IDA BELL WELLS BARNETT

On Sunday May 4, 1884 a young African American teacher Ida Bell Wells boarded a train and had her second run-in with the White supremacist laws of travelling while African American. She was forcibly removed from a carriage designated for women. Of course the designation was for White women while African American women were relegated to a carriage where White men "retired" to drink and smoke and where African American women were subjected to sexual harassment by White men. The May 4, 1884 incident happened while the first incident from September 15, 1883 was still making its way through the courts. While most people know about Rosa Parks and her challenge to the White supremacist system of segregated American transportation there were many protesters before her December 1, 1955 protest. In the century before there was the crusading Ida Bell Wells later (June 27, 1895) Ida Bell Wells Barnett.

Born on July 16, 1862 during slavery she was three years old when slavery was abolished in 1865. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, the first child of enslaved Africans James and Elizabeth Wells. Following the end of the Civil War and the beginning of freedom and Reconstruction in the Southern states formerly enslaved Africans made education a priority. During slavery it was illegal for enslaved Africans to be literate; the few who gained the skills of reading and writing did so at the risk of losing their lives. Emancipation saw 90% of African Americans illiterate and “Negro schools” were established throughout the south. On November 24, 1866 when Wells was four years old Rust College was founded to provide basic education for adults and children who had formerly been enslaved. Four years later in 1870, the college was chartered as Shaw University. Located in Holly Springs it is one of 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and is the second-oldest private college in Mississippi. Wells along with her siblings and her mother (who seized the opportunity to learn to read) attended the institution.

In 1878 when Wells was 16 years old tragedy struck in the form of a yellow fever epidemic which claimed the lives of her parents and a younger sibling. Wells was visiting her grandmother's farm when the epidemic hit but returned home despite warnings from doctors. In her autobiography Wells wrote about her reason for making that decision: "I am going home. I am the oldest of seven living children. There's nobody but me to look after them now." Despite the urging of older community members Wells resisted all attempts to split up her family and insisted on keeping her younger siblings together. She applied for a teaching position, passed the qualifying examination and was given a position 6 miles from her home. Relatives and friends kept the Wells children during the week when Wells was at her job. In her autobiography, Wells described managing her role of caretaker and provider: "I came home every Friday afternoon, riding the six miles on the back of a big mule. I spent Saturday and Sunday washing and ironing and cooking for the children and went back to my country school on Sunday afternoon."

Her first run-in with staff and White passengers on a train on September 15, 1883 led to her suing the company. An excerpt from the court document reads: "I am 20 years of age and unmarried, my profession is that of School Teacher and during September 1883, I was teaching a public school at Woodstock, a station on defendant’s road, ten miles North of Memphis. My salary was $30.00 a month -- On 15th September, 1883. I was in Memphis, and started to return to Woodstock - took a seat in the rear car of defendant’s passenger train that left Memphis about 4 o’clock that afternoon. When I went in the car, some half hour before leaving time the ticket office was not open - I afterwards went out and bought a ticket which read as follows:
Chesapeake Ohio & Southwestern R.R. one continuous trip Memphis to Woodstock."

The ticket Wells had bought obviously did not specify that she could not ride in the section where she was seated. In practice African Americans were forced to ride in the carriage where White men indulged in behaviour deemed not suitable for the carriage in which White women were seated. The September 15, 1883 incident ended with Wells being dragged off the train by the White conductor and two White passengers after a violent struggle in which Wells was forced to physically defend herself.

The May 4, 1884 debacle was the tipping point and Wells became an activist, writing articles under the penname “Iola.” Writing as the crusading “Iola” cost Wells her teaching job. She then became a full time journalist and was so successful at raising the issues of the day (including the scourge of White people lynching African American men, women and children) that her life was in danger and she had to flee. In 1892 while out of town her newspaper was destroyed by a White mob and she was warned not to return home. Wells took her anti-lynching campaign to Britain and became an internationally known anti-lynching crusader.