Who Was Ida B. Wells?

The story of how a girl born into slavery became an early leader in the civil rights movement and the most famous black female journalist in nineteenth-century America. Born into slavery in 1862,Ida Bell Wells was freed as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865. Yet she could see just how unjust the world she was living in was. This drove her to become a journalist and activist. Throughout her lifeshe fought against prejudice and for equality for African Americans. Ida B. Wells would go on to co-own a newspaperwrite several bookshelp cofound the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)and fight for women’s right to vote.