Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor and, with her husband, newspaper owner Ferdinand L. Barnett, an early leader in the civil rights movement. She documented lynching in the United States, showing how it was often a way to control or punish blacks who competed with whites. She was active in the women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. Wells was a skilled and persuasive rhetorician, and traveled internationally on lecture tours.

Read more about Ida B. Wells:  Early Life and Education, Early Career, Investigative Journalism, Personal Life, Later Public Career, Europe, Willard Controversy, Southern Horrors and The Red Record, Rhetorical Style and Effect, Wells and W. E. B. Du Bois, Legacy

Famous quotes containing the words ida and/or wells:

    Can you conceive what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing as that “we, the people,” should mean women as well as men; that our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?
    Mary F. Eastman, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 ch. 5, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    Here we’ll strip and cool our fire
    In cream below, in milk-baths higher;
    And when all wells are drawn dry,
    I’ll drink a tear out of thine eye.
    Richard Lovelace (1618–1658)