she loved journalism.

A Crusader for Equality.

Encouraged by the eminent Frederick Douglass...