Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) was a journalist, feminist, and civil rights activist best known for her anti-lynching campaign in the 1890s. Many said she was “the loudest and most persistent voice for truth.” T. Thomas Fortune, publisher of The New York Age, wrote that Wells “has plenty of nerve; she is smart as a steel trap, and she has no sympathy with humbug.”

In 1892, Wells published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases and A Red Record: Lynchings in the United States—pamphlets detailing the brutality of lynchings in the South. She co-owned and wrote for Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, which she used as her platform to launch her anti-lynching crusade. Frederick Douglass described her as a “Brave woman!”

At twenty two, while Wells was traveling on a train, the Conductor asked her to move to the Colored Section. She refused and was forcibly removed. Wells successfully sued the railroad, but her case was overturned on appeal. This bold move by Wells took place several decades before Rosa Parks’ famous refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.

In 1894, Wells married Ferdinand L Barnett—also a strong voice against the lynching of black Americans—in Chicago, Illinois and their wedding made the front page of The New York Times—a testament to the significance of their work. The house in this artwork was the couple‘s home from 1919-1930. It is now a designated Chicago landmark.

Wells-Barnett marched in the first national women’s suffrage parade held in Washington, D.C. on March 3, 1913. Though black suffragists were relegated to the back of the parade in an effort to appease southern white suffragists whose votes were needed to pass the 19th Amendment, Wells-Barnett joined the white Illinois delegation from her home state at the last minute in protest of this decision.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett also organized The Women’s Club, was involved in the formation of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club, and helped stop the proposed segregation of Chicago Public Schools among many other extraordinary accomplishments. She made it her life‘s mission to seek racial and gender equality and justice.