Ida B Wells Research Paper

Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs Mississippi, in 1862. She experienced firsthand the hardships of the Civil War and what followed in the Reconstruction Act from her childhood to a young adult. So she was very familiar with the freedoms and opportunities that African Americans had been denied. At first things weren’t as bad for Ida for her parents were well known and liked. But when she was 16 tragedy struck her hometown while she was off visiting her grandmother; yellow fever had plundered the lives of many including her parents and youngest brother. Now it was up to her to take care of her 5 other siblings. She had to drop out of school to take on the responsibilities of her family and found a job as a school teacher. Though she hadn’t completed schooling of her own, she was allowed the job because she knew the basic education and most of the students were illiterate. Then Wells and her sisters moved in with their aunt in Memphis Tennessee, in the early 1880’s. There she continued schooling at Fisk University in Nashville and got another schooling job ten miles away. It was in 1884 when on a train ride to her work she was asked by the conductor to move from the ladies front car to the smoking car at the end of the train. She got angry and refused exclaiming to the conductor that she had paid for her first class ticket. This

After extensive research she published a pamphlet in 1892 called “Southern Horrors.” from her findings, she uncovered that the “rape myth” was used by lynch mobs to defend themselves against the murder of African Americans. She also found that by challenging white authority and or even becoming involved in business or politics, you were an instant target for lynching. These public statements made her vulnerable and soon after the Free Speech offices were ravaged and her own life was threatened by a