Ida B. Wells: podcast appearances and interviews

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, sociologist, educator, and a prominent leader in the civil rights movement. She was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence while advocating for African American equality, with a particular focus on women. Throughout the 1890s, Wells documented lynching in the United States through articles and pamphlets such as Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases and The Red Record. Her work challenged the prevalent misconception that Black victims were guilty of crimes by exposing the brutality of lynching and analyzing its underlying social and political causes. She argued that white mobs used lynching to maintain racial and economic dominance and to terrorize African Americans. Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells was freed as an infant following the Emancipation Proclamation. She faced personal tragedies early in life, losing her parents and brother to yellow fever in 1878, and she subsequently worked as a teacher to support her family. Her journalism began at the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, where she reported on racial segregation and inequality. Due to threats and violence, including the destruction of her newspaper office, she relocated to Chicago. There, she continued her activism, writing, and organizing efforts. She was involved in the women’s rights movement as well and traveled nationally and internationally to speak and organize. Wells passed away in 1931 in Chicago, and in 2020, she received a posthumous Pulitzer Prize special citation for her courageous reporting on violence against African Americans.