July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931
- Investigative journalist, educator
- Early leader in the civil rights movement
- co- founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
- Born in Mississippi
- moved to Memphis, Tennessee
- moved to Chicago, Illinois
“A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” – 1892
About Ida B. Wells
Ida Bell Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16, 1862 and became one of the most important journalists and civil rights leaders of her era. On September 15, 1883 she refused to leave the first-class ladies’ car of a Chesapeake and Ohio train and was dragged out; she sued and won $500 in a local court, though the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the ruling in 1887. In 1889 she became editor and co-owner of the Memphis newspaper Free Speech and Headlight.
After three Black men in Memphis, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and William Stewart, were taken from jail and killed by a mob on March 9, 1892, Wells began investigating lynching across the South. A mob destroyed her newspaper office in May 1892, and she never returned to Memphis. Her pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, published in October 1892, contains the self-defense line quoted above: that a Winchester rifle deserved “a place of honor in every black home.” She later settled in Chicago, helped found the NAACP, and organized the Alpha Suffrage Club in 1913. Wells died in Chicago on March 25, 1931, and in 2020 she received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize special citation. Her words remain one of the most cited arguments for armed self-defense by people the law failed to protect.
Key Facts
- July 16, 1862: Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi
- 1889: Becomes editor and co-owner of Free Speech and Headlight in Memphis
- October 26, 1892: Begins publishing Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
- January 30, 1913: Helps organize the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago
- March 25, 1931: Dies in Chicago
- 2020: Awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize special citation
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