Ida B. Wells-Barnett with her children Charles, Herman, Ida, and Alfreda, 1909

Ida B. Wells faced challenges that many women know well: she had to balance her organizing zeal with raising a family.

In 1895, Wells married attorney Ferdinand L. Barnett, a widower with two sons, Ferdinand and Albert. She was one of the first married American women to keep her own last name as well as taking her husband's The couple had four more children: Charles, Herman, Ida, and Alfreda. In the chapter of her Crusade For Justice autobiography, called A Divided Duty, Wells described the difficulty she had splitting her time between her family and her work. She continued to work after the birth of her first child, traveling and bringing the infant Charles with her. Although she tried to balance her world, she could not be as active in her work. Susan B. Anthony said she seemed "distracted". After having her second child, Wells stepped out of her touring and public life for a time.

Alfreda M. Duster, the daughter of Ida B. Wells and Ferdinand L. Barnett, was the editor of her mother’s autobiography Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells.

Towards the end of her life, realizing that her work was already becoming forgotten history, Ida B. Wells wrote the massive, unfinished memoirs that form Crusade for Justice. An outspoken and determined woman with seemingly limitless energy, Ida B. Wells began her crusade against the oppression of black people in 1884, when, at the age of sixteen, she sued the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad for evicting her from a first class car. A teacher and journalist, she began a one-woman anti-lynching campaign after a close friend was murdered. She traveled throughout England and later in the United States gaining support; got married; began the first clubs for black women in the US; started a reading room, shelter, and employment service for black men in Chicago; investigated race riots; and had six children. Her children and husband (she refers to him as "Mr. Barnett") remain almost invisible in this book, but what Crusade for Justice lacks in domestic detail, it makes up for in personal opinion. Ida B. Wells was a forthright woman who worked with many famous leaders of the early twentieth century, and she does not hesitate either to blast her opponents or to praise those who earn her respect - including President Wilson, Booker T. Washington, Susan B. Anthony, and Frederick Douglass. Her history is packed with facts not often taught in schools and filled with the fervor of a woman who spent her life proving that one person can and must make a difference

I wrote “Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was a lioness” two years ago for Black Kos, and am republishing portions of that piece here:

She would not be silent

For speaking plainly about rape, sex and murder, Wells lost her home and her livelihood. For the rest of her life, she had to defend her reputation against both white and black people who called her a "negro adventuress" and "Notorious Courtesan." A black newspaper editor suggested that the public should "muzzle" that "animal from Memphis," and the New York Times dubbed her “a slanderous and dirty-minded mulatress."

There are two biographies of her you should read. The first is Ida: A Sword Among Lions—Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, by black historian Paula Giddings.

Heralded as a landmark achievement upon publication, Ida: A Sword Among Lions is a sweeping narrative about a country and a crusader embroiled in the struggle against lynching—a practice that imperiled not only the lives of black men and women, but also a nation based on law and riven by race. At the center of the national drama is Ida B. Wells (1862-1931). Born to slaves in Mississippi, Wells began her activist career by refusing to leave a first-class ladies' car on a Memphis railway and rose to lead the nation's first campaign against lynching. For Wells, the key to the rise in violence was embedded in attitudes not only about black men, but also about women and sexuality. Her independent perspective and percussive personality gained her encomiums as a hero—as well as aspersions on her character and threats of death. Exiled from the South by 1892, Wells subsequently took her campaign across the country and throughout the British Isles before she married and settled in Chicago. There she continued her activism as a journalist, suffragist, and independent candidate in the rough-and-tumble world of the Windy City's politics. With meticulous research and vivid rendering of her subject, Giddings also provides compelling portraits of twentieth-century progressive luminaries, blacks and whites who worked with Wells during some of the most tumultuous periods in American history. In this groundbreaking work, Paula J. Giddings brings to life the irrepressible personality of Ida B. Wells and gives the visionary reformer her due.

She was also the subject of the documentary film Ida B. Wells: a Passion for Justice.

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The second biography is To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells, by Mia Bey.

Born to slaves in 1862, Ida B. Wells became a fearless anti-lynching crusader, women’s rights advocate, and journalist. Wells’s refusal to accept any compromise on racial inequality caused her to be labeled a “dangerous radical” in her day but made her a model for later civil rights activists as well as a powerful witness to the troubled racial politics of her era. Though she eventually helped found the NAACP in 1910, she would not remain a member for long, as she rejected not only Booker T. Washington’s accommodationism but also the moderating influence of white reformers within the early NAACP. In the richly illustrated To Tell the Truth Freely, the historian Mia Bay vividly captures Wells’s legacy and life, from her childhood in Mississippi to her early career in late-nineteenth-century Memphis and her later life in Progressive-era Chicago.

For Women's History Month, it is fitting that we look at Wells-Barnett through the lens of black female historians like Paula Giddings.

Professor Paula Giddings is the author of three books on the social and political history of African American women: When and Where I Enter: The Impact on Black Women on Race and Sex in America; In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement; and, most recently, the critically acclaimed biography of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, Ida: A Sword among Lions. She is also the editor of Burning All Illusions, an anthology of articles on race published by The Nation magazine from 1867 to 2000. She is also a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeune Afrique (Paris), The Nation, and the journals Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism and Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, among other publications. Before attaining the position of professor of Afro-American studies at Smith College, Professor Giddings had taught at Spelman College, where she was a United Negro Fund Distinguished Scholar; Douglass College/Rutgers University as the Laurie Chair in Women's Studies; and Princeton and Duke Universities.

Mia Bey is another black woman historian. She is ...

… a Professor of History and Director, Center for Race and Ethnicity at Rutgers University and has authored To Tell the Truth Freely: the Life of Ida B. Wells. Hill & Wang, February 2009.and The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas About White People 1830-1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Bey speaks of Wells-Barnett in these two brief bio clips.

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At a time when we are faced with extreme and dangerous challenges, we need truth-tellers and crusaders like Wells—now more than ever.

She told us, “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

Amen, Sister Wells. Amen.