A white mob destroyed her newspaper office and presses as her investigative reporting was carried nationally in Black-owned newspapers. Wells exposed lynching as a barbaric practice of whites in the South used to intimidate and oppress African Americans who created economic and political competition-and a subsequent threat of loss of power-for whites. In the 1890s, Wells documented lynching in the United States in articles and through her pamphlets called Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, and The Red Record, investigating frequent claims of whites that lynchings were reserved for Black criminals only. Her reporting covered incidents of racial segregation and inequality.
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Soon, Wells co-owned and wrote for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper. Later, moving with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, she found better pay as a teacher. She went to work and kept the rest of the family together with the help of her grandmother. At the age of 16, she lost both her parents and her infant brother in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. īorn into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War. Over the course of a lifetime dedicated to combating prejudice and violence, and the fight for African-American equality, especially that of women, Wells arguably became the most famous Black woman in the United States. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (J– March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement.