Ida B. Wells, born July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, was a teacher, journalist suffragist, a leaer in the early Civil Rights Movement and co-founder of the NAACP. She was orphaned at 16 years old, but went to work as a teacher to provide and care for her younger siblings so the family could stay together.
May 4, 1884, she purchased a ticket with the Memphis and Charleston Railroad in the first-class ladies car, but was told to move. When she refused, she was forcibly dragged from the car. She sued the railroad company and won the initial case in the local circuit court but the railroad company appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court's ruling.
In 1889, Thomas Moss, an entrepeneur and friend of Wells, was lynched with two other men. Moss had opened a grocery store that competed and did better than the white-owned grocery store across the street. This prompted Wells to research and document lynching and their causes. She published her findings in a pamphlet "Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases" in 1892.
She fiercely campaigned against lynching and even traveled to Europe twice to promote her message.
Wells passed away of kidney failure in March 1931 in Chicago.
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