Ida B. Wells

Born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862, Ida B. Wells was the oldest daughter of parents active in Reconstruction-era Republican politics. Her path toward activism sharpened in 1892, when a white mob murdered her friend Thomas Moss along with two of his business partners, Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart, after their grocery store drew customers from a white-owned competitor.

Wells used her position at the Memphis newspaper Free Speech to investigate and expose the lynching; in retaliation, a white mob destroyed her printing office and threatened her life. She relocated to Chicago and kept working, compiling anti-lynching statistics and publishing them in pamphlets, and in 1898 she carried her campaign directly to the White House to press President McKinley for reform. Wells also co-founded the NAACP in 1909 and organized Chicago's Alpha Suffrage Club, one of the first Black women's suffrage groups. In 2020, she was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her anti-lynching reporting.

Key contributions

• Investigated and publicized the 1892 lynching of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart in Memphis.
• Published data-driven anti-lynching pamphlets and campaigned nationally against mob violence.
• Brought her anti-lynching campaign to the White House in 1898.
• Co-founded the NAACP in 1909.
• Founded the Alpha Suffrage Club, an early Black women's suffrage organization in Chicago.
• Awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for her reporting on racial violence.

Context

Wells worked during a period when lynching operated largely outside the reach of federal law, and Southern newspapers routinely justified mob violence with unproven accusations. Her insistence on evidence — records, dates, names — made her reporting difficult for critics to dismiss, even as it made her a target.

In their spirit: Bring the receipts, then refuse to be quiet about them.

About this set

Wells's card is one of six in Set 1A — First Flame Daughters, part of the Lineage: Origin Fire digital postcard collection. First Flame Daughters gathers women whose public courage and leadership lit the way for the movements that followed.

Shop the First Flame Daughters set or get the Complete Collection (all 12 cards).

Sources: National Park Service — Ida B. Wells biography; A Noble Endeavor: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Suffrage; Encyclopedia Britannica — Ida B. Wells-Barnett.