Equally as Important!

In honor of Black History Month, Gutsy Gals Inspire Me is proud to present the story of Ida B. Wells. Wells was a Civil Rights hero long before Rosa Parks or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. While it is a travesty that her name isn’t universally known, we hope that each of you will pass on the tale of this true American icon.

Born to slaves in the mid 1862 in rural Mississippi, Ida B. Wells was the oldest of eight children. Her parents believed in the importance of education and sent Ida to Rust College at age 14 where she was subsequently expelled for arguing with the President of the school…it seems as though Ida was born gutsy.

Soon after, a plague of Yellow Fever killed her parents and Ida had to take a job as a teacher in a black school to support her siblings. While her job kept the family together, Ida wasn’t passionate about teaching and became increasingly outraged by how little she was paid in comparison to white teachers. By 1890, she’d had enough and moved to Memphis to attend Fisk University part time.

Around this time, Wells became embroiled in a law suit that would pave the way for African Americans long before Rosa Parks refused her seat on a bus. Ida was riding a train when she refused to leave her seat and move to an all black “Jim Crow” car. Her refusal set into motion a civil case that would eventually reach the Tennessee Supreme Court. Ida lost her case but her fire for racial equality only grew in the process.

Ida B. Wells learned that the “pen is mightier than the sword” and took to writing about black issues as a way to propagate her political ideals. She held many editorial positions and even co-owned a newspaper. Ida also fought her naysayers by writing, Southern Horrors :Lynch Law in all its Phases, one of the most comprehensive pieces of literature on the atrocity.

The rest of Ida’s life is marked by further struggle for equality in all areas. She eventually married an attorney but refused to give up her last name (thus becoming one of the first women to do so). She and her husband moved to Chicago where Ida worked to find a balance between raising her four children and continuing her movement. Some of her later accomplishments include co-founding the NAACP, and traveling across Europe to speak about the injustices suffered by African Americans.

Playwright Tazewell Thompson said of Ida, “A dynamic, controversial, temperamental, uncompromising race woman, she broke bread and crossed swords with some of the movers and shakers of her time... By any fair assessment, she was a seminal figure in Post-Reconstruction America." Ida died in 1931 of uremia, just short of finishing her autobiography. The world is different today because of her unrelenting desire for equality. While not every woman will attain the greatness that she did, there are “Ida” moments and possibilities alive in all of us. It’s our turn to write the next chapter.