Ida B. Wells was born in Holly Springs, MS in 1862 to former slaves and died in Chicago, Illinois 1931 at the age of sixty-nine. Though born in Mississippi, Wells’ career as an activist and journalist began in Memphis, TN where she moved after her parents’ death (Yellow Fever) and became an educator to take care of her surviving siblings.
While there, three friends, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart, owners of the People’s Grocery Company, were lynched. Local whites were infuriated with the boldness of these men, believing that they took away business from surrounding white grocers. Having become co-owner of a Memphis-based newspaper, The Free Speech, Wells wrote an editorial in response to the murder of the three men. In their anger at her pointed critique of racism, a white mob stormed into the newpaper's offices and destroyed the printing press, leaving a message demanding that Wells leave town.
Out of safety, Wells moved to Chicago, where she continued to write on lynching in the South as a criminal epidemic. Her work in Chicago inspired anti-lynching campaigns by both the NAACP and the black women’s club movement in the United States. Wells went on to publish a major book on the subject.
