Ida B. Wells

About

Civil rights leader and women's rights activist who gained national attention for documenting the groups lynching blacks in the United States.

Before Fame

Her parents were slaves until the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. 

Trivia

She refused to give up her seat while riding the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad and was thrown off the train for it, 71 years before the activist Rosa Parks showed similar resistance on a bus.

Family Life

She was born to James And Elizabeth Wells. She married to Ferdinand L. Barnett. She had two sons, Herman and Charles, and two daughters, Alfreda and Ida.

Associated With

Together with Frederick Douglass and other black leaders, she organized a black boycott of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, for its failure to collaborate with the black community on exhibits representing African-American life.