As I continue to reflect on women’s history month, civic action, equality, and a democratic society (among other things), I couldn’t help but write and speak about Ida B. Wells-Barnett this week. Recently, Melissa Gomez of the Los Angeles times reached out to teachers, including me, to talk to us about how we are teaching students about the invasion of Ukraine (Read the article here). Edweek notifications ping my phone several times a day. The 1619 Project is one of the greatest journalism feats of my lifetime. Journalists are risking their lives to report from areas of the world where they are not welcome; including in the United States. We need to celebrate (and protect!) our First Amendment right to freedom of the press, and what better way to do that then to study the female journalists who used investigative journalism and opened the doors for other women to join the profession? Last week, The Teaching History Her Way Podcast interviewed Bloomfield, New Jersey educator Meredith Forte about Nellie Bly, the Gilded Age journalist who exposed the mistreatment of mentally ill women in New York. This week, we study Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 19th century African-American woman, editor, journalist, and activist who fought against lynching, for women’s suffrage, and civil rights. Wells-Barnett, readers, is a hero.

First, some background information. Wells-Barnett was born enslaved in Mississippi in 1862 and was the oldest of 8 children. She attended Rust College, a Historically Black college that is still open today, but couldn’t finish her degree because both of her parents and one of her siblings died of yellow fever in 1873. She took care of her siblings by becoming a teacher (That’s right, our hero Wells was also an educator at one point in her life!) So, in 1881, Wells moved herself and her youngest siblings to Memphis, Tennessee to live with an aunt and work as a teacher. She was also able to reenroll in college and attended Fisk University. Around the same time she reached a pivotal moment in her life that sparked her passion for activism. On a train ride from Memphis to Nashville in 1884, Wells was told to move to a different train car because she was Black, despite the fact that she had bought a first-class ticket. She refused and was forcibly removed from the train. She later sued the Chesapeake, Southwestern, & Ohio Railroad Company and won, but her legal and moral victories were overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court. It was this event that sparked her active journalism, as she began writing editorials in Black newspapers and magazines, and later would own two newspapers, The Memphis Free Speech and Headlight and Free Speech. In 1891 she was actually dismissed as a teacher for writing in her newspaper about the evils of segregation!

Wells was personally affected by lynching, as a Black grocery store owner and two of his employees were murdered in this way in Memphis. When this happened was when Wells took to the pen and used her voice in Free Speech to urge Black people to move away from Memphis. If they wouldn’t leave Memphis, Wells urged them to not ride the trolley cars or put money into Memphis’s economy. Wells received death threats for her writing and while she was out of town the Free Speech newspaper office was destroyed. After this, she continued her anti-lynching campaign in New York, writing for a newspaper there and speaking throughout the North East and in 1893 left for the U.K. to speak out against lynching there. In the U.S. starting in 1894, Wells started anti-;lynching committees, and when she settled in Chicago she wrote A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States 1892-1893-1894. She got her statistics from the Chicago Tribune and the Tribune vouched for the truthfulness in her record. It was an appeal to the world to stop mob violence. She was the first and the loudest voice to fight against lynching.

During her lifetime, Wells was threatened with lynching and other forms of hate violence but she bravely pushed on in standing up to those white nationalists- and “regular” white people- who propagated lynching, approved of lynching, or stood by and watched lynchings happen in the United States. She saw lynching as the failure of the South to give and maintain the rights of Black people, but also, according to Paula Giddings, lynching also demonstrated the relationship between men and women and sexuality and it was the definition of America’s issues with race. Wells traveled the country and wrote about how the extra-judicial murder of Black people and its acceptance were wrong and unacceptable, and she advocated for social and political change. Several states outlawed lynching in the 1880s because of her work. Given that our Senate just passed an anti-lynching bill in early March of 2022 and there is still no federal law outlawing lynching, Wells is still relevant and right.

Wells used her pen to speak out about injustices though out the U.S. Her primary belief was that lynching was central to the issues Black people were dealing with in the country at the time, but she also fought hard for enfranchisement because she believed that the vote would stop lynchings; the name of the article she wrote is “How Enfranchisement Stops Lynching.” She organized the Alpha Suffrage Club in 1913, the first organization for Black women seeking suffrage. She was also a founding member of the NAACP.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett left us a legacy of bravery, courage, truth in journalism, and hope because no matter how grim the state of society and politics seemed, she never gave up hope that the light she spread and her sometimes lonely, one-person campaign, would make great change. How does this translate to the classroom? Wells is a change-maker and protector of democracy. Her history runs deep with civics lessons in activism and First Amendment protections. She was a leader in the women’s suffrage movement and her history tells the story of disagreements within the movement because many white women wanted to leave Black women out. She is a primary source that proves our country’s tumultuous history as related to race. Not only does Wells deserve to be studied, but our students deserve to study her!

Sources: https://www.nps.gov/people/idabwells.htm, https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/ida-b-wells/, https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-1500924;jsessionid=601E1CBEB0EA4B5D679537FE9B4744CD?a=1&d=10&n=Ida+B+Wells&q=1&ss=0, Ida: A Sword Among Lions by Paula J. Giddings, Crusade for JusticeThe Autobiography of Ida B. Wells, Second Edition by Ida B. Wells.