Ida B. Wells, was born a slave in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

By the turn of the century, she had risen in prominence and was known as one of the greatest female journalist of her time and a tireless advocate of justice for her race.

Her journalistic career began in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1880's.

One day in 1884, Miss Wells, who was a teacher at the time, boarded a train in Memphis and took a seat in the lady's coach-first class car as she had always done. When the conductor came by to collect tickets, he refused to accept hers. When ordered to move to the car which was reserved for smokers and blacks, she refused. The conductor, with the help of two other men, pushed Miss Wells out of the coach when the train stopped at the next station.

She then sued the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad and was awarded $500 in damages, only to see the decision overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

She wrote an article about the incident for The Living Way, a black church weekly, and later began writing columns.

Miss Wells' initial articles were confined to so-called women's news, i.e. births, deaths, club meetings, concert reviews, etc.

She soon expanded her writing to broader issues of "outrages, discrimination and the defamation of black women". Her columns written under the pen name Iola were reprinted in newspapers across the country.

Although there were more than a dozen women writing for black newspapers in the 1880's, none wrote as boldly as Ida B. Wells.

When she was twenty-seven, she became editor and part owner of the Memphis Free Speech.

Two years later she was fired from her teaching position after writing an article denouncing inadequate conditions in schools for black children.

Another turning point in her career came in 1892, when a close friend of hers and two others, were lynched by vigilantes. Their crime had been to own a grocery store that competed with a white grocer.

A white man was shot and wounded while the black grocers were trying to keep their store from being ransacked by a local citizens group. Ida published a detailed expose of the incident, including the names of the perpetrators. She demanded their arrest and conviction. When no attempt was made to punish the murderers, she wrote another editorial decrying the injustice and urging blacks to abandon the city of Memphis.

"Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails a Negro if he dares protect himself against the white man or become his rival," wrote Wells-Barnett.

Fortunately, she was out of town when the article was published. A group of leading citizens ransacked her offices, destroyed all her equipment and warned her not to return to Memphis. All incoming trains were watched for Ida B. Wells.

While in exile, Wells-Barnett became writer, editor and part owner of the New York Age.

She began investigating the 728 reported lynchings of back men and women that took place in the South from 1880-1891. Her friends feared for her life because of her outspoken newspaper articles. She bought a pistol and began keeping it at her side at night as she wrote.

In 1895, she wrote the Red Record, the first serious statistical treatment of lynching in America.

She worked closely for years with Susan B. Anthony in the women's suffrage movement and was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In 1898, at a Chicago rally, she presented President William McKinley with a series of resolutions against lynching.

In 1913, she organized one of the first suffrage groups made up of black women.

Although out- matched by the well-oiled political machinery in Illinois, in 1930, at the age of sixty, she ran as an independent in the Republican primary for the Illinois state senate.

She died in 1931, while sitting at her desk working on her autobiography.

Ida. B. Wells-Barnett is remembered as a tireless crusader, who put herself at risk to call attention to the inequities and injustices of her day.