Investor's Business Daily, August 1st, 2007
Civil rights activist Ida B. Wells started school at such a young age that she later said she couldn't remember how old she was when she first set foot in a classroom.
Wells' earliest memory was reading the newspaper to her father and his friends. Her parents had been slaves. Up to the Civil War, slaves in the South were forbidden to learn to read and write. After the war, Wells' mother, Elizabeth, went to school along with her children.
Born in Holly Springs, Miss., Wells (1862-1931) was 6 months old when slavery ended. Her parents made sure from her earliest years that she understood the value of education. "Our job was to go to school and learn all we could," Wells later said.
Her parents instilled in her a lifelong love of learning along with deep religious faith. That, combined with her resolve to never back down, led her to become one of the great American civil rights leaders.
Her father, Jim, later became a trustee at Shaw University, now known as Rust College. At the time, it was a school for newly freed slaves. He was a good carpenter, loved reading and was active in the Republican Party. He discussed the power of the vote and current events with Wells as she grew up.
Wells enrolled at Rust College in her teens. But in 1878, when she was just 16, Wells faced a challenge beyond her years. Her parents and a baby brother died of yellow fever.
According to biographer Linda McMurry, considered an expert on Wells' life, friends of the family wanted to split up the children. A family would take each of them to a different home. Wells saw the value of family ties and refused to let that happen. She left school and took a job as a teacher to support herself and her five brothers and sisters. "She had to drop out of school. It was a source of some discomfort all her life," McMurry told IBD.
Wells didn't let that stop her. "What she did was take it upon herself to get educated," said McMurry.
In her book "To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells," McMurry writes about how Wells dismantled barriers of prejudice through her actions and writing.
Wells' passion for learning was so deep that at times it caused her pain. On a visit to Holly Springs in 1886, she cried watching younger people get their degrees from Rust College.
"As I witnessed the triumph of the graduates and thought of my lost opportunity, a great sob arose in my throat and I yearned with unutterable longing for the 'might have been,'" Wells wrote in her diary.
Wells' desire to learn led her to join the education society. The group put out a journal and provided textbooks for independent study. McMurry describes her as a "voracious reader." Before leaving Holly Springs, Wells read the entire Bible.
She also read books by Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott and Charlotte Bronte, plus all of William Shakespeare's works.
Despite her lack of formal education, Wells went on to become a nationally known journalist and lecturer. She raised national awareness about the lynching of blacks that took place regularly in the South.
She later co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and took part in major black civil rights actions of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Wells used her teaching pay to raise her brothers and sisters. Along the way, she created a stir by taking a stand similar to the one Rosa Parks would take 71 years later.
Wells was on a train in Tennessee one night in 1884, returning home from her teaching job. A conductor told her that, even though she had a first-class ticket, she would have to go back to a car for blacks and smokers. She refused. The conductor and two passengers physically dragged her from her seat. Rather than sit at the back, Wells got off the train. And she decided she would try to right this injustice.
She sued the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. A lower court ruled in her favor and ordered the railroad to pay her $500. But the country wasn't ready for racial justice.
The railroad appealed the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court. And that court ruled against Wells. It told her to give the $500 back and to pay $200 in court costs.
Wells wrote a story about the case that ran in the Living Way, a religious weekly magazine. It was the start of her career as a reporter.
She moved to Memphis, Tenn., and started writing articles under the byline Iola.
Wells drew her strength, in part, from a deep belief in God. A diary entry in the middle of the fray says: "God help me to be on the watch and to do the right; to harm no man but do my duty ever."
At a time when few people spoke out, she wrote about the travesty of racially motivated lynching.
In 1889, whites lynched three black men in Memphis. Accounts later said it happened because the black men opened a grocery store and took business from a white-owned store across the street.
Wells expressed the outrage of the black community in an editorial in a local newspaper. "The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival," she wrote.
In 1909, prominent black and white leaders met to form a group for the advancement of black people. Wells was among them. From that meeting, the NAACP emerged.
This story originally ran Oct. 8, 2004, on Leaders & Success.
