The American figure I chose is Ida B. Wells Barnett, an African American writer and reformer. Barnett was an activist for anti-lynching and civil rights movement during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She was the daughter of James Wells who was a carpenter and Elizabeth Warrenton who was a cook. Wells was the eldest out of eight children. During Wells childhood the nation went under renovation, with ratified amendments, the south was readmitted to the Union, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded. Wells parents and younger brother was killed by the yellow fever epidemic. This made her determined to keep her family together, so she became …show more content…
She refused to leave, and the train officials physically removed her. She filed a successful suit against the Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroads. Even though she won the case, the Tennessee Supreme court reversed the decision and Wells had to pay court fees. Wells began writing articles for a black newspaper under the pen name “Iola” and was able to launch her journalism career. Wells criticized editorials resulted in her losing her job as a teacher. In 1889, Wells became a part owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight where she used it to address the cause of African American civil rights. During the 1890s Wells became an activist to raise awareness towards lynching. After three of her male friends became victims of lynching activity. Like other Americans, Wells believed that the lynching victims committed crimes such as rape. However, the three grocery owners did not commit the crime they were just involved in a prejudice debate with a white grocery who was losing business to them. This event led to Wells decided to investigate other lynching stories that involved rape she found out that many of the allegations were false. Her editorials had led to the demise of Free Speech outraged citizens of Memphis and they forced her and her partner out of …show more content…
After one o her speech she was able to raise sponsors that helped finance her publication on lynching, Southern Horrors. She argued that lynching negatively increased because African Americans became more successful and educated. She also made it clear that white men committed sexual violence against black women, while black men were brutalized by white mobs for having consensual sex with white women. Wells flip the script and portrayed whites as the rapists of African American women and the hypocritical murders of innocent African American men. She taught in the United States in England at the appeal of both whites and blacks. Her lectures also appeared in newspapers. Wells goal was to make a campaign to end the discriminatory killing of black men. Wells research on lynching was a result of her personal experience and her belief that no one would defend African Americans victims against lynching during the 1890s. Her writings included historical development of lynching, data, case studies, and cures. In 1892, when mobs across the South murdered more than 200 African Americans men and women, including one of Wells closest friends, she began to systematically investigate lynchings. In 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition Wells joined Frederick Douglass and lawyer Ferdinand L. Barnett to pass around a coauthored protest