Born a slave in 1862, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was the oldest daughter of James and Lizzie Wells. The Wells family, as well as the rest of the nation's slaves, were freed about six months after Ida's birth, thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation. However, living in Mississippi as African Americans, they faced racial prejudices and were restricted by discriminatory rules and practices. Wells-Barnett's father served on the first board of trustees for Rust College and made education a priority for his seven children. It was there that Wells-Barnett received her early schooling, but she had to drop out at the age of 16, when tragedy struck her family. Both of her parents and one of her siblings died in a yellow fever outbreak, leaving Wells-Barnett to care for her other siblings. Ever resourceful, she convinced a nearby country school administrator that she was 18, and landed a job as a teacher.
On one fateful train ride from Memphis to Nashville, in May 1884, Wells-Barnett reached a personal turning point. Having bought a first-class train ticket to Nashville, she was outraged when the train crew ordered her to move to the car for African Americans, and refused on principle. She was then forcibly removed from the train. Wells-Barnett sued the railroad, winning a $500 settlement in a circuit court case. But that decision was later overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court. This injustice led Wells-Barnett to pick up a pen to write about issues of race and politics in the South. Using the moniker "Iola," a number of her articles were published in black newspapers and periodicals. Wells-Barnett eventually became an owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and, later, the Free Speech. While working as a journalist and publisher, Wells-Barnett also held a position as a teacher in a segregated public school in Memphis. She became a vocal critic of the condition of blacks only schools in the city. In 1891, she was fired from her job for these attacks. She championed another cause after the murder of a friend and his two business associates. In 1892, three African-American men—Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart—set up a grocery store in Memphis. Their new business drew customers away from a white-owned store in the neighborhood, and the white store owner and his supporters clashed with the three men on a few occasions. One night, Moss and the others guarded their store against attack and ended up shooting several of the white vandals. They were arrested and brought to jail, but they didn't have a chance to defend themselves against the charges—a lynch mob took them from their cells and murdered them. These brutal killings incensed Wells-Barnett, leading to her write articles decrying the lynching of her friend and the wrongful deaths of other African Americans. Working on behalf of all women, Wells-Barnett, as part of her work with the National Equal Rights League, called for President Woodrow Wilson to put an end to discriminatory hiring practices for government jobs. She created the first African-American kindergarten in her community and fought for women's suffrage. In 1930, Wells-Barnett made an unsuccessful bid for the state senate. Health problems plagued her the following year. attended suffrage meetings with the likes of Susan B. Anthony and Jane Addams, yet most of her efforts are largely unknown due to the fact that she is African American and female.
The remaining years of Ida B. Wells' career were filled with more writing, activism and organizing. In 1909 she became one of the founders of the NAACP. In 1913 Wells established the first black women's suffrage club, called the Alpha Suffrage Club. That same year she marched in a suffrage parade in Washington DC and met with president McKinley about a lynching in South Carolina. The years following World War I she covered various race riots in Arkansas, East St. Louis and Chicago and published her reports in pamphlets and in the Conservator and newspapers nationwide. In 1928 Wells began her autobiography, stating that "the history of this entire period which reflected glory on the race should be known. Yet most of it is buried I oblivion... and so, because our youth are entitled to the facts of race history which only the participants can give, I am thus led to set forth the facts" (Duster 5). In 1930, her impatience with politicians and her growing concern for Chicago's black ghetto led Wells to run for the Illinois state senate, which she lost to the incumbent.