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An activist, educator, writer, journalist, suffragette, and pioneering voice against the horror of lynching, Ida B. Wells used fierce determination and the power of the pen to educate the world about the unequal treatment of blacks in the United States. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was one of the most important and well known leaders of the African American struggle at the turn of the twentieth century but is almost unknown today. Why is that?

“One had better die fighting injustice than like a rat in a trap.” – Ida B. Wells

Lynching

Between 1882 and 1968, 4,743 persons died of lynching, the majority of them black men and women. Most of the lynchings were by hanging or shooting, however, many were of a more hideous nature: burning at the stake, maiming, dismemberment, castration, and other brutal methods of torture. In the last decades of the 19th century, the lynching of Black people became an institutionalized method used by whites to terrorize Blacks and maintain white supremacy. Today lynching continues, Trayvon Martin being a glaring example of individual violence against an African American.

Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin was an unarmed, 16-year-old who was killed by a neighborhood watch member as he walked to his father’s home in a gated community. The case has gained national attention, as George Zimmerman, the man who admitted to shooting and killing him, was not initially arrested or charged. After nearly 6 weeks and considerable public outcry, prosecutors charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder in the case, which has become a flashpoint in the conversations about racial profiling and gun laws. Was this a lynching?

Who was Ida B. Wells?

Of all the Great civil rights leaders, Ida B. Wells is one of the least known – yet one of the most important. An activist, educator, writer, journalist, suffragette, and pioneering voice against the horror of lynching, Ida B. Wells used fierce determination and the power of the pen to educate the world about the unequal treatment of blacks in the United States. She helped found the NAACP, fought for women’s voting rights and waged a campaign against lynching that exposed the use of mob violence to terrorize African-Americans. Ida B. Wells was born into slavery on July 16, 1862, six months before the Proclamation Emancipation in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

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