Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was born a slave in 1862 but not for long because of the Emancipation Proclamation. Ida and her family were decreed free by the Union. Wells-t filled a lawsuit against a train car company in Memphis for unfair treatment. She was in Memphis where she first started to fight for racial and gender justice. She has thrown off a first-class train to Nashville, regardless of having a ticket. Wells was outraged when the conductor ordered her to move to the African American section. Wells refused and was removed from the train. This injustice led her to launch her career in journalism and write about the issues of race and politics in the South. Ida Wells became an African American journalist and activist who documented the …show more content…
She was named the most prominent correspondent for the black press. She became part owner and the editor of the Free Speech newspaper, Ida wrote an article that denounced the lynching of the three businessmen she knew, who were murdered and alleged of raping women. During Wells investigation she came to realization that lynching was an organized effort to "keep the nigger down" and enforce white supremacy in the South instead used to weed out criminals. So, in her series articles in Free Speech, she urged blacks to move to the west of possible and argued boycotts Memphis’s streetcars. Wells-Barnett became a threat to the whites after speaking out about the violence and inequality in the press against lynching. She earned fearless reputation and become a target, the Memphis Free Speech, was attacked but white mob. This incident left her no choice then move to Chicago.
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution was passed in 186 and granted black men the right to vote and not women. This engendered anger among some white suffragists, particularly in the South. Wells shifted her focus to the women’s suffrage movement to address problems dealing with civil rights and women’s suffrage. She was a founder of the National Association of Coloured Women’s club. Wells Barnett battled racism, sexism and violence. She continued her devotion to democracy and