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Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi
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At the age of 16, she lost both her parents and her 10-month old brother, Stanley, the youngest from the yellow fever epidemic.
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Wells’ speech, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases is important as a historical document and as the initiating event in what became a social movement; as a rhetorical work, it is significant in three respects.
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She published a pamphlet titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, and A Red Record, which documented research on a lynching. Having examined many accounts of lynching based on alleged "rape of white women," she concluded that Southerners concocted rape as an excuse to hide their real reason for lynchings: black economic progress, which threatened not only white Southerners' pocketbooks, but also their ideas about black inferiority.
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Wells went to Great Britain at the invitation of Catherine Impey, a British Quaker. An opponent of imperialism and proponent of racial equality, Impey wanted to ensure that the British public learned about the problem of lynching.
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Wells married her husband, Barnett. She set an early precedent as being one of the first married American women to keep her own last name along with her husband's.
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Wells founded the National Association of Colored Women, and also founded the National Afro-American Council. Wells formed the Women's Era Club, the first civic organization for African-American women. This later was named the Ida B. Wells Club, in honor of its founder.
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Wells was struggling to manage a home life and a career life, but she was still a fierce campaigner in the anti-lynching circle
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Wells died of uremia (kidney failure) in Chicago
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On February 1, 1990, the United States Postal Service issued a 25 cent postage stamp in her honor.
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Wells was listed on the 100 Greatest African Americans
