Happy Birthday Ida B. Wells

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Today we celebrate 153 years of Ida B. Wells.

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931), more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was an American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, Georgist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. She was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi to James Wells and Elizabeth "Izzy Bell" Warrenton. This occurred just before President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. While visiting her grandmother in the Mississippi Valley in 1878, Ida, then aged 16, received word that Holly Springs had suffered a yellow fever epidemic. Both her parents and her 10-month-old brother, Stanley, died in that event, leaving her and her five siblings orphaned.

Wells kept track of her life through diaries. She documented lynching in the United States, showing that it was often used as a way to control or punish blacks who competed with whites, rather than being based on criminal acts by blacks, as was usually claimed by white mobs. She was active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. Wells was a skilled and persuasive rhetorician and traveled internationally on lecture tours.

In 1895, Wells married Ferdinand Barnett. She was one of the first married American women to keep her own last name as well as taking her husband's. The couple had four children: Charles, Herman, Ida, and Alfreda. Throughout her life, Wells was militant in her demands for equality and justice for African-Americans and insisted that the African-American community win justice through its own efforts. Since her death, interest in her life and legacy has grown. She died at the age of 68 in Chicago, Illinois on March 25, 1931.