Ida B Wells' Role in the Civil Rights Movement

Throughout Ida B. Wells’ diary, she has many struggles, ups and downs. Her diary takes us from her young promiscuous days as a young woman with her various friends, callers, and not knowing who she really was to basically a travel log as a married lady who was well set, owned her own news paper, and a spokesman for blacks all across America. During these years, she goes through long stretches of depression and happiness. In her struggles of depression, Wells very much struggles with three particular concepts the most. Wells has big problems her identity, the way black women were treated, and stereotypes of blacks.

In Wells’ younger days, she struggled tremendously with the concept of identity. She did not know who she was, where shit fit in, or what crowd she was in part. In her diary, she talks of how she despises racism and blacks who forget their culture, yet when it comes to her looks she dresses to the “white” standard of a proper lady. Wells does not even notice this as it is not just her, but a mindset that has already been developing around her which she has taken on, that the “white” standard of dress is what is proper. One thing Wells does notice though is that she does not fit in anywhere. In the text she talks of how she feels she does not fit her time’s standards as a black woman. This is because in her time not just black women but mostly all women were supposed to be in the private eye and men were in the public eye. Wells’ found herself in the public eye which was extremely unusual, her being black and a woman. This is why she did not fit in. Wells’ struggle with identity is very important because it shows how the younger years of your life are a growing period for a person to find one’s self and true purpose. Wells was conflicted all the way into her twenties until she decides to take action on what she has wanted to do which is to be a writer and use that to be the trumpet and voice of blacks and speak out against the unfair treatment of blacks in America. Wells had to struggle through her identity to find her true purpose. This happens to mostly everyone nowadays also, for example in college many students do not know what they want to do until almost their third or fourth year in.